Timesuck with Dan Cummins - 392 - Let The People Trip! (What Psychedelics Are and Where They Come From)

Episode Date: March 18, 2024

Very informative episode today! I learned so much and hope you do too. We explore the history of human psychedelic usage, and also dive into the origin, properties, dangers, and benefits of the most popular psychedelics today: LSD, MDMA, Magic Mushrooms, DMT, and Peyote.  I loved psychedelics before this episode, and love them even more after learning what I share this week. Watch the Suck on YouTube: https://youtu.be/jxcKBIgK0ucMerch and more: www.badmagicproductions.com Timesuck Discord! https://discord.gg/tqzH89vWant to join the Cult of the Curious Private Facebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" to locate whatever happens to be our most current page :)For all merch-related questions/problems: [e-mail] (copy and paste)Please rate and subscribe on Apple Podcasts and elsewhere and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG and http://www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcastWanna become a Space Lizard? Click here: https://www.patreon.com/timesuckpodcast.Sign up through Patreon, and for $5 a month, you get access to the entire Secret Suck catalog (295 episodes) PLUS the entire catalog of Timesuck, AD FREE. You'll also get 20% off of all regular Timesuck merch PLUS access to exclusive Space Lizard merch. And you get the download link for my secret standup album, Feel the Heat.

In the 1930s, science fiction writer, philosopher, author of the dystopian classic Brave New World Aldous Huxley began experimenting with hallucinogenics. He along with many other philosophical minds of his day became strong believers that psychedelic drugs were the key to bypassing the limits of ordinary human perception and expanding our consciousness to heights far greater than anything you could achieve without psychedelic assistance. Aldous once wrote to a friend and fellow experimenter in the world of psychotropic substances that because of psychedelic drugs, he had experienced and understood,

quote, that sense of affectionate solidarity with the people around me and with the universe at large. Also the sense of the world's fundamental all-rightness in spite of pain, death, and bereavement. As a user of psychedelics, yes, yes, and more yes. I've reached that exact state numerous times and it is sublime. A very different type of high than narcotics or opioids or alcohol, weed, etc. You feel like you're in contact with the divine that you have, if only temporarily, achieved some state of deeply spiritual sublimity. That quote makes me wish I had the space in my life to right now selfishly take a psychedelic vacation at least a week.

There's nothing else like it. Just Lindsey and I, a few friends in some peaceful warm beach house with a bunch of LSD, DMT, shrooms, molly, definitely some 5-MeO DMT, aka toad venom, aka god molecule, and tons of yummy snacks and water. Can't forget in between trip snacks and the need for your body to stay hydrated in this world while your mind is in the fourth or some other dimension. Three decades later on his deathbed, Aldous requested his wife to inject him with LSD as he passed on to the next realm of existence. I'll share some of what she wrote about his final moments, perhaps the most beautiful

death I have ever heard of. Huxley, of course, is just one of hundreds of famous people and millions and millions of regular ones to experiment with psychedelics as a means to transcend the monotony, the suffering, the stress of this feeble human existence that we are shackled to. Before taking to the stage during the psychedelic 1970s, Jimi Hendrix would, allegedly, slice his forehead open and bandage the wound with a sheet of LSD blotting paper under one of his infamous bandanas. If he didn't absorb that acid that way, it seems he was at the very least a frequent user. Did expanding his consciousness somehow help him achieve his otherworldly abilities on the guitar.

A genius of another type and founder of Apple, Steve Jobs, spoke frequently about how hallucinogens helped him think creatively when he was first getting his company started. He once said, taking LSD was a profound experience, one of the most important things in my life. It reinforced my sense of what was important, creating great things instead of making money, putting things back into the stream of history and of human consciousness as much as I could. After Mike Tyson bit Evander Holyfield's ear off during their 1997 showdown, the heavyweight legend struggled with severe depression and suicidal thoughts. However, after experiencing a spiritual overhaul through the use of psilocybin mushrooms, his mental health improved dramatically.

So much so that in 2021, he told someone from Reuters, excuse me, I did all this stuff. And once I got introduced to the shrooms, my whole life changed. To think where I was almost suicidal to this now isn't life a trip, man. It's amazing medicine and people don't look at it from that perspective. Could not agree more. It is an amazing medicine as we'll see today. Mike also smoked 5-Meo DMT aka Toad Vitam aka Bufo several years ago. He's talked about it on several podcasts and he spoke of how he died and was reborn a changed man. He spoke of how women, fame, cocaine, championship belts, none of that actually made him happy.

Successful, but not happy. But then when he came out of his trip, a trip where he felt terrified at times, naked and afraid to use his words, now he was laughing, he was filled with joy. He was so grateful to be alive, to have people in his life to love and to be loved by. He spoke of his ego dying,

how he realized for the first time how truly small he was, how truly small we all are, how we are nothing, and how that is not sad, it's beautiful. He started to talk about how all his fancy clothes and fancy cars were really worth nothing. He broke down, got really emotional in this interview I watched. I've actually watched it several times the past few years. And he said this trip changed him forever. And while he was in it, it felt like it went on forever, but it was only 15 minutes.

In recent years, more and more celebrities and public figures have opened up about the positive effects psychedelics have had on their mental health. After his book was published in 2023, Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, spoke occasionally on how psychedelic drugs helped him process the death of his mother, Princess Diana. Additionally, many female public figures

like Lindsay Lohan, Miley Cyrus, Kristen Bell, have discussed how hallucinogenics have helped him cope with some of the issues that so many women face like body image and eating disorders. Lohan specifically talked about how the drugs helped her confront and accept a miscarriage. Since the early 20th century, psychedelic drugs have been a topic of Western social discourse. They were commonly used during the counterculture revolution of the 60s and 70s,

early 70s, then went largely underground and now they're back in the mainstream. Their prevalence has waxed and waned as has the debate on the ethics, benefits, dangers, and legality of psychedelic drugs. Today I'll be talking about how the most popular psychedelics affect us and their recent resurgence. I'll be sharing the history of their use going back thousands of years before the birth of Christ. Speaking of Christ, there are some very intelligent people who believe psychedelics were instrumental

in the founding of modern religion and that the founding of Western civilization itself was massively influenced by psychedelics consumed by the ancient Greeks in mystical religious ceremonies whose rituals we still know very little about today. All this and more in this historical, mystical, psychedelic, are you ready to expand your consciousness and commune with the divine edition of Time Suck? This is Michael McDonald and you're listening to Time Suck. You're listening to Time Suck. Happy Monday and welcome to the Cold to the Curious.

I'm Dan Cummins, suck master, guy who's probably too fat to get into heaven. Guy with far, far less hair than Mrs. Gwen Shamblin Lara had at the end. A guy who can probably fly a plane better than Joe Lara did at the end. And you are listening to Time Suck. Hail Nimrod, hail Lucifina, praise be to good boy Bojangles and Glory B to Triple M. A couple quick very quick things and then we're off. Our charity of the month this month inspired by last week's episode., will be donating $12,467 to the Remnant Fellowship to further reward skinny people for being God's favorite people on earth.

Of course not. We've donated $12,465 this month to Project HEAL. Project HEAL is a nonprofit working to, quote, break down healthcare and financial barriers to eating disorder healing. Did you know that eating disorders are the second most fatal mental illness second only to opioid use disorder in the US today? Every 52 minutes a person dies as a result of an eating disorder. If you or someone you love is in need of support or if you want to learn more about Project

HEAL's mission, please visit theprojectheal.org and we also donated $1,385 to our scholarship fund so huge thanks to all the Bad Magic Patreon supporters you bad magicians you spaces you Roberts and Annabelles I love you also finally watch Chad Daniels new stand-up special mixed reviews on YouTube with Lindsay and Monroe conclusion that son of a bitch is as funny as ever. So good, so clever, the writing is so crisp, command of the stage is so complete, he's at the top of his game,

and he's also on tour right now. So you can check out my buddy Chad's latest special mixed reviews on YouTube and then go find him. And now, let's get fucked up. Or let's at least talk about being fucked up. So what are psychedelics? Besides the stuff that made Hunter S. Thompson, played by Johnny Depp, think he was being attacked by a swarm of giant bats as he drove down the highway in fear and loathing in Las Vegas.

In some cultures, psychedelics are sacred components of long-standing religious rituals. In other, psychedelics are used in the treatment of psychiatric conditions like major depressive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, OCD, addiction, other non-mental physical disorders. And in still other instances, psychedelics are gleefully recreationally abused by idiots like myself to visit other times and or places and or consciousnesses, dimensions, planet and have the best time even though part of that time might be absolutely terrifying. They also make some music hit a little harder. Looking at you, Crangbin and Pink Floyd. Some psychedelics occur naturally and are found in living organisms like rats,

humans, trees, fungi and more. Yes, I said rats. Using a process in which micro dialysis tubing is inserted into a rat brain through the pineal gland, a team of researchers collected a sample that was analyzed for and confirmed the presence of DMT. That experiment resulted in a paper published in 2013. It's thought that all kinds of mammals have DMT inside of them, us, naturally. Other psychedelics are created in laboratories.

Psychedelics come in many forms, including tablets, candies, blotting papers, powders, crystals, dried vegetation, and can be taken by swallowing, smoking, injecting, or chewing. All in all, psychedelics are many things and are used for thousands of different reasons. And yes, one of them is to see hallucinations like giant bats while on a drug-fueled rampage in Las Vegas. I tried to recreate a fearing loathing experience in Las Vegas over a dozen years ago. Did pretty good. I shared most of the story in an old episode of Comedy Central's This is

Not Happening which is on YouTube. Didn't see any bats. But I for sure saw some other scary shit after dropping too much acid on the Vegas strip. Wild night. The Alcohol and Drug Foundation, Australia's leading organization committed to inspiring positive change and delivering evidence-based approaches to minimize alcohol and drug harm, defines psychedelics as a class of psychoactive substances that produce changes in perception, mood, and cognitive processes. Today, I'll be focusing on sharing the information.

The information, like I have all of it. Some information. I'm going to share the information. It's a weird way to talk. I'll be sharing information about the five most commonly ingested psychedelics. LSD aka acid, MDMA aka molly or ecstasy, psilocybin aka magic mushrooms or shrooms, DMT which is the key psychoactive ingredient in ayahuasca and also share info on its chemical cousin, 5-MeO-DMT aka bufo, toad venom, finally peyote which contains mescaline. And I'll also touch on ibogaine. Lesser known psychedelic. I'm going to talk about it before this episode is over.

Partially because it fascinates and terrifies me. And also it has shown itself to be a very powerful method of treating opioid addiction. Over the next two to three hours I'm going to be taking each of these drugs consecutively. And then I'll tell you what I'm experiencing in real time. Will the walls of the suck dungeon sizzle and melt away? Will I feel the need to pry my eyeball right out of my socket? Like a nice shiny pearl from a clamshell and eat it? Will all the serial killers we've ever covered here on Time Suck appear before me in some

sick procession and take turns telling me why my mother doesn't love me? Who knows? Of course I will not be doing that. Two strong tabs of acid left me unable to complete a podcast last time I tried. I even forgot how to whistle. No, I'm gonna have to wait a couple months before I get weird again with episode 400. I've picked out the drug for that one. I'm gonna be rolling on way too much Molly for that one. I'm really looking forward to it. I will almost certainly end up shirtless again. Molly makes me sweat so much and smile. Holy shit, will I be smiling my ass off. Also

kind of bummed I still haven't tried all five of the major psychedelics. Just waiting on the right person in the right situation for a masculine fueled spirit quest. Very curious about that one. The hardest one to find in my experience. I want to do it but I want to do it ethically. I don't want to contribute to peyote over harvesting. I have done four out of those five at the same time. Acid, magic mushrooms, molly and DMT. I don't recommend it. It was a shit show. Not a great trip. Way too much shit going on in my brain.

Anyway, instead of taking all those drugs at the same time today, I'm gonna start off today's episode by going over a brief synopsis, maybe a little more than brief, of what each of these drugs are and their physical and mental effects. Then once we get to the timeline I'll cover more about their history and uses. Now let's trip dudes and dudettes. Let's trip so fucking hard. In general the potential side effects of psychedelic drugs, both the naturally occurring and the synthetic ones, include nausea, vomiting, muscle weakness, confusion, insomnia, loss of appetite, increased blood pressure, dizziness, sweating, numbness, increased or irregular heartbeat, blurred vision, paranoia, anxiety, feelings of euphoria. Okay, that's a good one.

Sense of relaxation. All right. And of course, seeing and hearing things that aren't there. I was told growing up, especially by my mother, that psychedelic use could also lead to a psychotic break. Would probably lead to losing my fucking mind if I did it more than just a few times. And maybe if I just did it once. I heard stuff like you should never go on more than 10 acid trips in your life, that if you do it too much it stores up in your spinal fluid and then you'll have like flashbacks that'll just lead to tripping permanently.

It does not stay in your spinal fluid. That's a debunked myth. Your body metabolizes LSE rapidly and it won't show up in your system after a few days max. There are so many myths it turns out around psychedelics. So many websites right now, especially drug treatment center websites, making all kinds of negative claims about psychedelics that are often not true. Most of them not backed up by any empirical evidence. One such claim is the supposed prevalence of HPPD, hallucinogen persisting perception disorder. Basically constant flashbacks. Long after you're you know you're done tripping all of a sudden you start seeing visual trails, distorted

colors, you hallucinate in other various ways. Some people act like this happens all the time and that when it does happen it's you know it's very intense. It doesn't happen often. And with extremely rare and questionable exceptions it is not real intense. Visual distortions can last for seconds, minutes, hours, some rare cases days, long after you've gone on a trip, but very little is known about what actually triggers HPPD. First of all, the severity or lack of severity varies greatly. There's no established course of treatment, but the seizure medication, clonazepam, has gotten rid of HPPD for many.

Onset can begin shortly after your very first trip or after your 200th. The amount you take or how often you've taken psychedelics before seems to have no bearing on whether or not you will end up being diagnosed with HPPD. And you can get HPPD from regular old weed. Marijuana! The devil's lettuce! You can never take a psychedelic. You can still HPPD from regular old weed. Marijuana! The devil's lettuce! You can never take a psychedelic. You can still get it. You can also get it from benzodiazepine withdrawal.

Valium is a popular benzodiazepine. The prevalence of this disorder is approximately 4% of psychedelic users according to some sources, but according to a 2010 study of psychedelic users, only 4% of psychedelic users who have experienced HPPD thought it was serious enough to seek out treatment. So only 4%. Get it? Only 4% of that 4% think, oh this is probably something I should try and take care of. Usually just goes away on its own. When it doesn't, from what I can find, treatment is almost always successful. Treatment does vary. I can only find one case of a guy who just could not get rid of his HPPD. Long-term HPPD is called HPPD-2. His case report was published in the March 2015 edition of the British Journal of Medical Practitioners.

Here's an excerpt from the case report for this poor bastard. A 48-year-old man presented with unusual and distressing visual experiences with varying degrees of severity for over 20 years. Some of these included the following. Red objects having a green shimmer around them like 3D glasses. Altered sense of distance estimation. People's faces seeming to change shape when looked at. Alteration of own reflection.

Anything patterned appearing to move all the time. Words moving about while reading. Things appearing to be multi-layered. Bright lights throwing up shadows. Vehicles appearing to stretch as they drive past. Flying birds looking like animation. And difficulty in focusing. When present, his symptoms interfere markedly with his functioning.

For example, he could not cross the road, could not read, had to dim his lights, he struggled with knowing which visual perceptions were real, which were not. The patient felt his visual experiences were related to his past LSD use 25 years ago. He felt the drug had put him quote, in a coma, and he was dreaming all of this. I mean, sounds terrifying, right? Also maybe kind of awesome in moments. I've had a few little mini flashbacks and I'm always like oh got some bonus time thanks Lucy. But to have it to this degree, that'd suck. However did LSD give this guy HPPD? Reading further he said he started to experience HPPD after previously being

fine after going on about 15 different LSD trips over the course of around a year. But then, and this is crazy, at some party, somebody handed this animal a cocktail full of LSD. That's dangerous right there. Like you have no fucking idea how much is in it. THC, various other illicit drugs. He said he didn't even know what drugs were in this drink, but he still just pounded it.

Then he blacked out for a good chunk of the night, was still tripping when he started to regain his memory, finally fell asleep, then woke up still tripping, now with HPPD. Legendary night. Also, this dude had previously been using a variety of unnamed illicit drugs for who knows how long or how often. And we don't know if he also suffered from mental illness prior to the night he drank his mystery cocktail. Later on he definitely suffers, you know, started to suffer from anxiety and depression. Was it the LSD that messed him up or did this dude have a lot of other shit going on with him? Maybe not a good idea to pound a random drug cocktail full of who knows how much acid, who knows how much THL3, and just a bunch of other random drugs. LSD on its own leading you directly into

a full-blown psychosis from which you will never ever return seems to be, from what I can tell, a myth. I only say seems because not enough research has been done to know for sure, but I scoured academic and scientific databases and journals for hours. Could not find a conclusive link anywhere. There have been additional case studies similar to the one I just read an excerpt from of someone going on a heavy heavy trip losing touch with reality, ending up in a mental hospital, later being diagnosed for the first time with schizophrenia or a different serious mental illness. But

these case studies seem very anecdotal. The people who had this happen to them were not part of some scientific study. We only know how much they took or start, excuse me, we don't even know how much they took in many of these cases or if they took other drugs along with the hallucinogens, what other drugs they may have taken. And most importantly, we don't know if they were struggling with undiagnosed mental illness before ever taking LSD magic mushrooms or whatever The closest link between hallucinogen use and psychosis

I found came from an article referencing multiple studies published in the February 2020 edition of the psychiatric times In the article titled drug psychosis may pull the schizophrenia trigger and even the title says may The studies authors describe finding a total of 50 studies that met their inclusion criteria with 79 estimates of a transition from a drug-induced psychosis to schizophrenia among almost 41,000 people. So 79 out of 41,000. However, the drug abuse in the drug-induced psychosis could be anything from alcohol to marijuana to meth to cocaine to hallucinogens. So this weak ass study actually doesn't really prove shit.

79 examples of a transition out of 41,000 cases that means that drugs may have triggered psychosis in 0.002% of users, 2 out of every 1,000 users, maybe. And how many of those 79 examples dealt with a drug-induced psychosis brought on by psychedelics? 26%. So 20 people..0005% of users. 5 out of every 10,000. 1 out of every 2,000. Marijuana use led to more psychosis. 34% of the drug-induced psychosis came from weed. The most of any drug. 31% came from either meth or alcohol. And now check this out. Two very large comprehensive studies completed in 2015 printed in the journal Nature and various other

academic journals found no link at all between psychedelic use and psychosis. Users of LSD and similar hallucinogenic drugs were no more likely to develop serious mental health conditions than people who have never tripped. As in, zero statistical difference. In the first study, some clinical psychologists working for Emma Sophia, a non-profit organization that sounds fucking dope, based in Norway, working to increase access to quality-controlled MDMA and psychedelics, and researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, or Trondheim, scoured data from the U.S. National Survey on Drug Use and Health,

an annual random sample of the general population, and analyzed answers from more than 135,000 people who took part in surveys from 2008 to 2011. Of those 135,000 people, 14% described themselves as having used at any point in their lives any of the three classic psychedelics, LSD, psilocybin, or mescaline. The researchers discovered that individuals in this group were not at any increased risk of developing 11 indicators of mental health problems such as schizophrenia, psychosis, depression, anxiety disorders, and suicidal attempts. Or suicide attempts, excuse me.

And the rest of non-hallucinogenic users are as the rest of non-hallucinogenic users from the general population. And their paper appears in the March 2015 issue of the Journal of Psychopharmacology. So why do so many people, me included, until this week, and I truly apologize for being one of the people to unknowingly spread misinformation, think that there is not only a link but a very strong link between mental disorders and psychedelics? One of the researchers of the first study, Terry Suzanne Krebs, says that because psychotic disorders are relatively prevalent, affecting about 1 in 50 people, correlations can often be mistaken for causations. Her quote is,

psychedelics are psychologically intense and many people will blame anything that happens for the rest of their lives on a psychedelic experience. Yes, correlation does not equate to causation. Just because you dropped acid and then later were diagnosed with schizophrenia, that does not mean the acid gave you schizophrenia. The second of the two new studies, also published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, looked at 190,000 NSD-UH respondents between 2008 and 2012. It also found that the classic psychedelics were not associated with adverse mental health outcomes at all. In addition, it found that people who had used LSD and psilocybin actually had lower lifetime rates of suicidal thoughts and attempts. Excuse me. Before moving on, I want to

share some more positive associations between health and well-being and psychedelic use, since there is so much rumors and hearsay out there that point towards the contrary, and also illustrate how safe many psychedelics are compared to other drugs when it comes to the possibility of a lethal overdose. In case reports published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs in January of 2020 that spoke to concerns of overdosing on LSD a 40... this is so crazy... a 46 year old woman who snorted a staggering dose of LSD.

Like the most I've ever heard of by so much. 550 times. The normal recreational dose not only survived but found that the foot pain she had suffered from since her 20s was dramatically reduced. Why did she take that much? I love this. She said the LSD was in powder form at this party she went to and she thought it was cocaine. So she snorted the shit out of it. Big fat rails. And that was a huge mistake. LSD is fucking far more potent than cocaine, which is why you take it at the microgram level. She snorted the equivalent of 550 tabs of acid. That made me laugh so fucking hard the first time I read this. That's an absurd amount. And what did it do to her besides disintegrate her brain and leave her stuck to the ceiling all night long?

She said she blacked out and vomited for about 12 hours. But then had what she described as a great pleasant trip for the next 12 hours. Ah, it's so good, what a champion. The body again processes acid very quickly, thank God. I cannot imagine being that high in acid. I've been very high, what I thought was very high

and when I didn't know what the fuck was going on, I didn't have anywhere near that much. Yeah, she took so much 55,000 micrograms 55 milligrams She took over three times as much as researchers once theorized in the early 1970s. What was a lethal dose of LSD? I Wish I knew more about her. I would love to find out that right before taking 550 hits of acid or that equivalent in one night

She was like a you know like a big-time financial planner, some kind of upper level corporate executive, and now she does something like she sells sculptures of hobbits made out of Legos and tree sap at a farmer's market in Austin, Texas or Madison, Wisconsin or so. Speaking of lethal dose, I can't find a single example anywhere of anyone taking a lethal dose of LSD. It might be possible to overdose and die from taking too much, but no one's ever done that, that I'm aware of. Same thing with magic mushrooms.

I cannot find a single example of someone just dying specifically from taking too many mushrooms. Not those mushrooms. If there is a lethal dose, it would likely not be possible to achieve it because you can only eat so many mushrooms at one time. Your stomach's only so big. Odeon on shrooms would be like trying to overdose on cans of cream of mushroom soup. You would just throw up a shit ton of mushrooms long before your body had enough psilocybin

in it to overdose. In another example of someone taking a lot of LSD and not being negatively affected, not as much as that first lady. That's fucking, no one else is gonna take that much. A 15 year old girl with bipolar disorder took 10 tabs of acid, said it resulted in a massive improvement in her mental state. Finally, many many years earlier, a woman who went to the hospital for taking way too much LSD during the second week of a pregnancy ultimately gave birth to a healthy son, now 18, who has not shown

any impaired development. And I'd love to find out that that kid is now like a a roadie for fish or the string cheese incident or something. I bring all the stuff up to illustrate how safe most psychedelics are compared to most other drugs. For example, you can for sure overdose and die with alcohol. According to the CDC more than 2,200 Americans die from alcohol poisoning each year. More than 380 deaths. That is, the math doesn't work right. Never mind. Forget about the 380 deaths. But it's 2,200 Americans die each year from specifically alcohol poisoning. And again, according to the CDC, long-term alcohol use responsible for an additional 178,000 deaths in the US from

2020 to 2021 and that equates to 488 deaths per day. And I can go on and talk about drunk driving, alcohol abuse leading to more depression which leads to more suicide, etc. In 2021 alone over 80,000 people overdosed on just opioids in just the United States and not a a single person. From what I can find overdosed on LSD, magic mushrooms, D&T, or mescaline. There have been numerous deaths misattributed to psychedelics though. In particular in recent years to ayahuasca ceremonies. And many of these deaths have been published widely in the press. Like the case of Kyle Nolan, a Bay Area 18 year old who died in August of 2012 after participating in an ayahuasca

ritual in Peru. His death widely reported, widely in an ayahuasca ritual in Peru. His death widely reported, widely attributed to ayahuasca, but his own father, Sean Nolan, later said his son was murdered because people don't die from ingesting ayahuasca. The shaman, 58 year old Jose Manuel Pineda, buried him without contacting the family and he was later arrested and put on trial for homicide. The story faded after the death was no longer linked to the drug, and I'm not sure if the shaman was convicted or not. A total of 58 deaths were attributed to ayahuasca between 2010 and 2022

by mainstream media in the West, and par for the course when it comes to unfairly demonizing psychedelics, a lot of lazy or downright unethical and misleading reporting was done. Researchers with the Spanish nonprofit organization, ISEERS, dedicated to dedicated to navigating the challenges of the globalization of traditional indigenous medicines, looked into these deaths and published their results. In August of 2023, only 34 out of the 58 cases were able to confirm, uh, you know, that the individuals had even consumed

ayahuasca in the hours prior to their death. Of the 34 cases where it was confirmed, zero of the nine autopsies made public attributed the cause of death to ayahuasca. Looking at all 34 cases, 16 of them, there was a possible adverse reaction to ayahuasca. In 14 cases, suicide was the cause of death. In eight cases people were murdered. Three people drowned, one died of a heart attack, one died of a cervical fracture from falling down while high. Yeah you got to be careful you know when you don't understand how to process reality

on any level falling down smashing your head is a risk when you're on you know ayahuasca or any other drug. Also a risk when you're sober. People do it every year. In the same article the author writes we know that ayahuasca or any other drug. Also a risk when you're sober. People do it every year. In the same article, the author writes, we know that ayahuasca is physiologically safe for those in good health. According to Robert S. Gable, psychologist and expert in recreational drug toxicity, the amount of ayahuasca needed to produce death, and this is theoretically, by poisoning is 20 times the dose needed to induce psychoactivity. And later the author adds, anyone who has experienced ayahuasca knows that it is practically impossible to take 20 times the dose needed to induce psychoactivity. And later the author adds, anyone who has experienced ayahuasca knows that it is practically impossible to take 20 times the psychoactive dose because of its unpleasant taste and

emetic properties. Even if someone managed to drink that amount, they would vomit before experiencing any poisoning effects. Yeah, emetic just means that it causes vomiting. Also cause you to shit your brains out, which makes it harder to overdose on. Okay now enough numbers and stats for a bit. I was a little shocked by how much misinformation and disinformation has been shared over the years about psychedelics and I ended up getting lost in a lot of studies for a while. The crazy lack of logic we use in this

country, in most countries, when it comes to drug laws is disheartening to say the least. Alcohol? Totally legal and it is far worse for you than psychedelics. Opioids, way more dangerous, infinitely more dangerous than psychedelics and prescribed by doctors in mass every day. Hopefully these doctors will soon be also prescribing psychedelics, right? They can be very very good for you. I will share some more benefits of psychedelics as I get into talking about each drug individually circling back now to the most important side effect of taking hallucinogens seeing and hearing things that aren't there and I'll be doing that right after today's first of two mid-show sponsor breaks thanks for sticking around if you

don't want to hear ads and you want to get the entire catalog ad free and more, you can sign up to be a space alert on Patreon for five bucks a month. Now I'm going to circle back to the most important side effects of taking hallucinogens, seeing and hearing things that are not there. That is of course the main reason that people seek out psychedelic experiences in the first place. I know it's my main reason. However, that specific side effect, not guaranteed. In addition to the type of drug taken, there are many other things that play a role in how the psychedelic is experienced. In other words, whether or not you'll have a good or bad trip depends on a variety of factors. Your weight, mental and physical health, mood, what you've eaten, how much you've slept, other drugs you've taken tolerance arguably the most important where you are environment

So crucial so important tripping your senses so raw so extra sensitive Heavy metal music may normally pump you up But now with a head full of shrooms or LSD might feel very aggressive to a great oppressive even You may normally enjoy watching a horror movie, but now the sight of a Halloween mask could send you into a hellscape. I'll share some hopefully humorous personal experiences about this kind of stuff in a bit. Now that we got the bare-bone basics of psychedelics in general, let's get into some of the specific types. Starting with Lysergic Acid Diethylamide, also known as LSD. Acid, blotter, metal yellow, windowpanepane boomers yellow sunshine and Lucy in the sky with diamonds

Sorry to all the Beatles fans out there. I didn't know with that stuff Didn't know that's what that song was about. Well, come on Who did you think the girl with kaleidoscope eyes was? LSD is derived from a fungi that grows on rye called erggot because ergot naturally contains a psychoactive substance, lasergic acid, that LSD is formed from. The drug is technically considered semi-synthetic. In its purest form, LSD is a white odorless powder that you do not want to snort like it's coke at a party unless you enjoy being out of commission for 24 hours. But because of its incredibly high potency, it is not commonly taken this way and is instead diluted with other substances.

Most frequently, the drug comes in the form of a liquid solution that is dropped onto pieces of blotting paper, gelatin sheets, or onto sugar cubes, or put inside a gelatin capsule that is swallowed whole. I've only ever taken acid by sticking little soaked squares of blotting paper on my tongue. After it's ingested, the effects of LSD usually begin appearing within 30 minutes and on average last from 12 to 18 hours, depending on the person and how much is taken. But it doesn't hit full force all at once and remain full force for the duration of the trip. There's an arc

to the psychedelic experience of these hallucinogenic drugs. In my experience, I typically began to feel a little different. Somewhere between 30 and 60 minutes after first taking it, my pupils start to dilate, my energy is increased, my mood is enhanced, my focus changes. Suddenly I'm attracted to things I might not normally notice or care about. I might start staring at a cloud and thinking how truly magical clouds are. I might hear a song and really notice for the first time how fucking dope the baseline is. I feel very euphoric. Then if I've taken enough I'll slowly begin to hallucinate. Static images will begin to have movement. A painting may begin to look like an animated gif. Repeating some pattern of movement. Trees might look like they're breathing. Objects begin to vibrate. Objects in motion begin to trail. I can see where

the object is and where the object was at the same time essentially. Processing time becomes difficult. A minute can feel like an hour. Reality starts to seem a lot less firm. A flood of existential thoughts might begin to hit me like why are we here? How real is reality? What truly is important in life? Like that sort of thing. Musical sound different. The various instruments are simultaneously all more present and distinct. I feel like I can hone in on one aspect of the music and really explore it.

Space around me distorts something three feet away. Can something look like it's 20 feet away? Walking across a room can feel like a daunting task, right? You're not sure if you're even fucking make it. It's too far. Faces may change, likely will change. I might become convinced that someone's eyes are too small, their nose is too big, no one looks right anymore. Face of a stranger might morph into the face of an old friend or into my face. That's terrifying. I've looked in the mirror and been convinced that I'm looking at somebody else. I'm seeing someone else, it's for lack of a better word, trippy.

And I can go on and on, but it's hard to express what you feel like and have it make any sense. You have to experience it, it's fucking wild. On a really strong deep trip. I've also taken acid, used it just a tab or two and not experienced any strong hallucinations. Right, there's levels of it.

I dropped acid at a Dead & Co concert last summer and didn't see anything that wasn't there, but I did think John Mayer was way bigger, a lot more muscular than he was. The light show, once the sun went down, very intense. And I could not hold a conversation for a couple of hours. I couldn't verbally express coherent thoughts. I was easily confused by what others were saying. I was also wearing a t-shirt

I think I was wearing this t-shirt or another one I got from the same place called Johnny cupcakes in Boston and it just said Johnny cupcakes like this one does on it And a few people sitting around me Lindsay was telling me a lot about this later I remember it a little bit but a few people sitting around me in this one security guard Well, they just would read my shirt and they would say Johnny cupcakes when I walked by and I thought they were calling me Johnny cupcakes and then I thought I was Johnny cupcakes and I liked I remember liking being Johnny cupcakes my favorite part of a heavy trip a lot heavier than what I experienced at the

dead and co show is right when you start to come down from the peak like you're still very high but you're beginning to process reality again, you know, a lot more effectively. And now you can reflect on and laugh about all the crazy shit that you just saw, heard, felt, whatever, when you were just tripping balls. It's kind of like when you first wake up after an intense dream, you're like, oh my god, like it's all still fresh in your mind. And then it kind of fades over time. The side effects most

commonly associated with LSD according to some sources we looked at are a distorted sense of time, warped sense of the physical body, feeling like you're floating or swimming when you're really just like you know maybe sit on a bench, intense sensory experiences, seeing brighter colors, hearing clearer sounds, mixed senses, you can feel like you hear colors or see sounds, for example. After decades of no research on how LSD affects the brain, well decades, that's straight years, of no research, due to its criminalization in the late 1960s, fucking tricky Dick Nixon, I guess it is decades, sorry I'm getting hung up on inconsequential details, it has been decades.

Scientists now once again exploring psychedelics and in a 2016 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers used a battery of different brain scans to study how the drug interacted with the minds of 20 volunteers. Blood surged into the brain's visual cortex. Connections within the visual cortex strengthened. The stronger they were, the more visual hallucinations the volunteer would report experiencing. An area surrounding the hippocampus, crucial for memory, communicated less with an area of the brain's cortex. The amount of fall-off between the two correlated to how much the volunteer reported losing a sense of self.

Ego death or ego dissolution, it's often called. And also to their sense of reality. Overall, the action of LSD on the brain is an entropic one. The brain is sent into a state of disorder. Researchers said the brain areas that are normally siloed begin to talk to one another, while other established lines of traditional communication fall off. A similar effect as seen in brain studies of other psychedelic drugs such as psilocybin. This was thought to explain why acid users report sensations of seeing music or hearing colors. Right?

You're not using the same parts of the brain to see or hear as you normally would. Or you're not using the same parts of the brain in the same way. Like you know, parts of the brain there's like communication inroads connected between two parts of your brain that don't normally exist exist which is why your senses get all mixed up. LSD is considered to be one of the classic psychedelics because of its ubiquitous impact on culture more than some of the other psychedelics I'll go over today. LSD largely associated with mystical experiences used by many to improve their spiritual state which is interesting to me. In my experience DMT, psilocybin, far more spiritual. I probably just need to experiment a lot more with acid to make my own spiritual discoveries. That's what I'm gonna

take away from this. That I need to drop more acid for my spirit. A 2015 study on the long-term effects of taking LSD found that quote, in healthy research subjects, the administration of a single dose of LSD, 200 micrograms, it's a nice fat dose, in a safe setting was subjectively considered a personally meaningful experience that had long lasting subjective positive effects. Within one month of taking LSD subjects of the study reported a significant increase in satisfaction with life, satisfaction with the self, positive attitude, positive behavioral changes, positive mood changes, and an improved social life.

Fuck yeah! Additionally, a year after taking the LSD, almost 75% of the participants rated the experience as one of the five most meaningful experiences of their entire lives. How cool is that? How many people are saying that about alcohol? For example, I've had some great times when I've been hammered. I would never reference any time I've been shitfaced as one of the five most meaningful experiences of my entire life.

Five most embarrassing? Oh, for sure. Five worst decisions maybe, but not five most meaningful experiences. LSD is revered by many in both the religious and scientific communities as especially valuable because of its ability to alter the normal function of the human mind. Aldous Huxley for one believed that the discovery of LSD was one of three of the most significant scientific innovations of the 20th century. The other two being the manipulation of genetic structure and

the splitting of the atom. High praise from a brilliant man. We'll get more into Huxley and his fondness for hallucinogenics later in the timeline. In recent years, as clinical studies using LSD to treat various mental health disorders have started to be approved in the U.S. for the first time in decades, there's a lot of hope there's going to be a powerful treatment aid. During the 50s and early 60s, LSD was used rather successfully to treat alcoholism, arguably by compressing years of psychotherapy into a single intensive self-reflective session that helped patients with alcohol dependence achieve a new self-image and the willpower to move beyond their disease.

Others explored LSD as an adjuvant to psychotherapy for addressing trauma. Still others used it to model psychosis and generate interest in studying schizophrenia as a chemical reaction in the brain. Recently, a lot of studies focused on treating PTSD with a variety of psychedelics, including LSD. But I think more promising therapeutic results are coming from psilocybin and MDMA. Speaking of Mali, let's talk about MDMA now. A drug with a history similar to that of LSD discovered by accident. We'll talk about LSD discovery more in the timeline, but here I want

to say MDMA was first synthesized in 1912 by a German chemist Anton Kolitschke working for the pharmaceutical giant Merck. Big Pharma, definitely not all bad. Thanks for the Molly Merck. It was intended to be a parent compound to synthesize medications that control bleeding for like hemophiliacs, not to control appetite, as is often incorrectly cited. In 1927 and again in 1959, the pharmaceutical effects of MDMA were studied at Merck but not in humans. A decade later, after American chemists started dicking around with it in a Chicago laboratory, someone figured out that while it might not work well for hemophilia, oh this shit makes you feel

real good. And by the end of 1970 dealer, I just love by the way just some thinking there was probably some random dude in the lab, just took a little taste like, oh I like this. By the end of 1970 dealers were selling it around Chicago and from there it would explode into the counterculture. Rogue chemists would start to cook that shit up all over the place. MDMA stands for Methylene Dioxy Methamphetamine, more commonly known as ecstasy or molly. Unlike LSD it is both a psychedelic and a stimulant. It produces a hallucinogenic effect as well as an increase in energy motivation motivation, alertness, and attention. Interesting to me that LSD is not also

classified as a stimulant. LSD users commonly report feelings of euphoria, increased energy, excitement. It definitely stimulates me. Sounds like a stimulant, but as someone who's taken Mali a fair amount of times as well as LSD, I would say that Mali definitely increases your energy much more than LSD does. Molly is a very very happiness inducing drug. Because of the dual effect of a spike in energy and distorted perception, MDMA is most often used as a party or a rave drug. And yeah, you feel fucking amazing on Molly and so does your friend's jacket, maybe your grandma's sweater, the chair you're sitting in, the dog you won't stop petting, etc.

Molly is occasionally distributed in the form of a capsule, powder, or liquid. Most often comes in the form of a tablet containing, or capsule I guess, containing little MDMA crystals. It can be swallowed whole. The crystals can be crushed and snorted. However, researchers, I imagine you could smoke it too. However, researchers have found that the large majority of MDMA tablets that are distributed in the US right now are laced. Be careful with multiple other drugs including ketamine, cocaine, also a fentanyl.

And that can obviously lead to detrimental side effects including death. Because this shit is not legal and you have to buy it on the street, the main danger with Mali is not knowing if what you're taking is actually Mali or how potent it is. And that's one of the main reasons I'm in favor of legalizing Mali along with all other psychedelics and a variety of other drugs. So you can actually know what it is that you're taking and it'll be so much safer and cheaper for the economy. Fucking what are we doing?

Unlike LSD, DMT, and psilocybin, you can for sure take a lethal dose of Mali, even when it's not laced with anything else. Death can be caused by MDMA due to the way it impacts the body's ability to regulate temperature. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, on occasions this can lead to a sharp increase in body temperature hyperthermia, resulting in liver, kidney, and cardiovascular system failure and death. Because MDMA can interfere with its own metabolism, that is, its breakdown within the body, potentially harmful levels can be reached by repeated drug use within short intervals. Besides death, other potential negative side effects of MDMA can include muscle tension, teeth clenching or grinding, nausea, faintness,

chills, sweating, increased blood pressure, irregular heartbeat, severe dehydration, paranoia, and confusion. Yeah, pretty sure I chipped a tooth back on my teeth. Molly New Orleans could not stop grinding them. Also could not stop touching the faces of people around me and asking if they were okay. Are you feeling okay? Are you feeling okay? Lindsay told me later that yeah people were feeling okay other than me touching their faces. I am a menace on some of this shit. A very happy, wild-eyed, well-intentioned, maniacally smiling menace. MDMA works primarily by greatly increasing the brain's production of serotonin. The neurotransmitter responsible for promoting the feeling of happiness as well as a general cognitive functioning. Because of this if you use MDMA too frequently you can cause permanent damage to one's memory and ability to learn as well as other cognitive functioning. Because of this, if you use MDMA too frequently, you can cause permanent damage to one's memory

and ability to learn, as well as other severe long-term effects like depression and anxiety. The exact overuse amount, though, unknown for that to happen. I'll say anecdotally, I've known people who have taken MOLLE a couple times a week, most weeks for years, who do not seem to have any cognitive impairment. Not that you should use it all the time, not that that's an endorsement, I just don't want to promote the idea that this shit is as dangerous as meth or cocaine or heroin or some opioid because it's not. Despite Molly being more dangerous than the other psychedelics, MDMA, one of the most popular drugs in the U.S.,

so much so that an estimated 2.2 million people used MDMA in 2021 alone. Unlike LSD, ecstasy's prevalence cannot be attributed to its mystical or spiritual effects. As I said earlier, MDMA popularity is instead largely due to its ability to increase one's sensory experience in large social settings like raves, concerts, festivals. This is because MDMA is what's known as an atactogen or empathogen, a type of drug that increases feelings of communion and oneness with those around you. Functional MRI experiments have demonstrated that MDMA activates the ventral striatum,

a subcortical brain region, that plays a key role in reward processing, emotion, and expectation while simultaneously decreasing the effectiveness of the amygdala, which processes frightening stimuli. So, it leaves you this feeling of, everything is awesome, nothing is scary, woo, let's fucking go! Paired with other side effects like an enhanced sensitivity to physical touch and lowered inhibition, MDMA also used to both incite and amplify the pleasure of sexual encounters. Hey, Lucifina! Uh, Lindsay and I once had a ridiculously fun night on Molly. No sex.

Damn it. Lots of touching though. Very cuddly. We took way too much. Typically, we'll only take one to two capsules each in a night. Each capsule has approximately 100 milligrams of MDMA crystal. I would say somewhere between 80 and 120 milligrams. This night after taking two each, before I learned to literally lock up what you don't want to take in an evening and hide it from yourself while you're sober so you don't grab it later, we ended up taking four more capsules each. So we ended up taking six each. So you know somewhere around 600 milligrams of MDMA and that's too much. This is an extremely high amount, pretty stupid. We both had a lot of trouble regulating body temperature and at home with just the dogs at night we ended up naked but also carrying around

blankets for hours and drinking so much water. Between vacillating back and forth between feeling way too hot and and just sweating like crazy and then freezing we were also so in love. Like brains full of the most serotonin they could have in them, the most love, the strongest feelings of connection. We sat on the couch for probably at least half an hour and serenaded one another with 80s power ballads

that we pulled up on a wedding playlist and not even our wedding playlist, just a random one on Spotify full of songs like Right Here Waiting by Richard Marx. Just belting that shit out to one another. Just inches apart without a hint of irony. Never done that before since. Literally crying tears of joy as we did that as well. Wherever you go, whatever you do, I will be right here waiting for you. Don't go anywhere!

Penny and Ginger love that night. They have never gotten so many pets in a four-hour period. They were constantly told how wise and wonderful and beautiful they were. I just remember thinking that Penny's so wise. So wise. I don't know that she is. But I thought she was so wise. Their insane puppy parents were very complimentary. Generally with with Molly you start to feel a hit within 30 to 45 minutes of ingesting it. Less time if you snort or smoke it and it lasts

between three and six hours. While I love Molly, I don't know anyone who's done it who doesn't, I do find it odd that it gets classified as a psychedelic because I've never experienced any hallucinations, hallucinations oh my gosh on it, of any sort and neither has anyone that I've never experienced any hallucinations, hallucinations, oh my gosh, on it of any sort. And neither has anyone that I've ever spoken with personally. But apparently can happen in rare cases. I have heard that the hallucinations very mild. While the most dangerous of the drugs I'll be talking about today,

it also could be a very important drug when it comes to treating PTSD, depression, other mental disorders. On September 13th, 2023, the findings of a new study on the effectiveness of using MDMA to assist therapy in regards to treating PTSD were published in the journal Nature Medicine. The trial sponsor and funder, the private biopharmaceutical company, MAPS Public Benefit Corporation plans to submit its drug application to the FDA this year and hopes for FDA approval by the end of 2024. Sorry, and I said this year that was in 2023 when the article came out. And yeah, hopes to have FDA approval by the end of this year 2024. And the study's first author

Jennifer Mitchell PhD, Professor of Neurology and of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and a member of the Wheel Institute for Neurosciences at UCSF, University of California, San Francisco, said, These data are the culmination of several decades' worth of research that demonstrates the effectiveness of MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD. We are nearing the tipping point in establishing the benefits of psychedelic therapy for mental health conditions. Because of the euphoria you feel while on it, that flood of serotonin, also a greatly

reduced aversion to frightening stimuli, painful memories, you can discuss and process trauma while on MDMA that you otherwise would not be able to. Dr. Mitchell writes MDMA can allow you to process deep-seated trauma by enabling the transformation of fear memories in a part of the brain called the amygdala in a manner that doesn't make you withdraw or detach out of shame or fear. You don't feel shame or fear when you're super high on him Molly but instead helps you to accept and heal. Check out the incredible story of one of the study's participants Susie Chinn. So sad but then happy ending. 47 years

before the study then 16 year old Susie was raped by multiple assailants in San Francisco's Chinatown. For nearly half a century, she tried to overcome the trauma of that night through traditional therapy and failed to various degrees. Never quite worked. Still suffered from terrible PTSD. The now 63 year old said, I felt like I had a good handle on everything conceptually and intellectually. I could even muscle through certain feelings like anxiety sometimes and take healthy actions based on insights I'd gained. But in other ways, my body didn't seem to get the memo.

My startle reflex was so intense that if someone surprised me with a tap on the shoulder, I jump out of my skin and scare that person right back. It was exhausting to be so hypervigilant to danger. For Chin, the entire process of being a participant in the study, from the therapy before the monitored MDMA assisted sessions to the follow-ups by the attentive therapists and support staff were helpful. During the actual MDMA sessions, I never felt like I was on a trip or out of control. Yeah, and you don't on certain levels of MDMA.

She said, I felt less inhibited, more open, sensitive, and more attuned to what I was feeling. Chin was among 104 participants in the multi-site trial, which found that those suffering from moderate or severe PTSD who took MDMA paired with psychotherapy sessions were almost 25% more likely to recover from their trauma as those who only took a placebo. By the end of the 18 week trial period, 71.2% of the people in the MDMA assisted therapy group, including Suzy, no longer met the diagnostic criteria for PTSD versus 47.6% of those in the therapy plus placebo group. And MDMA produced no serious adverse side effects in any of the users. That's fucking incredible. And I've read other articles referencing a lot of other people who didn't always

have PTSD but definitely suffer with dealing with the aftermath of some traumatic experience earlier in life. People who according to their therapist in one example accomplished in a single session of MDMA assistant therapy what would typically take at least two years of therapy without MDMA assistance. Hail Nimrod, let's legalize this shit already. Now let's move on to my favorite little fungi friend. I guess friends cause there's multiple strains. Let's talk about the trippy world of psilocybin mushrooms,

also known as magic mushrooms or simply as shrooms. Sweet, sweet shrooms. How I love you. Definitely the psychedelic. I take the most often, mostly in medium doses, you know like I can function a bit out in the world kind of dose. My favorite way to take them though is to go pretty heavy for a deeper more spiritual trip. Shrooms are a naturally occurring hallucinogenic and like LSD commonly consumed for their mystical and spiritual effects. There are over 200 different species of magic mushrooms. I'll list a few names of some of the most popular varieties. There's penis envy, my go-to, mostly because I'm a very tiny penis, and I'm envious of most other penises. Or it's just a really common shroom variety, and what I happen to be able to get my hands

on most easily. This mushroom that's supposedly got its name for looking like a dick, with its thick stem and small round cap. True story is very potent due to its high psilocybin content causing intense psychedelic experiences including strong visuals and deep introspection. Another popular strain is the Golden Teacher. Milder than Schlong Longin. I mean penis envy. Often preferred by people who want to focus more on personal insight less on seeing crazy shit. There's also Jedi mind fuck.

That's a super fun name. Not sure where it comes from. These are known for their very strong psychedelic effects. One source Seattle met.com says regarding taking these. It's important to respect its power and use responsibly due to the intense experience it can provide. Let's fucking go. Jedi mind fuck get in my belly. Let's fucking go Jedi, my fuck! Get in my belly!

Let's blast off to space without a shuttle! Speaking of space, there's also a strain called Stargazer. Remnants of this shroom have been found in various Inca ruins, including at Machu Picchu. They've been cultivated for psychedelic rituals for centuries, if not millennia. Users report that Stargazer mushrooms offer unique experiences including vivid visuals and emotional insights potentially different from other strains. So much magic and so many mushrooms. What makes these mushrooms magic is the compound psilocybin. When ingested psilocybin is converted by the human body into the psychoactive chemical psilocin which in turn causes

hallucinogenic effects. Exploring how psilocybin interacts with the brain, it binds to specific serotonin receptors which seems to have a number of effects, all of which are not fully understood. Yet, let's legalize this shit federally, fund some fucking research and find out. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that plays a role in a number of bodily functions such as sleep regulation and our sense of appetite, says Michael Silver, Faculty Director of the Center for the Science of Psychedelics at the University of California at Berkeley. Sounds like an awesome job, by the way. Neuroimaging shows that after someone takes psilocybin, brain regions that don't typically

communicate with each other start to communicate in new ways. Researchers believe that these types of changes could help treat people with various psychiatric issues, mental health conditions. Let's fund some research again. Patients with psychiatric disorders, usually their brain is stuck in a circuit that they can't get out of. And psychedelics break the cycle, says Charles Nemiroff, co-director for the Center of Psychedelic Research and Therapy at the Dell Medical School at the University of Texas at Austin.

Some of the changes that psilocybin causes during a psychedelic experience include changes in the ways that people process sensory information, so they start to see kaleidoscope imagery, or may feel like time has slowed down even to a stop. Research also shows that psilocybin seems to reduce activity in an area of the brain involved with generating a sense of self which can cause some people to feel more connected to the people and the world around them," Barrett said. Sweet, sweet ego death. Maybe my favorite lasting outcome from psychedelic use.

Reminding yourself that the people you see crushing on Instagram aren't actually that important and neither are you. All these castles are made out of sand. That's a beautiful thing. Actually, before I forget, that time slowing down to a stop reminded me of an experience I had later. It was actually on DMT. I was smoking DMT and sometimes you have to do multiple rounds to really feel it and you

don't know exactly what's going to hit. And I was like, I didn't know if it was going to hit. I didn't know if it was going to hit. And I kept doing it. And all of a sudden it felt like time literally froze. I was like just in the house with just Lindsay and I felt like I was able to look around and she was like a statue. The dogs were like nothing was moving and there was no sound.

And it felt like it went on like that for a minute. It was probably like a millisecond. But God that was trippy. Psilocybin also appears to affect the default mode network, Barrett says, which is the part of your brain that is activated when your mind is wandering. And you may start to think about future plans or reminisce on a past memory. plays a role in crafting our internal narratives about ourselves and the world around us. Research suggests that in people with anxiety or depression, the default mode network can become overactive or underactive. This means it could generate a negative feedback loop where someone cannot stop worrying or

they can't just break out of spiraling unhealthy thoughts like an OCD type situation. The impact of psilocybin on sleep hasCD type situation. The impact of psilocybin on sleep has not been thoroughly researched yet but psilocybin has stimulating properties. This means an individual's blood pressure and heart rate can go up which can affect sleep. For me it never lasts past the night of the trip and actually for anybody else I've ever talked to about this, yeah it affects you while you're high. Also for me taking a couple indica edibles on the tail end of the trip knocks me out that same night just fine. Now let's talk about beneficial uses.

After the seconds of two mid-show sponsor breaks, and I'm back, and it's time to talk about some of the medical benefits of that sweet sweet psilocybin, psychedelic lifeblood of magic mushrooms. Recently a growing number of researchers are studying psilocybin as a potential treatment for a wide range of conditions, including depression and alcohol use disorder, also being studied to help people quit smoking and for obsessive compulsive disorder, OCD, anorexia, PTSD, and anxiety. Federal regulators have issued draft guidance for the drug to be used in research settings, but it hasn't been approved yet for treatment.

Oregon has approved state-regulated psilocybin therapy programs, and Colorado expected to offer similar programs by the end of next year. In treatment studies, researchers using synthetic, or they use synthetic psilocybin so that they can control the dose. Generally speaking, the larger the dose, the more someone's degree of consciousness will be altered. Yep. In wild mushrooms, that amount, the amount of psilocybin can be very

unpredictable. Fred Barrett, I've referenced him already, center director for the John Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research, sorry if I didn't say his first name before, says even two of the same type of mushrooms grown next to each other can have wildly different amounts of psilocybin. Nobody should be seeking out mushrooms to treat themselves. Varying potency is a problem. The unibuddy can take the exact same amount of shrooms from the same batch and you know one person will have like a mild trip and the other person will need to be scraped off the fucking ceiling they're so high. I'll share a crazy shroom trip I went on here soon where I my trip was very different than my buddy's trip. Be careful if you think that you're

just gonna, you know, go pick some mushrooms out in nature, some magic mushrooms. Magic mushrooms come in all shapes and sizes and many of them look almost identical to poisonous species of fungi. Shrooms occur naturally in meadows, woods, human forests all over the world. Across the U.S. and Canada there are 22 native species of psilocybin mushrooms. In Mexico there's 53. In Europe 16. Africa 4. Asia 15. And Australia 19. Making me consider moving to Mexico right now. Probably the best food on earth and the most magic mushrooms. Magic mushrooms are aside from their psychedelic effects a form of fungi just like any other. That means that in their freshly picked state raw shrooms can be either incorporated

into a meal or eaten by themselves. I like to pour a little honey on mine, gobble them up, wash them down with something like vitamin water, some flavored water, or I'll eat them along with some chocolate covered pretzels. The pretzels add a little crunch to take away from their kind of mushy kind of texture. Unlike your favorite grilled portobello or decadent truffle mushroom psychedelic fungi, not known for a rich umami flavor. Instead their taste can be more accurately described as something similar to dried shit. Lindsay and most people I know who do them hate the way they taste. Like really really hate it. Fairly common for people to gag

trying to get it down or even throw up. I am lucky I'm one of the weirdos who likes the taste of pretty much all mushrooms. Like you know psychedelic and otherwise. I also like unsweetened matcha lattes and earthy flavors in general. Did I mention I ate dirt when I was a toddler and worms and various bugs? Because of their taste most people attempt to conceal the unpleasant flavor of shrooms by mixing them into other dishes. Common recipes include adding honey again, like I said, or pesto. Haven't tried that to raw shrooms, sounds good. Or grating them into already cooked pizza or pasta.

Yes. Squish them into peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, grind them into a powder to steep into a tea. I have a friend who does that. Simply put them in between two pieces of chocolate s'more style. My sister made, she shredded some shrooms and then mixed it into some chocolate chip cookies and that was delicious. And a friend of mine, yeah, grinds them up and just like mixes them into honey and then like bottles that and that is very good. After shrooms are ingested, it usually takes about 30 minutes for an hour or to an hour for the effects to start kicking in. Average length of a shroom's trip four to six hours, so quite a bit less than with LSD, during which you might experience all the normal adverse effects

or awesome effects, psychedelics, but some adverse, nausea, lack of coordination, confusion, muscle weakness, and the other good ones, distorted visual, auditory reality, heightened physical sensitivity, feelings of immense euphoria, a profound sense of understanding and peace. Oh, that's, that's fun. Yes, yes, yes. Also might feel like you have to shit, but not be able to shit for hours on end, which is weird, or constantly have to pee, which happens to me, it happens to me almost every time, which is pretty annoying, but still worth it. Of all the psychedelic drugs we'll talk about today, shrooms have by far been around the longest. In fact, the earliest known reference to magic mushrooms being used in religious rituals

dates back possibly to 9,000 BCE. Definitely several thousand BC, but we'll get into that more in the timeline. Shrooms like I mentioned with LSD, very safe when it comes to worrying about a lethal dose. You can't ingest enough shrooms to die specifically from a shroom overdose. Your body, again, would vomit them up long before that happened. You can do something stupid if you're hallucinating really hard, like walk out into traffic because you don't understand what's going on. Not likely, but possible with any powerful psychedelic. Also possible if you're really, really drunk.

Like with other hallucinogens, shrooms get unfairly demonized in the media. Remember hearing about that pilot on magic mushrooms, Joseph Emerson, who tried to stop the engines mid-flight, kill over 80 people on board by crashing a plane back in October of just this last year, 2023. Got a lot of press. Emerson, 44 years old, told the New York Times in a jailhouse interview in Portland, Oregon that when he took the psychedelics around a campfire, he had never taken them before, on October 20th, two days before the incident, started dwelling on events in his past. He said, I thought of a lot of traumatic things in that time where I was like, am I dead?

Is this hell? I'm reliving the trauma. Then on October 22nd, Emerson, who was off duty, was sitting in a jump seat of the cockpit of an Alaska Airlines flight when he allegedly tried to shut down the plane's engines by activating a fire suppression system. Emerson told a Portland, Oregon police officer that he thought he was dreaming, wanted to wake up, according to court documents. Emerson told a newspaper, I thought it would stop both engines.

The plane would start to heap head towards a crash and I would wake up. Emerson also said he'd been depressed and that he believed he was experiencing a mental breakdown. Uh huh, there you go. He was already depressed before he took the shrooms. Already probably dealing with suicidal ideation. He accessed some tough memories while on shrooms. But then, does it make sense to blame the shrooms for his actions?

No, this reeks of a defense strategy to avoid taking legal responsibility for what he did. This temporary insanity. He took the shrooms two days earlier. You are not high at all. Two days later. It's a four to six hour trip. Maybe eight to 10, some cases. And then a bit of an afterglow that can last for days, weeks or even months. But that afterglow doesn't make you want to fucking crash a plane. You just feel more connected to nature, the world around you, trees look a little crisper, life feels a little brighter. I don't think that's the mushrooms talking when it came to wanting to crash a plane. At least not most of the shrooms. I feel like worst case that was 10% shrooms 90% Joseph Emerson. Reminds me a lot of people

blaming heavy metal music for murder. All that being said yeah you can't think some real crazy shit when you're high on shrooms. In January of 22, here's my big trip story for today, I made plans with a friend of mine and business associate who does not want to be named in the story, I'll just call him Jason. We went to go see a Tool concert, a band we both love. I'd seen Tool's Fear Inoculum Tour before the pandemic paused it early in 2020 in Spokane at the arena with Lindsay. I was blown away by the production value. Big flowing semi-transparent curtain surrounded the stage that would sometimes have these very intense psychedelic you know Alex Gray type artwork visuals projected onto it. Other times just some color. Still other times it'd be

completely transparent. You could see the band through it you know most of the time and then there were more intense visuals projected behind them on the wall, and those visuals all aligned with their songs. And I just thought, holy shit, this would be a great show to see while you're tripping. For some people, yeah, probably. Unless it would have been. For how much I took? Oh, no.

No, it was hell. Jason had a great shroom contact, Penis Envy, and we decided to go to this concert together. He asked me how high I wanted to get. And at this time, I had never been that high on shrooms. And I kind of considered them to be like LSD light. I'd always felt somewhat in control on them. And I didn't want to go through the trouble of planning a big get together for the sole

purpose of seeing Tool while tripping balls and then not see much. So I said something I later very much regretted. I told him I wanted to go hard. I said, quote, I want you to rip my fucking skull off. So now Jason, he doesn't have kids, doesn't have a spouse or serious partner. He's got a fair amount of time to experiment more than I do to like, you know, trip.

And so he goes on this two week bender where he's taking shrooms virtually every night, trying to figure out exactly what the proper dose is for a heavy trip. You know, like for somebody my size, which is, you know, roughly his size this time. Well, like with most mind-altering substances, if you buy frequently, you will build up a tolerance. You know, the amazing machines that our bodies are are highly adaptable and they'll try to adapt and try and allow you to function more properly on whenever you're're you know

Abusing yourself with or taking and that includes psychedelics We didn't know that at the time and we didn't think about how Jason is building up You know more and more tolerance with every trip he takes so essentially he ends up figuring out what a heavy dose of shrooms is For someone who basically lives mostly on shrooms, and he's going to give that same amount to me a person who has not had any in months So I fly into San Diego on a Wednesday afternoon. The show is that night at the Viejas Arena on the campus of San Diego State and I meet Jason at the hotel we were staying at in La Jolla. Four to five hours before the show starts. About 90 minutes before the concert starts we take a few shroom capsules to loosen up get into a psychedelic headspace. They probably had a quarter of a gram of

mushroom in them each so you know half a gram total not a lot. The best chart I've found on the great psychedelic information site healingmaps.com for figuring out how hard your trip will be versus how much you know you need to take or you know or how much you know you take what it equates to rather sorry we'll put this amount this half a gram into perspective. For dried penis envy a light dose or a micro dose is 0.2 to 0.5 grams. So not enough to feel high but enough for some therapeutic benefits have taken regularly as part of a therapeutic program. A medium dose 0.5 to 1.5 grams

so we're right between you know light and medium. A medium dose will typically produce some effects such as euphoria enhancement of all senses. A medium dose will typically produce some effects such as euphoria, enhancement of all senses. A strong dose, 1.5 to 3 grams, this will produce some hallucinogenic effects, mostly visual and sensory, stronger euphoria. Then there's a heavy dose, more than 3 grams. This will produce strong visual and sensory distortions which bring on mind- effects and synesthesia that blending of the senses you know like with a heavy LSD trip you know so you start smelling colors seeing sounds and shit your brain working very different way than when you're sober and then and that should actually be at least labeled as three

to five grams because then there's the hero dose which is five grams or more and this typically brings the full depth of a mushroom trip experience. The term comes from American ethnobotanist psychedelic fucking legend Terrence McKenna, one of the biggest most well known advocates for the use of psychedelics ever. Taking this shroom dosage, extremely rare, the site says, with side effects being things like a complete loss of control, losing grasp of reality, and total disassociation. So you're just fucking gone. You don't know what's going on. This is like some shaman in ancient times need to be guiding you along a spirit quest of, you know, epic proportions kind of amount of psychedelics.

So more than five, be very careful. Put a lot of thought into it. Not for the inexperienced user of shrooms. Did not know that at the time. So Jason and I after taking a half gram each, well we take an Uber, get to the stadium, sit down on the bench about a hundred yards from the entrance. Jason divides up the stems and caps he had in a bag of chocolate covered pretzels. Based on me getting real into weighing out shrooms after this adventure, because I never wanted to repeat it.

Just visually guessing how much we had I would say we each did about six more grams. We did a lot a lot a lot a lot so about six and a half grams each and my tolerance is zero and it went about how you would expect. I started a little stopwatch on my phone so I can check you know how far into the trip I am you know at any time. I started to worry I'd take it too much when it started to kick in after about 20 minutes which is a lot faster than me usually takes you know 45 minutes or so 20 minutes in I'm using the bathroom I'm at the urinal before we go take our seats and I'm surprised to

see this beautiful long-haired woman walk in and she starts to use the urinal next to me and my initial thought because my brain is not working right is that I am using a urinal in the women's bathroom and I panic a little bit but then I'm like no no no that's not that's not right there's no urinals in the women's bathroom are there and that's when I realized oh shit okay all right it's kicking in and I look back at this beautiful woman uh no just a middle-aged fellow tool guy just in a graphic tea with the ponytail uh I pop out to find Jason he's starting to feel it too uh we both agree that we need to find our seats pretty quick on the way, my ability to process time starts to disintegrate. Looking across the stadium, other people heading to their seats are moving too slow.

Like they're in slow motion. But then, they'll catch up. It's like I'm fast forwarding a fucking movie I'm watching. And then they like get to where they're supposed to be. So I'm pretty nervous by the time I make it to my seat. Still less than 45 minutes in. You know, way less. 30, 40 minutes. Something like that. And I know it's going to get progressively more intense for about three more hours. I tell Jason, I'm too high to leave my seat.

He wants to walk around, see if we can get better seats. I'm like, nope. He's getting way more tolerance than I do. I'm like, I have to stay here and just ride this storm out. Right here. And also, I might have just had a stronger cap or stem. Remember, even in the same batch, grown next to each to each other one stem one cap can be way stronger than another. Well by the time tool hits the stage about an hour into the trip I'm

fucking losing my mind. Time is now freezing occasionally. I'm getting stuck in these weird trip loops where you just you know you can do this with a lot of like like acid LSD DMT where time breaks down and your brain it's like it can't process it and you seem like you get stuck in moments that just seem to repeat themselves. And I would feel like each note the band played was freezing and reverberating and then looping for like a minute. It's really hard to explain. But sometimes I would be worried that I would get stuck inside the same song literally forever, not doing well. And it's getting worse by the minute. I'm starting to hallucinate visually now pretty visually now pretty hard Danny Carey the drummer starts to look like some kind of forest elf god I remember thinking he had like big elk horns coming out of his head and he's covered in leaves and

His veins which are way too big turn into tree trunks and then like weave through our tree roots and then like we've to the stage Maynard Keenan the vocalist he looks gigantic and very devilish He's wearing some kind of hellraiser, demonic, futuristic outfit. And I keep seeing some giant animatronic snake on the stage. The whole set is like a hellscape. All these red lights and shit pulsating, undulating. I couldn't believe how much money they'd put into set design since the last time I'd seen him.

No, they didn't. This was all in my mind. Someone posted footage of the same concert very next day on YouTube. I laughed so hard when I started watching it because that was not the concert I was watching at all. I was on my own planet. A scary planet. And then thanks to the full experience with a hero dose, I began to disassociate. Full-on ego dissolution. Completely lost touch with reality. I didn't know where I was, who I was. I got very confused. I couldn't tell the difference between random thoughts and like memories or reality, you know Imagination is all blended and that's not good for somebody who researches a lot of dark shit. The previous few days prior to this trip I was researching episode 281 Arthur Shawcross the Genesee River killer.

That old fucking lumpy potato-headed child woman killing psychopathic monster. And now in the middle of a tool concert in San Diego I start to think that I'm Arthur Shawcross. Like it feels so real. In my reality I'm Arthur Shawcross. I'm ashamed of what I've done. I'm so you know I I'm such a piece of shit that I had to invent a fake backstory and life for myself one where I'm this phony Dan Cummins a podcaster made up living in Idaho wife and kids not real and my new reality Jason is now an FBI agent and he's trying to get me to confess he's not my friend and everyone at the concert is in on it even the band it's all fake it's all set up and I don't

want to confess I don't want to go back to prison so I stopped talking to Jason I'm not gonna let him trick me this is how high I was it was insane then I wasn't start to remember that I'm Dan. But then I would enter a new reality, where I would think that I had died coming down the stairs of the concert. And my mind is making up all these crazy other thoughts in my final seconds, as the last of the life leaves my body, and I really have to now work to keep from crying. Because I want to call Lindsay and tell her that I love her. And I love the kids, but I don't know how to work a phone.

Right? The screen is like melting. I can't fucking see anything. Then later I remember how to use my phone, but now I can't talk. I'm so fucked up. And I start texting Jason, who's sitting directly next to me, that I want to leave because I'm afraid I might die if I don't leave soon. I thought I'd text him just a few times. Oh no, I was stuck in another loop where I would think that I wanted to leave, text him that I wanted to leave, then immediately forget I had done that, then think that I want to leave, text him I want to leave, and just keep getting stuck, you know, and forget over and over again.

My brain can't process time. He showed me the text thread later, probably 20 to 30 texts in a row. Some of them pure gibberish. Others were just stuff like, I'm scared. I don't like it here. I want to go back to the hotel. I don't want to be a serial killer. It's fucking insanity.

He doesn't want to leave. He's super annoyed with me. His tolerance is so great. He's not nearly this high I'm ruining his trip and the concert and I was the one who told him that I wanted to go really hard, right? Rip my skull off. So finally scariest moment of the concert He leans over in front of me and he says this is what you wanted. That's how it sounded to me It sounded menacing. He's probably like this is what you wanted. But in my mind, he's like, this is what you wanted. And I'm terrified. He's out to get me. And I'm still getting more high. I still have a ways to go for the peak. He convinces me to wait until the concert's over, but I don't know how concerts work. So I just think the concert is over. He tells me later at some point, I guess the song started to

wind down and I just bolted. I just started hurrying up the stairs. And I do remember that being hard because somehow the staircase had gotten easily 10 times longer than it was when I came down the stairs. It was like a mile of stairs had been installed while I was in my seat. Jason follows me so I don't end up hiding in the bushes at a park and I don't know, fucking stuck somewhere downtown for the rest of the night. And he tries to get us an Uber to get us back to our hotel. I'm no help. I can't use a phone at all. Again, screen is not holding shape anymore again. I don't even know what an app is. I'm useless. Jason is getting pretty high now too as well. But he's still sober enough to know that our hotel is real and the Uber is real.

But too high to know how to use Uber to get to a hotel. So he now starts approaching college kids to ask them to help us. Sober, responsible 18 to 22 year olds, you know heading back from their dorms, from studying on a Wednesday night, coming back from the library or whatever. And these kids are terrified of the two wild-eyed middle-aged gremlins, fucking cretins wandering around, one of them probably babbling about Arthur Shawcross. After a while Jason tells me I need to stay in the background because I'm scaring people.

So now, I wish I had footage of this. Now one super high 40-something is approaching kids while a much higher 40-something is just lurking back in the shadows. Kids are probably looking for like the third guy driving the murder van. I'm surprised the police weren't caught. Well finally some angel of a college kid probably all of 19 years old does not quickly walk away from us. Jason was able to ask him if he could help us get an Uber to our hotel. And I guess he asked, you know, why can't you do it yourself?

Which is a fair question. And Jason told him that we were too high. Now he asks what we did. And Jason tells him we took too much rooms. And we went to the Seed Tool. And now I guess his kid's demeanor changes. And he goes from being a teen student to our disappointed father. And he just shook his head and he asked, why would you do that? We're sorry teen daddy please help us. And he did. He put us in a car he sent us to the right hotel on the way there. I did start to think I was out there Shawcrossing and I'd been put in a squad car to go to

prison for the rest of my life. I was like, ah they fucking tricked me. Jason got me to stop talking about that, luckily though. Finally made it to the hotel, and now I was on the other side of the peak, thank God. Slowly started to become myself again. Reality got a little firmer, poured ourselves some stiff drinks in Jason's room, smoked a joint, walked down the beach in La Jolla, and with no one else around, listened to the waves, crashed against the sand, looked up into the stars on a very clear warm night, and it was majestic. I was so happy not to actually be a serial killer heading to prison. I appreciated my real life so much. The stars looked magical.

The moon felt alive. I felt so connected to the universe that one this feeling you can get. We talked about shit like the ancient Greeks looking at the same stars when they created Western civilization. We talked about dreams, you know, what we loved about our lives, all kinds of deep stuff. Then Joe told me he had taken even more shrooms during the concert that were kicking in now and you know it got weird again for him. And the story is already pretty long so I won't go into all that. But that is the kind of shit you can experience in a heavy shroom trip. Powerful hallucinations, heavily distorted reality, feelings of utter terror and confusion,

but also extreme euphoria, connectedness, feelings of existential bliss. I felt more content with my life in existence and more connected to history and the rest of humanity and also to some divine creator out on that beach than I ever have when I've been completely sober. And I felt extra calm and at peace with my life for months following that night. divine creator out on that beach than I ever have when I've been completely sober. And I felt extra calm and at peace with my life for months following that night, this beautiful afterglow, hail psilocybin, hail Nimrod and fuck Arthur Shawcross. Final note about shrooms, I could go on and on for hours about shrooms, but in 2016, researchers at Johns Hopkins published results of a randomized

double blind study showing psilocybin significantly decreases depression and anxiety in patients with life-threatening cancer. The Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research, leading the way currently in exploring innovative treatments using psilocybin, backed by 55 million dollars in funding for over 15 years they've been conducting some of the best psychedelic research in the world on psilocybin. From their website, the molecular structure of psilocybin, a naturally occurring psychedelic compound found in magic mushrooms, allows it to penetrate the central

nervous system and the scientific and medical experts are just beginning to understand its effects on the brain and mind and its potential as therapeutics for mental illnesses. And in the study, each participant underwent two sessions, a high-dose one and a low-dose one five weeks apart. Six months afterwards, about 80 percent of the patients remained significantly less clinically depressed and anxious than they were before the treatment. And many said they had lost their fear of death thanks to two doses of shrooms. Why? Speculating, getting non-scientific here. I feel like maybe the mushrooms showed them the true nature of the universe, a

kind of knowledge you just can't put into words. They had communed with the divine. They learned that no one, nothing really dies. We all just transform and return to the stardust we are made of. Now let's move on to another one of the most prominent psychedelic drugs that is actually pretty similar to shrooms DMT. DMT stands for bear with me dimethyltryptamine which is a psychoactive compound that occurs naturally in hundreds of plant and animal species around the world and it's something that can be synthesized in a laboratory. When taken on its own DMT

starts taking effect almost immediately after ingestion. Typically you smoke it. I've probably been on around two dozen DMT trips have always smoked it. Both the physical and mental effects of the drug can be extremely powerful but will only last about 30 minutes if that. My experience is more like a 15 minute cycle sometimes only 10 or less of heavy tripping. Sometimes real heavy tripping. One time home on a Saturday night during the peak of a deep shroom trip, but not a hero trip, more like three, four grams of shrooms. I kept smoking DMT until I truly thought, well, in my mind, I was seeing them.

I saw these two fucking humanoid looking demon things standing outside my front door. I could see them through the glass. They're in the dark and they were just staring at me. These crazy eyes. And then the image on the portrait TV we have turned into a hellscape where I could look into this lake in this image, kind of like a screensaver, and down below what used to be a lake, now it's like a portal into hell and there was demons walking around torturing people and shit. It's a fucking nightmare. I just started to stare at the stopwatch function on my phone and just would wait. I just waited for the trip to be over. That's the only bad DMT trip I've ever had by the way. I must have been

working on too much Scared to Death around that time. The most common side effect of DMT intense visual auditory hallucinations and because of this drug is most often taken and because of this excuse me the drug is most often taken to induce spiritual experiences. One study states that commonly described features of the DMT experience include a feeling of transcending one's body and entering into an alternative realm, an acoustic perception of a high-pitched whining slash whirring sound during the onset of the experience, glad I haven't had that, perceiving and communicating with presences or entities plus reflections on death, dying and the afterlife. Yeah. DMT can be smoked in a pipe, drunk in a liquid brew,

snorted as a powder or injected directly into the bloodstream. Most common method, however, is to drink it as part of an ayahuasca ceremony. So, yeah, I guess like people just taking DMT, I think, to generally smoke it. But if you want to have the full ayahuasca experience, that, yeah, then you put it into a brew. Before diving into ayahuasca, I want to share my most powerful hallucinogenic experience. Yet, it's a very quick story, not like the tool concert. I had this guy in Texas, not a shaman, but a real smart, knowledgeable guy who does not want to be named since he's a public figure. He introduced me to five MEO DMT, Toad Venom, Bufo, God Molecule.

Addictioncenter.com says of this stuff, despite having similar effects to other psychedelics like DMT, LSD, and psilocybin, toad venom produces stronger and faster results. Other sources I found describe it as the strongest hallucinogen on the planet, four to six times as powerful as DMT. According to researchers, the drug often leaves users immobile and unresponsive. Yep. It can cause intense emotional reactions. Uh-huh. Euphoria? Yep. Convulsions? I don't think so. Vomiting? Not for me. According to Alan K. Davis, clinical psychologist and assistant professor at the psychedelic

research unit at Johns Hopkins University, it's such an intense experience that in most cases doing it at a party isn't safe. Oh yeah, I would very much agree with that. It's not a recreational drug. Nope. If people get dose too high they can white out and disassociate from their mind and body. And that's what happened to me. I did white out. I left my mind and body for about 10-15 minutes and I think it changed me forever. I don't think I would have ever cancelled my stand-up tour this year folks on my mental health if I would not have done that. I wouldn't be as close to my kids now or my wife., I would have just been work focused ego driven. I would have been doing this for all the wrong reasons

Money mostly instead of artistic expression. It was life-altering I did two DMT trips back to back to get into the DMT headspace before I did the toad venom Then I inhaled, you know couple big You know took a couple big deep breaths of this God molecule. And then I just passed out essentially. I just fell backwards into the couch I was on, eyes closed and thought I died. I felt like I just kept falling below the couch, my soul drifting down, down, down. Then I'd fallen eventually all the way through Earth.

Now I was out in space in this vast darkness. I was scared. I fell into some cosmic river of stardust and primordial soup. No body, no ego. I was just part of everything else. I was both nothing and everything simultaneously. Dan Cummins was gone. I was back to whatever I was before this life, what I was thinking I would be afterwards. And it was terrifying. Yeah. And sad. But then so beautiful. most beautiful thing I've ever felt. I remember feeling like I was back with God, Mother Nature, Divine Creator, whatever you want to call it.

And it felt like I was in the womb of the universe, if that makes sense. I could hear what sounded like a heartbeat. I could feel it, like the pulse of everything. And I was content. I was okay with having died. I was at peace. Then eventually I came back to consciousness after floating out there, fucking would felt like a lifetime. And I opened my eyes and I was crying. I didn't feel sad. I feel like so happy.

I felt renewed for lack of a better term. Like a cosmic baptism. And the guy I was with, he told me before I went under, he said, this will change you. How your wife loves you, how expressive she is with her love, you'll feel that that right back It'll be like a callus and ripped off your heart He was talking about that because like by being more of a traditional Traditionally masculine guy in some ways, you know, I've been pushing down, you know feelings emotions for most of my life And you know, he's like it's gonna be intense when all that comes back up You're gonna feel it all again and it was and I know this is hippie-dippy

But he said he also felt some negative pulse of like a like a intense wave of energy Radiate off of me in the midst of me being on another planet Once I gather my senses again, I called Lindsey told her how much I loved her and the kids You know how they were all that mattered to me in life and you have been a different person On some level ever since it's fucking mystical shit According to addictioncenter.com again once the venom wears off users say that they experience an afterglow And you have been a different person on some level ever since. It's fucking mystical shit. According to AddictionCenter.com, again, once the venom wears off, users say that they experience an afterglow that can trigger them to make major positive life changes.

5-MeO-DMT appears to have an effect comparable to hypnosis. The drug has been shown to help break attachments to past trauma, negative behaviors, habitual negative thought patterns. To study the potential medicinal effects of 5-MeO DMT, John Hopkins psychedelics researcher, Alan Davis, conducted an online survey that included 362 people that routinely had used the Toad venom in ceremonial group settings. Of the 162 individuals that self-reported as having suffered from

anxiety or depression, approximately 80% reported significant improvements in those conditions after using the drug. 80%! The guy who took me under primarily works with veterans and said that many of them felt like their PTSD was fucking erased after one set of DMT cycles followed by that God molecule cycle. A lot of research still needs to be done, right?

This shit is on another level. It belongs in its own class of substances, I think. The drug is actually the venom excreted by a rare species of toad native to the Sonoran desert, Bufol alvarius. Luckily scientists have chemically synthesized and been able to recreate it. Now, ayahuasca. Ayahuasca is a type of psychedelic drug that is ingested as a liquid tea made by boiling a plant that contains DMT with a plant that contains, again bear with me, monamine oxidase inhibitor, MAOI. Monoamine oxidases, I think I'm saying it right, are a class of enzymes that work in the human body to control the oxidation and inactivation of certain types of neurotransmitters including serotonin. And these MAOIs, they are a

type of drug that suppresses the functioning of monoamine oxidases allowing for neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine to accumulate. MAOIs are found naturally over 70 plants in over 70 plants all around the world or can be produced synthetically in a lab and when you add them to DMT a substance that binds to serotonin receptors and induces psychedelic effects it makes it harder for your body to expel the DMT to rid itself of excess serotonin and dopamine as well so the DMT builds up to stronger levels in your system and also lasts much longer so the typical ayahuasca trip is 4 to 6

hours but it can last 12 hours or more in some instances. Onset usually begins in 30 to 60 minutes. I found a good quote on a psychedelic website comparing DMT to ayahuasca. A medicine man I used to drink ayahuasca with once told me in response to my question about the differences between DMT and ayahuasca, DMT is like a one night stand, like a lover, and ayahuasca is the long term relationship. It's the building, growth, and healing. Interesting. I have not done an ayahuasca trip yet, but very much want to.

Although there has been a recent boom in ayahuasca usage in the US, it's been around since far before there was a United States. Ayahuasca has been used for millennia by indigenous peoples of South America as part of spiritual healing, therapeutic, and divination rituals. Because of its widespread usage amongst communities that oftentimes have never had any contact with one another, there is no one standard version of an ayahuasca ceremony. In the Amazon rainforest alone, over 90 different tribes still each use ayahuasca in their own unique traditional ways.

In some cultures, only medicine men and healers are permitted to brew and consume ayahuasca for the purpose of communicating with the spirit world and diagnosing the metaphysical causes of patients' suffering and ailments. Sounds like a great excuse to get super high. What's going on with your knee? Hold on, I'm on a knee today. I'm going to have to get high as shit. In other cultures, ayahuasca is used

in much more casual settings as the shared hallucinations are thought to create social bonds amongst tribe members. Other uses of ayahuasca, use amongst indigenous peoples include learning more about nature and its spirits. And in the late 1960s, botanist Melvin Bristol found that in some tribes in Columbia that they use a psychedelic in order

to psychically visit family while out on long trips and feeling lonely. That's pretty sick. Even the very recipe for ayahuasca varies from group to group. Whether the tea is drunk cold or hot, whether it's steep for 12 or 24 hours, how much of the brew is actually consumed, just a few of the things that differentiate individual ceremonies. On average ayahuasca is brewed across the board using the DMT containing vine. Again this is a tough one. Banasteriapsis coppi. Banasteriapsis coppi, also known as the spirit vine, much easier to say. And the leaves of the MAOI containing shrub, uh, pytrotria, oh my gosh, psych, psico, excuse me, psychotria voridis, aka chakruna. Important note that Bonastyriapsis, copy, fuck that, also

frequently referred to on its own as ayahuasca. So the term ayahuasca both refers to the drug that is made, uh, that is made and one of the plants that is made, it's made out of. While most indigenous tribes use Shakruna with the spirit vine to create Ayahuasca, possible to brew the tea with another AMOI containing plant or more rarely without a secondary plant at all. Sometimes tribes drink just a lot of DMT for a trip of a different duration. For example, the Yaagua people of Colombia and Northeastern Peru, they brew Ayahuasca tea for ceremonial purposes only using the spirit vine. Generally speaking, ayahuasca ceremonies led by

shaman ritual begins when the sun sets, oftentimes does not end until it rises the following morning because of the oftentimes met additional aspect of the ceremony, indulgent things like partaking in sex or eating things like red meat, spicy foods prohibited in the days leading up to the ceremony. In a JSTOR article titled, The Colon prohibited in the days leading up to the ceremony. In a JSTOR article titled, The Colonization of the Ayahuasca Experience, we go to JSTOR frequently to find solid academic sources. It's the digital library of academic journals, books, and primary sources. Journalist Mark Hay writes,

Most people who take ayahuasca, regardless of their background or the particular ritual context in which they take it, report similar experiences. Soon after drinking the brew, they get nauseous and often vomit and void their bowels. Many users view this as a beneficial purge of one system. They may start to sweat and shake and feel their heartbeat race. They may even get agitated, feel intense, dizzy or uncoordinated. Then they usually see colors and geometric shapes for a few minutes, although it may seem like much longer, before gradually moving on to witness varied hallucinations, to witness varied hallucinations often of humanoid and animal figures. They may also get a

sense of being visited or inhabited by an alien consciousness of moving beyond their bodies, of flying through diverse and fantastical landscapes or any other number of hallucinatory experiences. I've often heard those geometric shapes referred to as fractals, excuse me. I've only seen them once or twice on a DMT trip. Super weird. Although for most of history ayahuasca has been used almost solely by the indigenous peoples of what is now Peru, Colombia, Brazil, and Ecuador for spiritual purposes, in recent years it has gained an exceptional amount of popularity in North America. However, as Mark Hay points out in his article, the westernization of the ayahuasca ceremony

is oftentimes exploitive and demonstrates a profound misunderstanding of the drugs intended for a sacred purpose. Nowadays, scattered across North America, there's hundreds of businesses that offer customers the chance to experience an authentic quote unquote ayquote ayahuasca ayahuasca oh my god ayahuasca ceremony and fast track their spiritual development prices for these luxury vacations and self-care packages range from a couple hundred bucks to around 10 grand for example founded by american multimillionaire gerard arman powell the rythmia life advancement center currently one of the most popular additions to the ever-growing catalog of luxury healing centers around the world.

Rhythmia is located in Guantacasta, Costa Rica, and for those looking to heal their spirit, the resort offers what their website describes as an all-inclusive, seven-day medically licensed transformation program. The week-long retreat includes four guided Ayahuasca ceremonies, two medical evaluations by staff physicians, six yoga classes, three rhythmic breath work classes, one healing massage, one so-called dance of liberation movement ceremony, 21 farm-to-table organic meals, two hydrocalonic cleanses, which is exactly what you think it is where they do your asshole. I'm not gonna lie, this program sounds a little pretentious, a little weird as fuck, maybe a bit scammy,

but also I'm intrigued and I'll probably do it. I wanna see what the fuss is. Might have the time of my life, liberating my ass through dance or whatever. Price of the program starts at $4,900 and according to a large banner that spans across the bottom of their website, Rhythmia is the number one customer rated healing center in the world on TripAdvisor with over 2,400 five-star

reviews and since its inception the resort has been six has seen 16,000 plus souls healed. Okay pretty bold claim but maybe I don't know. Alright back to psychedelics we'll cover more the use of ayahuasca by non-indigenous people later in the timeline. First one last psychedelic drug to cover, the least, the one we know the least about, peyote. Peyote is a spineless cactus native to Mexico and parts of southwestern Texas that contains a psychoactive compound mescaline. The peyote cactus grows in a variety of desert scrub habitats, but only blooms from March to May and

occasionally late September. The regions it can be found in include the Sierra Madre Occidental Mountain Range, running between the U.S. and Mexico on the border there, the Chihuahuan Desert, which similarly covers northern parts of Mexico and parts of the southwest U.S., and the Mexican states of Nayarit, Coahuila, Nuevo León, San Luis Potosi, and Tamalipas. Despite its pervasiveness, over-harvesting and over-consumption, particularly in South Texas, has caused native plant to become an endangered species. Peyote most often consume raw, dried, or infused into a tea. Occasionally dried buttons of Peyote. Top of the Peyote cactus is referred to as a crown and consists of disc-shaped buttons

that are cut off. And they can be ground into a powder which is then placed in a gelatin capsule and swallowed whole or it can be smoked with a leaf material like cannabis or tobacco. The fresh or dried buttons also can be chewed, soaked in water to produce an intoxicating liquid. In general, the effects of peyote mirror that of ayahuasca. Like DMT, peyote acts as both a psychedelic and a stimulant, simultaneously producing vivid hallucinations and boosting the production of serotonin and dopamine. While on it, users experience auditory and visual hallucinations, distorted perception of time and

space, and an altered feeling of their physical body. Color sounds, even experiences may feel richer or bolder. Visions are common with mescaline especially in high doses. These visions are experiences that are not happening in the real world but will feel very real to the person experiencing them like they're going on a spirit quest. Visions may be either overwhelmingly joyful or terrifying. They may seem highly significant to the person. They can also feel very chaotic. Each button of peyote contains approximately 45 milligrams

of mescaline with six to 12 buttons, typically ingested to attain the full hallucinogenic effects. Hallucinogenic effects occur within an hour, peak at around two hours, and generally last for eight to 12 hours. So long lasting, although the US government dictates that there are no legitimate medicinal benefits of peyote, the drug has a long history of being used in

healing rituals by indigenous peoples. It's believed to help relieve sufferers of joint pain, a variety of other illnesses, headaches, all kinds of stuff. Heart troubles. Harvard Medical School's Dr. John Halpern has spent years studying peyote and has found that the plant can reduce alcoholism and drug abuse levels amongst Native Americans. The first modern clinical trial of mescaline was led by pharmacologists Matthias Leichty at the University Hospital in Basel, Switzerland and published in the summer of 2023. Using 16 healthy volunteers, the study compared

the effects of LSD, psilocybin, and mescaline using psychological and physical assessments, including functional magnetic resonance imaging. Mescaline had the longest effect duration of the three, lasting on average just over 11 hours, compared to just over eight hours for LSD and just under five hours for psilocybin. All three at potent doses produce extremely similar altered perception effects. Mescaline has the lowest potency of the three,

so you have to eat the most to achieve those effects. You have to take 300 to 500 milligrams of mescaline compared to 100 micrograms of LSD and 20 milligrams of psilocybin. A lot more clinical research needs to be done to really understand its medical or therapeutic value. Although it's been used by humans for at least 5700 years, it is sometimes called the forgotten psychedelic. In the Native American church, which we will talk about more in the timeline, peyote is used in a sacramental way and as a means of convening

with departed loved ones and higher powers. In the U.S., the recreational use of peyote in any form is illegal for most of us. However, Uncle Sam makes an exception in cases of religious ceremonies such as those performed by the Native American Church. All right, now that we've covered the basics, time to move into the timeline, explore how these ancient and modern psychedelics play a role in our history. One last thing, want to make note of something. As you'll see soon, women are largely absent from the recorded history of psychedelics and psychedelic research. And that is because, don't shoot the messenger, women's minds are fragile,

too fragile, far too fragile and weak and underdeveloped to be able to handle a full psychedelic experience. JK, apologies, Lusifena. No, of course not. This is not because women did not play a role in the discovery and experimental development of psychedelics, but because their participation was erased and contributions explicitly omitted. For example, during the surge of psychedelic experimentation in the 1950s, such as the kind that Aldous Huxley undertook, it was standard practice for a sober observer to accompany the experimenter while they were high, kind of like a scientific version of a trip guide. The observer would write down

meticulous notes on the behavior and actions of the subject, such as how they responded to certain sounds or how they interacted with certain objects, as well as their own personal analysis of it. Afterwards, they would compile their notes in an official observers report which the experimenter would then use to form their conclusions about the effects of psychedelics. In recent years, modern researchers have taken a new interest in these archived observers reports and discovered that most if not all of them were written by women. Moreover, it's been found that not only were these women vital to the experiments but that oftentimes the observer had a previous experience

Taking psychedelics. However, by virtue of their sex they were rarely trusted trusted as experimenters only as secretaries Okay, I think I said secretaries wrong, but that's what that addressed. Let's meet some of those who have tripped before us Shrap on those boots, soldier. We're marchin' down a time-suck timeline. Datin' all the way back to prehistoric times. Maybe as far back as 9000 BCE. Native Americans have been using peyote to induce a psychedelic experience. We found this out only recently when a landmark study found ancient dried peyote buttons and

through radiocarbon dating estimated their origins to be between 3780 and 3660 BCE. So over 550 years ago, at least. From this the researchers concluded that buttons were used by ancient indigenous peoples for their psychoactive effects just like they are now. So many spirit quests. Century after century of fractals, trails, increased senses of connection to the world around you, altered sense of time, laughing your ass off because your fellow tribe members no longer look right.

Also feelings of terror when those around you turn into monsters. Man, I bet tripping centuries ago was more magical than it is now because the world was more mysterious Imagine truly believing when you're sober then in the nearby forest there's a fucking shit ton of skinwalkers and other monsters out there and Then you trip some night out on the prairie. That would be intense At least as far back as 1600 BC the illusion mysteries began to take place in a leucis Greece illusion mysteries began to take place in Eleusis, Greece. And they will continue for approximately 2,000 years. The mysteries, one of the oldest mystery cults in the Greco-Roman

world. There were many of the secret rituals that took place, may have begun centuries earlier with some agrarian cults. Going back over 1,500 years before the birth of Christ, the ancient Greeks in an annual religious ceremony taking place less than 20 miles from Athens, were drinking a mysterious sacrament believed to have been a powerful psychedelic derived from the ergot fungi that grows on rye and related plants, so LSD, as part of secretive religious rituals. The climax of the rituals in Eleusis was an experience of spiritual death and rebirth. If you die before you die, you won't die when you die. That's written in Greek over the doorway at Paul's monastery in Attica, Greece.

According to Brian Muri- uh, Muri-Rescues, oh man, I always have trouble with his last name research. This guy here wrote this great book about all this. The most common description given by initiates is that they underwent a transformative experience involving a metaphorical death and rebirth through the religious use of psychedelics and were given a sense of their own immortality. Plato participated, said that the blessed sight and vision was supposed to conquer death. It's thought that aided by powerful psychedelics participants got a little taste of ego death and immortality which gave them a much better appreciation for their life, for being alive. We still don't know

exactly what went on in illusion mysteries for a Greek to reveal what they participated in was to risk execution. Heralded religious scholar Houston Smith, whose book, The World's Religions, has sold over three million copies, wonderful book I studied a lifetime ago in a comparative religions class, called the illusion mysteries the best kept secret in history. The 2020 book, The Immortality Key, the secret history of the religion with no name, and that's the book that was written by Brian C. Murorescu, discusses the potential role of psychedelics in the birth of Western civilization and Christianity. Theories are presented in this book that even Jesus and his apostles were using psychedelics. The same used in illusion mysteries and

that the tradition of the modern Christian sacrament actually is derived from this ancient Greek sacramental elixir and that Christianity itself was born from psychedelics. That when Jesus said I came into this world to give sight to the blind and to show those who think they see that they are blind. He was talking about essentially awakening your third eye to the true nature of the universe through psychedelics. And that when he said, truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

He was talking about being born again as in the illusion ritual experience of spiritual death and rebirth. Just a theory, of course, but one I and a lot of other people find fascinating. Was even Jesus tripping? Was he accessing the divine through an ancient form of LSD? That's a fucking wild thought. In around 1500 BCE, pre-Columbian cultures, the Northeastern Amazon, regarded plants with psychoactive effects as sacred and started using them for religious purposes if they weren't already doing this.

Though some archaeologists deny this to be sufficient evidence of ancient ayahuasca usage, traces of DMT have been found on excavated objects like snuffing trays and bone spatulas, as well as pottery decorated with depictions of mythological beings and earthly plants. That has led many to conclude that humans have been using some form of ayahuasca for at least 3500 years. Spirit quest! Spirit quest! Jumping forward quite a bit to the late 16th century now when the Spanish conquistadors invaded Mexico. During this period the European colonizers first encountered peyote being used in religious ceremonies by indigenous people. Given the imperialist inclination towards cultural genocide and their strong conviction that all non-Christian religion was pagan,

they attempted to put an end to the use of the drug they deemed as satanic. Right? Everything different is evil. All other rituals other than our rituals, obviously from the devil. Luckily, they were not successful. In fact, in the coming years, peyote would spread rapidly to the native North Americans who are being forced onto reservations in the US. to the native North Americans who are being forced onto reservations in the US. In Europe, during the so-called Dancing Plague of 1518 or Dance Epidemic of 1518, some folks in Strausburg, modern-day France may have accidentally tripped fucking hard. Some of them eventually tripped themselves to death. From July to September of 1518, around 400 people danced for weeks.

It began with a woman named Frau Trofea began to dance enthusiastically in one of the streets of Strausburg. She kept dancing constantly when she wasn't sleeping I guess for a week. Then a few others started to join her. Then a few dozen more people started to join her. People kept dancing until they would collapse. Some died from exhaustion or from heart attacks. These fuckers would dance throughout the night. They would just dance, collapse, then eventually get back up and just keep dancing. Local musicians started to play for them. It was madness. Finally, September, it all just subsided. All went away.

So what the fuck was that about? One of the leading theories is LSD, a crazy form of food poisoning. The theories that the rye the town used to bake their bread with had become contaminated with ergot, and one of the weirdest cases of mass psychedelic food poisoning history led to this medieval rave Would love to see that 1851 the Western world is first introduced to ayahuasca by English ethnobotanist Richard Spruce old dicky spruce dick spruce Exploring the Amazon and he was cataloging local plant species when he observed a group of Takano tribal members brewing and ingesting psychedelic tea and then they started acting pretty weird and saying some crazy shit. In approximately 1885

the Native American Church also known as Peyotism was created, a syncretic religious movement combining practices from Native American beliefs and Christianity. It originated with the Kiowa and Comanche tribes in the territory of Oklahoma from between 1890-1907 and among Native Americans today. Or, sorry, that's when that tribe existed in the territory of Oklahoma. Existed in 1890-1907. I know that it's set in approximately 1885. Sources vary a little bit with the dates on this stuff, but late 19th century. And it is the most prominent indigenous religion for Native Americans today. Peyotism has been adopted to varying degrees across approximately 50

Native American tribes, each practicing it in vastly different ways. Currently, there are approximately 300,000, maybe a little more, practicing members of the Native American Church across the US, Canada, and Mexico. There are two primary forms of Peyotis beliefs, the half moon and the crossfire. The biggest difference between them being how strong the influence of Christianity is in their traditional practices. For example, although the half moon congregation promotes Christian morality, it rejects the use of the Bible placed on an altar, the employment of a minister in a ceremony, and the practice of baptism. Crossfire adherents, however, embrace the importance of ministers during ceremonies,

Bibles on altars, and baptism. Additionally, many crossfire sects admonish the use of tobacco and smoking during ritual ceremonies, but not all do. Similarly, there are divergences amongst the Half Moon adherents. In the article Native American Church, The Half Moon Way, published in 1991, a member of the Lakota tribe, Vincent Catches, describes how peyote was used by his friends and family. Vincent wrote that he was introduced to the Half Moon Way of peyotism as a young boy and was involved in the Native American Church as an adult until his wife died. When he was a kid, one of Vincent's uncles would make trips down to what he and many others called the Holy Land, places in Mexico and Texas where peyote grows. According to the author, peyotes who make pilgrimages to pick the cactus each have their own

unique way of doing so. One way is to eat a slice of the first peyote you find and then wait for the hallucinogenic effects to reveal other plants in the area. I'm not sure that actually works but I love it. I love tripping as an excuse to find more psychedelics for more tripping. Because peyote is difficult to spot in the great expanse of the desert, another way is to spread tobacco leaves in the area while speaking directly to the unseen plants about how they are needed to help those in pain and suffering. Next day, the pilgrim returns to the spot where they spread the tobacco and listens

for the sound of a snake. Under that animal, that's where the peyote will be. That method for sure was developed by someone who was tripping their balls off, and it sounds pretty dangerous. In Vincent's tribe, peyote was used primarily as a medicine and ritualistic ceremonies led by a roadman. In western culture, that'd be akin to a pastor or priest. According to Vincent, after all the attendees are seated in the prepared tipi, the general procedure of a peyote ceremony in the half moon way goes like this. The roadman addresses the congregation.

He tells them the purpose of the meeting, after which the tobacco is seeded and passed around clockwise. Everything is done clockwise. Then when the people have rolled their tobacco into cigarettes, the fire stick is passed around and the roadman prays aloud. Anyone who wishes to may also pray aloud while the Roadman is praying. When the Roadman is done praying he places his tobacco stub beneath the chief peyote, a large peyote button placed in the center of

the half moon altar in front of the road chief angled towards him. Then the fireman collects stubs from all the people starting at the door going to the drummer while the assistant fireman collects the stubs from the door moving counterclockwise to the cedar man and then places them by the tips of the moon on their respective sides. After that the roadman cedars his staff, feathers, gourd, etc. and the drummer cedars his drum. Then the singing and drumming starts. Each man sings four songs going clockwise, of course. At various times throughout the night peyote is eaten by the people in the teepee,

starting with the road chief, who decides how much and when it should be sent around and what form it should be. Usually it is eaten at least four times during the ceremony, sometimes more. An individual may ask for more from the road chief, I guess it would be possible for someone not to take the peyote, but I've never seen that happen.

Peyote may be eaten dry in the button form, ground and eaten dry, ground and mixed with water into a paste or made into a tea. How you eat it is not important. What is important is that you do it prayerfully. Vinci goes on to describe how there are four major chapters of the Half Moon Way Peyote ceremony. Beginning, midnight, 3 a.m. and morning. At midnight, the ceremony's fireman, who as his name suggests is the person in charge of keeping the fire stoked throughout the night, is sent down to whatever natural water course is nearby to collect a bucket of water. He then returns to the ceremonial teepee with the water, prays over it in front of

the congregation, as does the roadman and his drummer. When the prayers are complete, each man and woman present takes a turn drinking from the bucket in a clockwise order. After everyone has drank, the bucket is removed and the roadman exits the teepee in order to pray to the four directions. East, South, West, and North in that order. And Vincent writes that, in the half moon way, each direction represents a season. Spring, summer, fall, winter. And each season represents parts of our life. Childhood, youth, adulthood, and old age. I fucking love all this.

When the road man returns, the peyote is passed around once again, the next main chapter in the ceremony is called the main smoke. During which the one for whom the meeting has been called in honor of, prays to the great spirit and ritualistically rolls some tobacco. A fire stick is then passed to him and he lights his tobacco with it.

He then shares the smoke with the road man and the drummer. Who contributes another prayer. He is also expected at this time to thank the people who have come a long way to be there with him. Excuse me. After that, the singing continues until dawn. The ceremony concludes with the woman who has been assigned to the task going to retrieve the morning water from the same source as before. When she returned, she's handed the tobacco to smoke and recites a prayer of thanks for the life-giving water. The water is then passed around clockwise, and the closing songs, also called quitting songs, begin. When the fourth closing song is over, the roadman says a final prayer. During this, breakfast is placed at the TP's entrance for congregants to eat on their way out.

Four foods and beverages are set out in this particular order. Water, meat, corn, and fruit. And with that, the ceremony is complete. I love it! A ritualistic spirit quest followed by catered snacks. I'm in if anybody invites me. Well, not anybody, but you know, it'd be a lot of fun. Psychedelic rituals would probably be the most effective way to get me actually become religious and go to church. Hey, you want to come to church? Oh, what are you guys going to be going to be doing? We're going to gonna sit quietly listen to an old man share his thoughts on a book that I've already read. Ah I don't know. Thanks, but I'm practicing at home cute of the following week. You want to come to church?

What are you guys gonna do? I'm gonna sit half naked and TP pass around a pipe full of peyote Get so high our spirits will ascend into the heavens and commune with God directly Cut to me already being fucking dressed and walking out the door before he finishes that sentence. 1914. First-hand account of the effects of magic mushroom is published anonymously in Science Magazine, ushering in a new age of interest in psychedelics in the West. In the article which was titled a recent case of mushroom intoxication, the anonymous author referring to himself as Mr. W and the woman he took mushrooms with as Mrs. Y wrote, Peculiar symptoms were perceived in a very short time. Noticed first that I could not collect my thoughts easily, when addressed nor answer

readily. Could not will to arise promptly. Walked a short distance. The time was short but seemed long, drawn out. Would walk straight but seemed drowsy. Had no disagreeable stomach sensations. Effects seemed entirely mental. Remembered little about the walk.

Mrs. Y was in about the same condition, according to Mr. Y. My mind very soon appeared to clear up somewhat and things began to seem funny. And rather like intoxication. A little later objects took on peculiar bright colors. A field of red top grass seemed to be in horizontal stripes of bright red and green. And a peculiar green haze spread itself all over the landscape. At this time Mrs. Wise saw nearly everything green, but the sky was blue. Her white handkerchief appeared green to her. And the tips of her fingers seemed to be like the head snakes. Both of us had an irresistible impulse to run and jump, which we did

freely. Just running around, jumping around, dealing with finger snakes. What a fun trip. No idea what's going on. 1919, Mescaline is first synthesized at the University of Vienna by chemist Ernst Spoth, soon after the German drug company Merck starts marketing it to researchers. At the time, mescaline was thought to be a potential cure for schizophrenia, but before long that hope was abandoned. A general scientific interest in the drug's effects, however, continued to grow strong. 1931 DMT is first synthesized by Canadian chemist Richard Manx. Another dick!

However, its effects on humans was not studied. November 16, 1938, Swiss chemist Albert Hoffmann first synthesizes LSD at the chemical company Sandow's Laboratories in Basel, Switzerland. Hofmann had been hired at Sandow's nine years prior to work on synthesizing chemical compounds that occur naturally in medicinal plants, and that was exactly what he was supposed to be doing when he instead accidentally discovered one of the most influential drugs of all time. On that fateful day in 1938 Hoffman was in the midst of researching the restorative properties of ergot, that fungus right grown on rye and other

grains. The goal of Hoffman's study was to synthesize chemical compounds in ergot in order to create a drug that would stimulate the human respiratory and circulatory systems. Instead he inadvertently synthesized lysergic acid diethylamide. He set it aside, wouldn't look at it again for five years. Bummer. April 16th, 1943, Hoffman decides to resynthesize LSD.

The chemist would later admit he wasn't even exactly sure why he felt inclined to do so. It was calling to him. Especially given when it was first created five years prior, the compound was found to have no pharmacological value. Still he decided to recreate a sample to pass on to the pharmacology department. Call it fate, pure coincidence, divine guidance. But while he was in the final stages of purification and crystallization of the compound, he accidentally

touched his face. Very soon after making contact with the skin, the acid started to take effect. In a report of the experience he sent to his superior at Sandoz named Professor Stoll, Hoffman wrote, Last Friday, April 16, 1943, I was forced to interrupt my work in the laboratory in the middle of the afternoon and proceed home, being affected by a remarkable restlessness, combined with a slight dizziness. At home I lay down and sank into a not unpleasant intoxicated-like condition, characterized by an extremely stimulated imagination. In a dreamlike state, with eyes closed,

I found the daylight to be unpleasantly glaring. I perceived an uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense kaleidoscopic play of colors. After some two hours this condition faded away. When the spell was over, Hoffman surmised that his bizarre experience must have been caused by an external influence, most likely by the compound he had been working with. Furthermore, given that he had barely had any direct contact with the LSD, also concluded that the compound he created must be one of extreme potency, thus meriting further investigation. He decided that evening to start self experimenting. In his memoir, which was first published in 1979, Hoffman wrote,

exercising extreme caution, I began the planned series of experiments with the smallest quantity that could be expected to produce some effect. Considering the activity of the ergot alkaloids known at the time namely 0.25 milligram of lysergic acid diethylamide tartrate. Well, April 19th 1943, Hoffman begins to self experiment in earnest and ingest 250 micrograms LSD, solid dose. In his lab journal, Hoffman was only able to write down one line of observation about his experience at the time.

1700 hours, beginning dizziness, feeling of anxiety, visual distortions, symptoms of paralysis, desire to laugh. Two days later, he added to his notes for April 19th, home by bicycle from 1800 to 20... from 1800 to 20... I don't know how to say military. From fucking 1800 to 20 from 1800 to 20 hundred I don't know how to say military from fucking 1800 to 20 God damn it's messing with my mind right now so that'd be from 6 to 8 o'clock there we go most severe crisis I love these as most severe

crisis and it is 20 hundred hours I think yeah I get it it can definitely send you into a most severe crisis because of its notorious home by bicycle line April 19th is now known by many psychonauts as bicycle day. In celebration of the first time, LSD was truly ingested. However, while common belief is that Hoffman had to get home by bicycle because he was too high to drive, truth is he could not have driven a car even if he wanted to or was sober. It's because, you know, World War II was going on and there was a lot of restrictions on automobile use. Although his laboratory notes for April 19th pretty scant, the chemist did document the world's first LSD trip later, and it's so good. In his memoir, Hoffman wrote that while riding his bicycle home on April 19th,

little mood music, my condition began to assume threatening forms. Everything in my field of vision wavered and was distorted, as if seen in the curved mirror. I also had the sensation of being unable to move from the spot. Nevertheless, my assistant later told me that we had traveled very rapidly. Finally we arrived at home safe and sound, and I was just barely capable of asking my companion to summon our family doctor and request

milk from the neighbors. In spite of my delirious bewildered condition, I had brief periods of clear and effective thinking, yeah, and chose milk as a nonspecific antidote for poisoning. I fucking love this so much, he's out of his mind. The dizziness and sensation of fainting became so strong at times that I could no longer hold myself erect and had to lie down on the sofa. My surroundings had now transformed themselves in more terrifying ways. Everything in the room spun around,

and the familiar objects and pieces of furniture assumed grotesque, threatening forms. This reminds me a bit of being at home, laying on my stomach in the yard on an acid trip, and holding onto the grass. I was truly worried that I was going to somehow fall off the fucking face of the earth, that my mind had made sense that I could fall out into space if I just didn't hold on strong enough. They were in continuous motion, animated, as if driven by an inner restlessness. The lady next door, whom I scarcely recognized, brought me milk. In the course of the evening, I drank more than two liters. She was no longer Mrs. R, but rather a malevolent and stidious witch with a colored mask.

I steep in it. Even worse than these demonic transformations of the outer world were the alterations that I perceived in myself and my inner being. Every exertion of my will, every attempt to put to an end, the disintegration of the outer world and the dissolution of my ego seemed to be wasted effort. A demon had invaded me, had taken possession of my body, mind and soul. I jumped up and screamed, trying to free myself from him, but then sank down again and lay helpless on the sofa. The substance with which I had wanted to experiment had vanquished

me. It was the demon that scornfully triumphed over my will. I was seized by the dreadful fear of going insane. I was taken to another world, another place, another time. I still get the insanity part. I have this recurring situation I find myself in when I trip at home. Inevitably, if I trip hard enough, I will at some point become convinced that I am in an insane asylum, I've always been there, and that Lindsay is my orderly and that she won't let me leave the facility. My body seemed to be without sensation, lifeless, strange. Was I dying?

Was this the transition? At times I believed myself to be outside my body and then perceived, clearly, as an outside observer the complete tragedy of my situation. I had not even taken leave of my family. Would they ever understand that I had not experimented thoughtlessly, irresponsibly, but rather with the utmost caution, and that such a result was in no way foreseeable? My fear and despair intensified not only because a young family should lose its father, but also because I dreaded leaving my chemical research work, which meant so much to me,

unfinished in the midst of fruitful, promising development. Another reflection took shape, an idea full of bitter irony. If I was now forced to leave this world prematurely, it was because of this lysergic acid, diethylamide, that I myself had brought forth into the world. By the time the doctor arrived, the climax of my despondent condition had already passed. My laboratory assistant informed him about my self-experiment, as I myself was not yet able to formulate a coherent sentence. He shook his head in perplexity after my attempts to describe the mortal danger that threatened

my body. He could detect no abnormal symptoms other than extremely dilated pupils. Pulse, blood pressure, breathing were all normal. He saw no reason to prescribe any medication. Instead, he conveyed me to my bed and stood watch over me. Slowly I came back from a weird unfamiliar world to reassuring everyday reality. The horror softening gave way to a feeling of good fortune and gratitude. The more normal perceptions and thoughts returned and I became more confident that the

danger of insanity was conclusively passed. That's a trip. What a landmark moment. The first time in modern history, at least, that someone had intentionally tripped somewhat. He didn't exactly know what he was getting to, but you know, took it knowing that he was going to do some shit to his brain on LSD. From his initial self-experiment on April 19th, Hoffman came to a few conclusions about LSD. The first and most important was that LSD is fucking awesome and the next time he did it he should definitely listen some weird music or go to a museum with an exhibit of surrealistic sculptures or something. No his first conclusion was that it is an extremely potent psychoactive substance that has a profound impact on the way we experience both external sensations and internal

emotions. From that Hoffman also concluded that such a powerful substance would be of immense use to science, specifically in the fields of psychiatry, pharmacology, and neurology. In that moment, the chemist had no inkling that the new substance would also come to be used beyond medical science, as an inebriant in the drug scene. "'The last thing I could have expected,' he wrote, was that this substance could ever find application as anything approaching a pleasure drug. Come on! How did he not think that people wouldn't want to get fucked up on this? Humans love to have our minds altered with drugs. The whole point of drugs is to alter your consciousness and

nothing alters your consciousness more than LST. 1945 under the direction of German physician Kurt Friedrich Plotner, Jewish prisoners in concentration camps were experimented on with psychedelics by the Nazis. The goal of Plotner's unfathomably inhumane project was to discover a method of mind control that would be used to extract information from unwilling persons. At the Dachau concentration camp in southern Germany, prisoners were forcibly injected with mescaline, then made randomly to exercise for 30 minutes, then interrogated. The Nazi researchers observed that the victims' behaviors and reactions,

or they observed those behaviors and reactions to see if the psychedelic could work as a truth serum. Following the year after the Axis collapsed and the Allies were victorious in 1945, World War II finally over, that same year, Kurt Friedrich Plotner, aka the Nazi who conducted the human experiments, hired by the CIA to help them work on mind control, a mind control drug of their own. And his experiments would lead directly to Project MKUltra. I covered that CIA mind control LSD field experiment in bonus episode 8 of Time Suck way back in January of 2018. Still one of my favorite topics. Fascinating. 1947 the world's first paper on the psychological effects of LSD is published by Hoffman superiors at Sandoz

by one of them Professor Werner Stoll. In 1949 two American psychiatrists Max Rinkle and Nick Bercel personally transport batches of LSD synthesized at Sandoz to the US in order to begin their own experiments. Sandoz, under the brand name Delacid, able to distribute samples of LSD to American researchers under the Federal Food Drug and Cosmetic Act of 1938. Essentially the samples of LSD were given to researchers who could be trusted to both administer the drug safely to patients and evaluate its effectiveness in order for everyone to learn more about this mysterious new wonder drug.

During this time, all the buzz surrounding LSD was scientific in nature, and US publications were rife with conjecture and theories about the drug's ability to treat conditions like schizophrenia, alcoholism, and depression. In 1950, chemists Anthony Bush and Warren Johnson published the results of an experiment they conducted in an article titled LSD25 as an aid in psychotherapy, preliminary report of a new drug. It was the first English language publication on LSD. The purpose of the research was to determine the usefulness of LSD and the psychiatric treatment of who they described as psychotic patients in a hospital for chronic states. In their experiment, 29 patients in a mental hospital were given doses of LSD and then their reactions were recorded. Most

patients suffered from paranoid schizophrenia. This early experiment found that after being administered LSD, these 21 psychotic patients showed increases in activity. The mannix, to such an extent that hydrotherapy was necessary for control. Four of the paranoid schizophrenics also required hydrotherapy. Despite this, we were impressed by the various attempts most of the patients made to establish some kind of interpersonal relationship with the personnel. This was especially prominent in patients 1920 and 21. In view of this, it was decided that the drug might be of value during psychotherapy. Eight patients undergoing psychotherapy were then chosen for a trial. Four were inpatients. Four outpatients. While many researchers studied psychedelics in order to uncover their healing properties, others thought of ways

that psychedelics could be wielded as weapons against their enemies. In 1953, the CIA established a top-secret human experiment program, Project MKUltra. The original program consisted of 149 experiments on human test subjects, subjects who were oftentimes oblivious that they were being experimented on. The main objective of MKUltra was to find out if, how LSD and other psychedelic drugs could be used as tools of mind control, psychological torture, and information gathering. The program was approved by the newly appointed director of the CIA, Alan Dulles, and supervised

by CIA agent, chemist and poison expert, Sidney Gottlieb. In essence, MKUltra was a direct response to rumors of the ever-looming international communist party developing a mind-controlled drug. The rumors were reinforced by the claim that American prisoners of war released from North Korea, the Soviet Union, and China had been brainwashed so thoroughly by communists they didn't want to return to America. It seemed then to the CIA that we were in a mind control race with the commies and we needed to develop our own X-Men type super drug, STAT. On April 10, 1953, new director of the Central Intelligence Bureau, Alan Dulles, gave a speech

to a gathering of fellow Princeton alumni. And Durnity said, In the past few years, we've become accustomed to hearing much about the battle for men's minds, the war of ideologies. I wonder, however, whether we clearly perceive the magnitude of the problem, whether we realize how sinister the battle for men's minds has become in Soviet hands. We might call it, in its new form, brain warfare. Three days later, Douglas approved the rollout of Project MKUltra.

Very top secret. Gottlieb and his team immediately started experimenting and continued doing so for 20 years until the operation was finally shut down in 1973. Then soon thereafter in 1975, it was exposed to the American public via special Senate select committee testimony. While some subjects willingly volunteered to take part in MKUltra's experiments, most were either coerced into being experimented on or simply just never informed at all. The majority of the experiments, which is fucking crazy with LSD, they would just be dosed and not told. The majority of the experiments centered around subjects being administered with or without their

consent or knowledge, typically a very high dose of either LSD, MDMA, heroin, meth, cocaine, or shrooms. LSD by far the most common. During its two-decade run, the CIA covertly funded 80 American universities, including Columbia and Stanford, and 185 private research centers to conduct MK-ULTRA trials on human subjects. Other experiments took place in settings like mental hospitals, brothels, prisons, and American detention centers in Germany, Japan, and the Philippines. As for who the actual human subjects were, MKUltra targeted vulnerable and disadvantaged people who, as one official put it, could not fight back. Prisoners were a favorite test subject

of the CIAs because if they were desperate, which in the American prison system many were, inmates would agree to take part in a study in exchange for something like more rec time or a shorter sentence. Mentally handicapped persons also often preyed upon by the government agency. That's terrible. Unlike prisoners, they were seldom even given a choice or rewards. Former Suck subjects Whitey Bulger and Charles Manson both claimed to have taken part in this program. Bulger said he was dosed claimed to have taken part in this program. Bulger said he was dosed more than 50 times while serving his first stretch in prison. Some have claimed that shortly after getting out of prison before the Tate-LaBianca murders, before leaving for LA in the late 60s,

Manson participated in CIA LSD experiments in San Francisco. From 1955 to 1965, scattered across San Francisco and New York City, there was a web of seemingly normal brothels, each drawing from the streets a steady stream of customers every night. What those paying customers did not know was that hidden behind a two-way mirror was a group of men observing the participant rail and or get railed by a sex worker and taking meticulously notes about his behavior, actions, and possibly stroke technique. Kidding about the stroke technique? Possibly, but not the other stuff. For 10 years taxpayer dollars went to work or went to funding fake brothels where real sex workers were paid to lure men. Once inside the men were given LSD

by the sex workers and then their sexual encounter was not only observed by a room full of dudes in suits, but audio of it was recorded for further use. It's fucked up and also not a good meeting to wear too tight of a suit to. Definitely not a meeting that you'd want to wear sweatpants to. Although the program was described internally at the CIA as being a valiant endeavor for the greater good, the government agency was by no means ignorant of the atrocities they were committing. In one internal communication about the project, the CIA's Inspector General

wrote, Precautions must be taken not only to protect operations from exposure to enemy forces, but also to conceal these activities from the American public in general. The knowledge that the agency is engaging in unethical and illicit activities would have serious repercussions in political and diplomatic circles, and would be detrimental to the accomplishment of its mission. 1954 now, Aldous Huxley, going back to the very beginning of the episode, publishes The Doors of Perception in which he documents his own experience on Mescaline.

The book becomes a sort of Bible for fans of psychedelics, still widely read today. One of the most famous quotes from the book is, I went in search of, not of myself, and not for any god, and nor for the East Asian Buddha, but rather, I searched for the ultimate being, the being of which all the songs sing, the final output, and the great algorithm of the human computer, the one who could free mankind from the chains that weighed down its soul. Wow. 1956, the term psychedelic, coined by psychiatrist Humphrey Osmond to describe the effects of hallucinogenic drugs within the context of psychotherapy. 1957, the term magic mushroom first enters the English lexicon

after an article titled Seeking the Magic Mushroom by Gordon Wasson published in Life magazine. In the article, Wasson, who was at the time one of the vice presidents of JP Morgan & Co, wrote about spending the last four summers in Mexico to, quote, participate in the age-old rituals of Indians who chew growths that produce visions. In the opening of his article, Wasson wrote, On the night of June 29 to the 30th, 1955, in a Mexican Indian village so remote from the world that most of the people still speak no Spanish. My friend Alan Richardson and I shared with a family of Indian friends a celebration of

Holy Communion, where divine mushrooms were first adored and then consumed. The Indians mingled Christian and pre-Christian elements in their religious practices, in a way disconcerting for Christians but natural for them. The rite was led by two women, mother and daughter, both of them curanderas or shamans. The proceedings went on in the mexteco language. The mushrooms were of a species with hallucinogenic powers, that is, they caused the eater to see visions. We chewed and swallowed these acrid mushrooms, saw visions, and emerged from the experience awestruck. swallow these acrid mushrooms, saw visions, and emerged from the experience awestruck. We had come from afar to attend a mushroom rite, but had expected nothing so staggering

as the virtuosity of the performing curanderas and the astonishing effects of the mushrooms. Richardson and I were the first white men in recorded history to eat the divine mushrooms which for centuries have been a secret of certain Indian peoples living far from the great world in southern Mexico. No anthropologist had ever described the scene that we witnessed. Love how proud he was of being one of the first white dudes to do this. Also, how fucking fun and exciting to try that mystical mushroom without really knowing what it's going to do to you and then just having your mind blown. From 1960 to 1962, researchers and psychologist Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert, another psychedelic dick,

lead the Harvard Psilocybin Project at Harvard University. It was a short-lived project. The students were eventually forced to cease their research after the Harvard Center for Research and Personality complained the project lacked legitimacy and was a safety concern for both the researchers and others at the university. Both Leary and Alpert were invested in self-discovery through psychedelics and were outspoken about their benefits. Because of that, their research included both academically sound pursuits and their own trips. Before they were axed, Leary and Alpert, along with the board of seven other students,

graduate students, and a professor, carried out two pretty significant experiments. The first was the Concord Prison Experiment, not to be confused with the Stanford Prison Experiment that we've covered. Shockingly, of these two, it was the one that gave prisoners psychedelics that was more ethical. Larry and Alpert's experiment was conducted at the Maximum Security Concord State Prison in Massachusetts, where 32 prisoners were administered psilocybin. The goal of the experiment was to see if the shrooms would help the prisoners along with

group psychotherapy sessions avoid relapsing into antisocial behavior. The study found that although 64% of the test group was initially predicted to return to prison within six months of being let out on parole, only 25% ended up back behind bars. Other studies with psychedelics in years since have revealed that regular users of psychedelics are far less likely to commit violent and property theft crimes than non-users. November 22, 1963 mere hours after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, all this Huxley dies of laryngeal cancer. On his deathbed, he's no longer able to speak, so he writes his final wish down on a piece of paper for his wife Laura, and it read, LSD 100 micrograms intramuscular. Intramuscular by the way means injecting the substance directly into the muscle with a syringe.

Laura obliged and wrote a detailed and pretty fucking moving account of his death to Aldis's brother Julian Huxley and his wife Juliet. In the letter she describes how prior to taking the LSD on the day he died, her husband was unable to accept or recognize his impending fate. It was too painful. She wrote that after Aldis handed her his request, she knew with conviction it was something she had to do for him, no matter what. After informing the in-house doctor of her plans, who responded by saying, what's the difference, Laura prepared a syringe of 100 hundred micrograms of LSD

and went to her husband's bedside. I love that they just had a bunch of LSD laying around by the way. The doctor who had accompanied her into the room asked Laura if she wanted him to do the injection, given that her hands were shaking. According to her letter, Laura responded by saying, no, I must do this.

I quieted myself and when I gave him the shot, my hands were very firm. Then somehow a great relief came to us both. Then we were quiet. I just sat there without speaking for a while. Aldous was not so agitated physically. He seemed somehow I felt he knew. We both knew what we were doing. And this has always been a great relief to Aldous.

I have seen him at times during his illness very upset until he knew what he was going to do. Then even if it was an operation or x-ray he would make a total change. This enormous feeling of relief would come to him and he wouldn't be worried at all about it. He would say let's do it and we would go to it and he was like a liberated man. And now I had the same feeling. A decision had been made. He made the decision again very quickly. Suddenly he had accepted the fact of death. He had taken this medicine in which he believed. In addition to soothing his anxiety, helping him emotionally prepare for death, the LSD also reportedly took away some of the harshness

of the physical process of dying. When Alda started displaying signs that death was a mere few hours away, Laura administered another 100 micrograms LSD to her husband. She then sat by his bedside until his heart stopped beating, repeating the phrases, Easy, easy, and you are doing this willingly, and consciously, and beautifully, going forward and up, light and free, forward and up, towards the light, into the light, into complete love.

Whew! Man, teared up reading that the first time and every other time. That's so beautiful. And what a privilege to die like that with your love at your side, soothing you, and a beautiful drug taking the fear out of the final adventure we all take, at least in this body. We should all be so lucky. In her letter she continued by writing that eventually Aldous' breathing became slower and slower and there was absolutely not the slightest indication of contraction of struggle. It was just that the breathing became slower and slower and slower and at 520 the breathing stopped. I had been warned

in the morning that there might be some upsetting convulsions towards the end or some sort of contraction of the lungs and noises. People have been trying to prepare me for some horrible physical reaction that would probably occur. None of this happened. Actually, the ceasing of the breathing was not a drama at all, because it was done so slowly, so gently, like a piece of music. I had the feeling actually that the last hour of breathing was only the conditioned reflex of the body that had been used to doing this for 69 years, millions and millions of times. There was not the feeling reflex of the body that had been used to doing this for 69 years millions and millions of times. There was not the feeling that with the last breath the spirit left. It had just been gently leaving for the last four hours. In the room the last four hours were five people.

These five people all said that this was the most serene, the most beautiful death. Both doctors and the nurse said they had never seen a person in similar physical condition going off so completely without pain and without struggle. Whew! Also teared up reading that passage. I mean, again, what a beautiful poetic death. March 31st, 1961. The Single Convention on Narcotics Drugs is signed by the United Nations in Manhattan, New York City. Thus establishing the International Narcotics Control Board, this unofficially marks the beginning of the end for psychedelic research in the US.

At least legal research. Around the world, psychedelics are garnering a reputation, but not for the reasons they used to. Two decades earlier, they had been heralded by scientific communities as a potential miracle drug for psychiatry. By the time the 60s rolled around, many researchers and academics still believed in their potential for immense good. However, as psychedelics became more widespread in the US people started using them not as a treatment for depression or PTSD but as a recreational activity or a form of spiritual development. Although this scared the shit out of people at the time, as we well established by now using

psychedelics for non-clinical or scientific purposes is not anything new for humankind. It's only new for non-indigenous peoples in the modern era. All right, the way in the 1960s outside of scientific communities, the rhetoric surrounding psychedelics escalated from weariness, weariness, and apprehension to full-fledged terror. In the eyes of the public, psychedelics had morphed from potential saving grace for those suffering from incurable diseases into the enemy of cultural values and a destroyer of children.

Those hippies in the counterculture revolution started dropping acid and waking up to how corrupt the American government was in so many ways. Young men didn't want to be cannon fodder for the military industrial complex in an unwinnable war in Southeast Asia. Young women didn't want to be unshackled, right, from a Judeo, or they didn't want young women to be unshackled from a Judeo-Christian patriarchy that had zero interest in seeing them as intellectual equals. More and more minorities were willing to protest and fight

for the right to finally be seen as equals. And all this shit and shit like it scared the hell out of Richard Nixon and many like him on Capitol Hill and elsewhere around America. And how much of that cultural awakening can be traced back to new hallucinogens like LSD? Probably quite a bit. LSD first leaked out to the general public thanks to MK Ultra agents, early researchers like Timothy Leary and Humphrey Osmond sharing it with colleagues and friends in the early 60s. Shrooms after being discovered in Mexico leaked into the counterculture population as well. MDMA shows up on the counterculture scene in 1970.

DMT called a business trip back then due to its short hallucinogenic duration, also showed up in the counterculture. Mescaline left Mexico in reservations in the 1950s and 1960s and showed up in the counterculture. And all that shit, you know, being record actually used in America for the first time in the 50s, 60s, and early 70s really affected the counterculture. I don't think that that huge counterculture shift happening at that same time is a coincidence. And now there is the most interest in psychedelics since the 1960s. So I wonder what major cultural shift might be coming.

I think it's already started. I think it's shown up in a push for like a better work-life balance than in decades past for starters More more people wanted to work and save for the future. Yes, but also enjoy the here and now more. That's a good thing But anyway, this counterculture movement, you know It's scares people gets mixed in with psychedelics amidst global backlash and probably a million outraged fucking Karens knocking on their preferable doors every night Every day in August of 1965 Sandos decides to stop manufacturing both LSD and psilocybin. Despite its ever-increasing opposition, psychedelics still retained thousands of supporters, many of whom continued to be vocal about the value of hallucinogenics in both personal and professional pursuits,

but it wasn't enough. One outspoken advocate was an anthropologist named Dr. Alan Colt. At the 1966 meeting of the American Anthropological Association in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Dr. Colt held a session on how LSD is incredibly useful not only as a means to explore our own subconsciousness but as a necessary tool in the study of anthropology. According to the November 1966 issue of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, during his talk Dr. Colt said to the audience, the anthropologist's first field trip should not be to Africa or South America or Japan, but into the hidden primitive layers of his own mind.

Dr. Colt claimed that under the influence of LSD, he had come to comprehend the history of mankind in new and spectacular ways, and he urged his fellow anthropologists to do the same. After taking LSD upwards of 70 times, the anthropologist also said, now we had a better understanding of how humans in ages past perceived our world in their own lives, as well as the origins of ancient myths that have evaded modern researchers. According to the article, under psychedelic drugs, he said, he has come to think of man as a composite of all the animals that form his evolutionary background, much like a totem pole. He said his experiences have led him to believe the differences in people's cultural styles are based on the manifestation of the styles of one or another of the animals within us.

Sounds like a conclusion you would come to after going on 70 acid trips, but also might be the correct conclusion. By making these claims, Dr. Colt caused quite a stir both within the field of anthropology and the general population. He was ridiculed, he was reviled, promptly exiled from many academic circles and labeled a madman. The psychedelic taking anthropologist died from hepatitis, a complication brought on by treatments of his cancer of the lymphatic system three years after his infamous speech at the conference in Pittsburgh during which at one point he said to the crowd, I have

not seen God but I have seen what man believes to be God." Interesting. Very interesting. 1971, President Nixon officially declares the war on drugs, proclaims drug abuse to be public enemy number one. That motherfucker. May 1st of that year, Nixon signs the Controlled Substances Act, effectively criminalizing not only the recreational use of psychedelics like LSD and psilocybin, but legitimate scientific research into them as well.

Such a fucking stupid decision. A decision not based on public safety, but a politically motivated one. Hippies didn't vote for Nixon. Hippies did drugs. This was a good way to punish them, help bring them to heel, also, you know, make his base happy, put him in prison if they won't vote the right way. The Controlled Substance Act designates existing regulated substances into five categories, with those subject to the most severe restrictions in Section 1 and those that require the least restrictions in Section 5. These categories are called schedules, and Schedule 1 contains all regulated substances found to have, quote, a high potential for abuse, a no currently accepted medical use in the United States, and a lack of accepted safety for use under medical supervision.

In addition to all psychedelics DMT, LSD, mescaline, MDMA, psilocybin, more schedule one also is drugs like heroin, methamphetamine, and fentanyl. You know, because you know, shrooms, molly, same shit as meth and fentanyl. Makes a lot of sense. Good thing we have so many wise leaders looking out for his dumb plebs. In addition to mandating more severe prison sentences for those found guilty of drug-related crimes, Nixon also allocated massive portions of federal funding towards drug control agencies and initiatives. And that led to shit like LeVon Dumont, free-spirited Santa Cruz teenager whose principal passion was the Grateful Dead, who was on his way to a dead concert on September 14th, 1989 when he was stopped by an undercover agent at the Milwaukee airport to go into prison for a long time.

They found three grams of LSD on him and he was put in prison for over 15 years. Serial pedophiles often get shorter sentences. Same year that Nixon cracked down on drugs, the global authorities also started to implement stricter policies in regards to drug use. On February 21st, 1971, the Convention of Psychotropic Substances is signed by the United Nations in Vienna, Austria. In 1972, the illegal human experiment program MKUltra shut down. In the end, Gottlieb concluded that the entire program had been useless. 1973, Nixon adds another force to his arsenal the DEA, aka the Drug Enforcement Administration. In its inception, the DEA was comprised of only 1,470 agents, had a budget of 75 million. Now the agency

employs over 10,000 people, working as special agents, forensic scientists, intelligence research specialists, diversion investigators, and more across America and the world. Currently the DEA has 222 field offices in 23 domestic field divisions, as well as 90 foreign offices in 70 different countries. December 21, 1988, the United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotics, Drugs, and Psychotropic Substances is signed in Vienna, Austria. More people worldwide will go to prison for dealing and or using psychedelics.

1996, the Anti-Drug Abuse Act passed by Congress ensuring a minimum prison sentence for certain types of drug-related offenses. The act both exacerbated the rampant fear of drugs through the nation and made it easier for the court system to incarcerate non-violent offenders. While in 1980, there were 50,000 people incarcerated in the US for nonviolent drug-related charges, by 1997 the number had grown to a record 400,000. Currently, roughly 350,000 US citizens are incarcerated for nonviolent drug-related charges. January 16, 2006.

A celebration with over 2,000 scientists, artists, and enthusiasts gather in Basel, Switzerland to celebrate the 100th birthday of Albert Hofmann. Mr. LSD! a celebration with over 2,000 scientists, artists, and enthusiasts gathered in Basel, Switzerland to celebrate the 100th birthday of Albert Hofmann. Mr. LSD, the man himself who lived for another two years was in attendance and gave a speech. During it, he said, LSD wanted to tell me something. It gave me an inner joy, an open-mindedness, a gratefulness, open eyes, and an internal sensitivity for the miracles of creation. When you study natural science for the miracles of creation.

When you study natural science and the miracles of creation, if you don't turn into a mystic, you are not a natural scientist. I think that in human evolution, it has never been as necessary to have this substance. It is just a tool to turn us into what we are supposed to be." How beautiful. It's a tool to turn us into what we're supposed to be. How beautiful. It's a tool to turn us into what we're supposed to be. Around the same time, the second wave of psychedelic research had begun in the US after a three-decade enforced hiatus. One of the earliest

modern studies took place in 2006, was published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry. The intention of the experiment was to discern how if psychedelic drugs have the power to relieve symptoms of obsessive compulsive disorder and to investigate the safety, toler tolerability and clinical effects of psilocybin in patients with OCD. The study found that 100% of the subjects experienced a decrease in their OCD symptoms within 24 hours of taking psilocybin. 100%! But it's still illegal and no one I've ever spoken to has a good logical answer as to why.

Started in the early 2010s, North America's interest in ayahuasca ceremonies begins to accelerate. Mark Hay describes the phenomenon in his article, The Colonization of the Ayahuasca Experience, which we read from a bit earlier, like so. Non-traditional use or the use of ayahuasca by non-indigenous groups continues to increase in Western countries. Non-traditional use of ayahuasca is also increasing in South American countries through ethogen tourism, in which tourists travel to foreign countries to use psychoactive substances in religious or spiritual contexts. However, some tourists, who are primarily driven by curiosity or desire for adventure, travel to South America to simply use ayahuasca with little interest in the religious or cultural

aspects of the hallucinogenic tea. As the use of ayahuasca continues to increase amongst non-indigenous individuals, significant questions arise regarding the differences between traditional and non-traditional uses and regarding the importance of spiritual contexts in reaping the benefits of ayahuasca use." I mean, I'm in favor of just spiritual and non-spiritual use, but you know, to each their own, I guess. 2011, another major study in psychedelic research takes place.

The goal of the study was to assess the effect of a single dose of psilocybin on symptoms of depression experienced by people with a life-threatening cancer. The study found that the shrooms had both immediate and enduring antidepressant effects on patients. This is the John Hopkins study I referenced earlier where the results were published in 2016. 2014 landmark study on the positive effects of psychedelic drugs on people with life-threatening diseases similar to the 2011 experiment takes place. However, in this study the drug being administered to subjects was a low dose of LSD. The goal was to see if it

had any effect on patients levels of anxiety. The results of the study indicated that when administered safely in a methodologically rigorous medically supervised psychotherapeutic setting, LSD can reduce anxiety suggesting that larger controlled studies are warranted. 2015. A study out of the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center in partnership with the Department of Philosophy and Human Sciences at the University of Santa Cruz in Brazil investigates the effect of psilocybin on those struggling with alcohol addiction. Although medical experiments involving magic mushrooms had taken place prior, this was the first clinical study to specifically look at this

psychedelic in relation to alcoholism. In the end the researchers found that after being administered the drug just once in a therapeutic environment, just once, all participants experienced a steep decrease in drinking behavior, if not complete abstinence from drinking for up to nine months. In 2016, multiple studies took place that proved the psychiatric benefits of hallucinogenic drugs. One study found that after a single dose of ayahuasca, subjects with major depressive disorder experienced a decrease in symptoms for up to three weeks. Another concluded that after a single dose of psilocybin subjects with treatment

resistant major depressive disorder, which means the symptoms of depression are not affected by antidepressants or other forms of treatment, experienced a sharp decrease in symptoms for up to six months. Similar study reinforced those results and found that after one dose of magic mushrooms, subjects experienced significant decreases in anxiety for up to seven weeks. In 2020, Oregon became the first state to decriminalize psilocybin and legalize its use in therapeutic treatment. In 2022, Colorado legalized the consumption, growth, and sharing of psilocybin. Colorado now one of the first states to have its own division of natural medicine that

will hopefully by the end of this year issue licenses to spaces where psilocybin can be legally consumed. 2023, a California bill that decriminalizes certain psychedelic substances is passed by the Senate. The bill had been introduced by state Senator Scott Weiner one year prior. As of January 1st, 2025, this bill will make, quote, the lawful possession, preparation, obtaining, or transportation of specified quantities of psilocybin, psilocin, DMT, and mescaline for personal use as defined by and with persons 21 years of age or older.

The bill would provide penalties for possession of those substances on school grounds or possession by or transferring to persons under 21 years of age. Making some progress! Hopefully this trend continues and we can return to a time when it's no longer a fucking felony to do shit like go on an incredibly psychologically beneficial mystical spiritual beautiful journey amongst friends in the privacy of one's own home. Hopefully we are all given the legal option to die as beautifully and as peacefully as Aldous Huxley. Now let's get out of this timeline. Good job soldier. You've made it back. Barely.

Psychedelics. I know this is a big episode. I could have made it twice as long. I had to work hard to cut myself off going down more side roads. If you're not really a psychonaut, I bet you just learned a lot. And if you are, I bet you still learned a lot. I definitely did. You know, these things, they're not just drugs to fuck around with and see how different Pink Floyd's The Wall hits. They're medicine. Powerful, powerful spiritual medicine. And they were made illegal over 50 years ago by politicians who had no fucking clue what this shit

was about. No idea. And there should be a plan in place right now to legalize them again. Depression, anxiety, PTSD, alcohol addiction, opioid addiction, psychologically overcoming past trauma, overcoming fear of death, and terminally ill patients, and on and on and on and on. We don't know how much good these wonderful chemical compounds can do because research has been so scarce due to them being illogically demonized and made illegal for decades. Why are they demonized? So I think largely because it is in our nature to crave control and when you're under the influence of a powerful hallucinogen,

you have very little control. And that scares the shit out of a lot of people. And people fear, right? They don't understand it. They fear what they don't understand. And they demonize it. You know, because it's not like being drunk. It's not like being high on coke.

You know, you're not just drunk or high. Your mind has been turned inside out. And you might end up being changed forever by just a single trip. So powerful and I find that power wonderfully exciting but a lot of others find it absolutely terrifying and to those people well I think they need to trip more than the rest of us well guess what you don't have to fucking do it if it's legalized. You can still be a dork but the rest of us who want to explore the mystical and I think miraculous world of psychedelics, we shouldn't have to worry about legal consequences brought about by your ignorance. It's asinine. Also, kind

of fucked with your trip to worry about getting arrested. Let the people trip and trip safely. Last thing before the takeaways, if you are going to use psychedelics, do so responsibly. Have a trip guide, sober friend, ideally someone who's tripped before to be with you to watch over you. And since it's not legal and you can't buy it from the equivalent of a dispensary where you can trust the potency and purity of the product, go to someplace like dancesafe.org. That's dancesafe.org. Order some fentanyl test strips. You can also order regent test kits, which will test your drug to make sure it is the drug you think it is. Other companies also sell these kits and similar test strips. Be safe and also have a fucking blast. Try and put yourself in a calm relaxed happy

state before you start your trip. Psychedelics are powerful mood accelerants. Put on some music you love. Be in a place you feel safe., surround yourself with good people, enjoy the fuck out of exploring the mysteries of your own mind and the cosmos. And if you ever smoke a little toad venom, I hope it fills your heart with as much love as it once filled mine. Hail Nimrod, you beautiful bastards. Number one, psychedelics have been around a long, long, long time. Way before the Beatles and Jimi Hendrix and Lindsay Lohan and Mike Tyson were around to advocate for them.

Some of the first people to use psychedelic plants were Native North Americans and the indigenous first peoples of the Amazon dating all the way back to 3780 BC or possibly much further back than that. Number two, psychedelics occur both naturally in living organisms like mushrooms, cacti, and even in human beings or can be synthetically created in a lab. The most influential synthetic psychedelic is arguably LSD, discovered in 1943 by Swiss chemist and bicycle rider, but not that bicycle, those you know, Albert Hoffman. Well, he probably did ride that bicycle too. Number three, while research into the medicinal and psychological benefits of LSD has been

increasing recently in the US, it's not the first time science has taken an interest in hallucinogenics. From the 1930s to the 1960s, psychedelics, thought to be the next frontier in medicine, experiments testing substances like LSD, psilocybin, mescaline as potential treatments for alcoholism, depression, schizophrenia, and anxiety were rife in the US and their findings incredibly promising. However, their work was halted in 1966 when their use in any setting was suddenly on the road towards being outlawed. Number four, during the golden age of psychedelic research in the mid 20th century amidst the altruistic experiments that sought a greater good for humanity, illegal human experiments were being conducted by Nazi

Germany and the US government. No matter how good something is, there's always at least a few cocksuckers out there who will turn it into something terrible. Number five, new info, I didn't forget to talk about ibogaine, like promised. Ibogaine is found in the roots of the aboka plant, which is native to central Africa and has been used for millennia during shamanistic rituals. We don't even know how long it's been used. Identified by French explorers in the early 1900s for the west and then it came to the U.S. in 1960s and became marginalized in the mid 1990s after adverse outcomes halted federally funded human trials. Since then legal ibogaine treatment clinics

have been established only in countries without use restrictions. Currently, Ibogaine treatment is only legal in Mexico and New Zealand. It's classified as a Schedule I controlled substance in the U.S. It has always been far, far less popular than other psychedelics on this continent, but in both the 19th and 20th centuries, doctors in Europe and the U.S. experiment with its use in treating a variety of ailments. It is more dangerous than most psychedelics for those people who have heart problems. Ibogaine has known cardiac risks, it reduces heart rate,

and when combined with other medications can cause arrhythmias. It's important to be under continuous cardiac supervision while on this medication. Ibogaine also might be the most powerful hallucinogen on earth when it comes to intensity of visual hallucinations combined with duration. Harder to find testimony from people who tripped on it but allegedly you can trip for up to 36 hours straight on a heavy dose. It's fucking insane. In a New Jersey suburb of 1962 a 19 year old recreational drug enthusiast named Howard Lotsoff laid hands on 500 milligrams of powdered aboga root. Ibogaine. At first, Lotsoff had no desire to spend a day in a half hallucinating,

so he gave the dose to a friend. A month later, his friend calls in the middle of the night, tells him the drug is revolutionary. They have to tell Congress. Lotsoff decided he had to try it himself. His first experience with the drug was unlike anything he'd ever done. There were endless hours of weird visions, a pulsating yellow screwdriver, dancing Neanderthals, rolling a giant stone heart. He witnessed his own birth in reverse, plunging back into his mom's womb from a diving board. Holy shit. When it was over, he stepped out into the sunlight and he noticed something odd.

Lotsop was addicted to heroin, but after tripping on Ib Ibogaine he felt no withdrawal, no cravings. As he later told a friend who published lots of story as a book, for the first time in months I did not want or need to go cop heroin. He was stunned. I looked down at the street, at the trees, the sky, my house and realized that for the first time in my life I didn't feel afraid. He distributed the drug to 19 friends, seven of whom were also addicted to heroin. 5 of the 7 reported that their symptoms of dependence evaporated immediately for up to 6 months after one dose of Ibogaine. Currently, many are viewing Ibogaine as a miracle cure for opioid addiction. In a Mexican Ibogaine clinic in 2022, a woman got Ibogaine treatment in a hospital bed.

She took 3 Ibogaine pills and tripped for over 24 hours. When it initially kicked in she found herself unable to move her body from the neck down. A buzzing grew louder in her eardrums. Just when she thought she couldn't take it anymore it stopped and visuals began. For the next 22 hours Smith relieved relived a series of events that had left her that had led to her excuse me my god to a treatment clinic just south of Tijuana, including being ejected from a truck years prior. I've heard this in many stories about Ibogaine, like you deal with the toughest shit in your life. It

just forces you to deal with these memories. That was an accident that left her with a crushed skull and a prescription for opioids that she became addicted to for almost 20 years. She said afterwards, her trip of her trip, it was horrific. It was the worst thing in the world what I saw. Behind closed eyelids, she witnessed wires in her brain being ripped apart, singed, pieced back together like a puzzle. Under the watch of a nurse who kept an eye on her vital, Smith's body would shoot straight up in bed,

then flop back down, then dart up again, back down, over and over. She spent five weeks at the clinic, many, many trips, then returned to Arizona, no longer addicted to opioids. One of many such stories. It also has been anecdotally incredibly effective, maybe the most effective of any substance in treating PTSD. What if the secret to ending America's opioid crisis? What if the best way to attack America's homeless epidemic lies in legalizing and further researching powerful psychedelics. Time Suck Top 5 Takeaways Let the people trip! What psychedelics are and where they come from has been sucked.

Thank you to the Bad Magic Productions team for all the help in making Time Suck such as Queen of Bad Magic Lindsay Cummins running operations around here, Logan Keith recording this episode and designing merch for the store you can find at badmagicproductions.com and Molly Jean Box again providing initial research this week. Also thanks to the all-seen eyes moderating the Culturally Curious private Facebook page, the Mod Squad making sure Discord keeps running smooth and everyone over on the Time Suck subreddit and Bad Magic subreddit. Now let's head on over to this week's Time Sucker updates.

Updates. Get your Time Sucker updates. Let's start things off with some inspiration from Super Sucker and Super Duper Dad, Kevin Chitwood, who writes in with the subject line of Colonel Sanders is my spirit animal. Hey Dan, I started off as a big fan of your comedy but just recently became addicted to the suckers. I work by myself all day and consume one to two episodes daily. I know I have a lot of catching up to do but that's okay. Anyway I found the Colonel Sanders episode especially inspiring. After spending almost 20 years in banking and manufacturing I finally broke free of the cubicle and started my

own custom woodworking business. At 49 years old, I've had many instances of self-doubt and wondering if I'm too old to build this business into something substantial. After hearing the many setbacks that Harland Sanders faced and the fact that KFC wasn't started until he was in his 60s, I put all those negative emotions away. I now get to work with my hands making beautiful creations. My office is my backyard and some days I just stop, look around and think how lucky I am. I get to be a much bigger part of my nine-year-old daughter's life and even though I'm not getting rich time with her is more valuable than any position or salary I've ever had before.

So thank you for covering the Colonel. I hope to catch a live show someday keep up the great content solid three out of five stars keep on sucking Kevin. Well Kevin what a truly wonderful message. So happy to read it. You still have plenty of time to turn what you're doing into what you want it to be. You got passion for the work that you're doing and you have 20 years of experience in banking and manufacturing that didn't go away. I'm sure you learned all kinds of lessons that are very applicable to what you're doing now. I'm rooting for you truly you sound like a great man and a

great dad and the world can always use more great dads. Hail Nimrod and fucking stay after it. And now Marvelous Meat Sack Matt Bird writes in with a subject line that certainly got my attention. Santa would beat Gwen's ass. Matt explains. What up master sucker? In the latest episode of Time Suck you mentioned Gwen Shamblin preached that God the Son created by and subordinate to God the Father. This idea was not original to her and is known as the Arian Heresy. Not because of anything having to do with Nazis, but named after Arius, an early Christian bishop who argued for that interpretation at the First Council of Nicaea,

which was called by Emperor Constantine in 325 CE to standardize church doctrine. Arius's argument angered another bishop in attendance so much that Saint Nicholas, yes, that Saint Nick slapped Arius across the middle of the face in his argument. Why is it one grown man slapping another grown man in the face at a meeting so fucking funny to me? It was quite the scandal and resulted in Nicholas being defrocked and imprisoned only later be freed by divine intervention before being reinstated to the cloth. Not to go on too much of a tangent but other miracles attributed to Nicholas made him a saint who could intercede on behalf of children, eventually becoming one of the Christmas gift-giving figures that was amalgamated into

Santa Claus. I doubt Gwen was the type of person to leave out milk and cookies for the jolly old elf on Christmas Eve. Yeah, I doubt it. I doubt she left out milk and cookies for fucking anyone ever. But that's not the only reason Santa would beat her ass. Just thought you'd be interested in this historic tidbit, keep on sucking, spaces are mad. Well thank you Matt. Yeah, I love that little bit of history. Love hearing about Santa having a reason to beat Gwen's bobblehead ass. If she were still around, of course. Now another message from another kid loving sucker. Kid loving in a good way.

Trevor Pitney who also writes in about last week's suck with the subject line of, children disobey your parents. Dear Lord of the suck, I've been listening to the podcast for about a year now. A perfect three and a half, three out of five stars for sure. And I finally decided that I needed to write in. I am nearly 25. I am a devout Christian and have been brought up in the church my entire life. I don't always agree with your opinions, especially on religion. That's fair. But I appreciate your openness to it and your righteous anger towards so many utterly despicable things that you discussed on the podcast.

This update is being prompted just after completing listening to the newest episode on Getting Thin to make it into heaven. There was a point in the episode where you're talking about how there should be a carve out of sorts for kids when their parents are utterly trash or abusive. As I was raised in the Southern Baptist Church, I was told the verse that spawned that idea many, many times. It's Ephesians chapter 6 verses 2 to 3. The verse is where many people in the church, that verse is where many people in the church

like to stop reading. Whereas the chapter goes on in the very next verse to mention the carve-outs that you were saying should exist. Fathers, do not exasperate your children, instead bringing them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. It is frequently lost on many leaders of the church that they are to treat their children kindly as in the fruits of the Spirit that you quoted shortly after in the episode, just as much as children are to listen to their parents. I know this is probably more info than you were looking for, but I found it amusing that you would pursue an opening for

children who are facing abhorrent families and that the opening you were hoping for is most literally the next thing written in the Bible that the cult and many non-cult churches conveniently leave out. Finally, I love the podcast and eagerly await Monday afternoons for the newest episode to drop. I listen to each episode at work and recently begun listening to enough that I'm starting to venture into the backlog to keep me occupied until a new episode releases.

Your curiosity into the world around you and your continued pursuit of new knowledge and ideas is something that I admire so much and something that I hope I can imitate as I continue to grow up and grow older. I wish I had found this podcast many years ago. Signed a fellow time sucker and lover of all knowledge, Trevor P. Trevor before I have notes about what I was going to say. Oh, actually, that's more than I want to say something about brain elasticity. PS, if you do read this on any

future installments of Time Sucker Updates, please say hi to my wife Hannah, whom I introduced to this podcast with the amazingly strong start of the dolphin point experiments while we were only engaged. She stuck with me after I cackled at the continued absurdity of the episode and so I know she will stick with me through it all." Trevor, that's awesome. That was not too much info. And yes, when you talk about wanting to keep learning, that actually is another benefit of psychedelics.

They've done studies in brain basically elasticity. As far as like when you're younger, it's easier to learn things. Well they have found through studies with LSD psilocybin I believe others I'm just pulling this out of my out of my memory right now that you're the way your brain acts and the way that cells are kind of generated and connections you know are occurring goes can go back to that elasticity that normally you would be done with like normally your mind would be more cemented but with certain psychedelic usage it's opened up again like when you were younger. So you actually can stay open-minded and

curious your whole life. Not that you have to use that to do it but it does help. Yeah, Trevor that was great. I didn't know that the very next verse said what I was saying. Feel a little embarrassed? That is that's good for me to know. Obviously I'm not religious, but I do believe that there's a lot of religious teachings that are wonderful. And now I have another good biblical lesson to ponder. Yes, hello Hannah. If you can handle that LSD enhanced dolphin suck nonsense, I'm sure you can handle just about any of this. And you know, you're gonna be along for the ride with your man for a long, long time, Trevor.

I hope you both stay curious and thanks for writing in. And now a quick silly one from a dick loving sack, Alison Williams, who writes in with the subject line of dick quota. Good morning, Dan and crew. I just wanted to send an email in for Dan to use if he needed a dick for an episode lacking one. I know we already had one, but I wanted to share this anyway. I work at a John Deere dealership. I deal with a lot of interesting people and names. Today I had a gentleman call in whose name is Richard Little.

Poor guy. Now my coworkers and I are making little dick jokes. It is fantastic. If you do use this in an episode, could you please give a shout out to my awesome husband Liam and his best friend Caden who got us into Time Stuck back in 2019. They are both great guys who work hard and have amazing senses of dark humor three out of five stars Allison Williams Allison oh man dick little what a name you and your co-workers far from the only people who have joked about his name I hope he's a cool guy now it's suck to be

named dick little and be a douche I also hope he has a nice girthy long but not too long schlong. I mean Dick Little and a micropene that's a cruel fate. Unless he's a serial killer. If he is it'd be very fun to cover a micropene serial killer named Dick Little. Anyway thank you for listening. Shout out to your awesome husband Liam. Love that name and shout out to Kayden as well and that's it for today. awesome husband Liam. Love that name and shout out to Kayden as well and that's it for today. Thanks time suckers. I needed that. We all did. Thank you for listening to another Bad Magic Productions podcast. Scared to death time suck each week. Short sucks nightmare fuel on time suck and scared to death podcast feeds some weeks. Please do not take 550 hits of acid

this week or the equivalent. I love acid. That's fucking too much. Way too much. Just take like one, two hits and then turn off this podcast. Listen to something calmer. I'll be here when you return and then you can keep on sucking. One last quick personal story about psychedelics. Last November I had to help host, well I didn't have to. I hosted Lindsay's 40th birthday party and I actually do not love to host parties. And I was worried about not appearing happy and upbeat enough, you know, not like giving people the greetings they wanted.

So what did I do? I took some molly and I knocked that shit out of the park. My mom and grandma Betty have never gotten so many hugs from me in a four hour period. Everyone got hugs and compliments. And my grandma had a very soft sweater, uh, what she was wearing. And I probably rubbed her back more that evening than I had the entirety of my life combined before that night. And she never complained. She had a great time. Everybody did. So drugs.

They don't just ruin lives. Sometimes they also help grandmas get more hugs and back rubs.