First criminalization of MDMA was itself
illegal.
We can sell the drug, we can make all
this money, and we can use that to sue
the DEA. [music] We taxed the ecstasy
dealers. They donated 20,000 pills and
they gave me 19,000 at $3 a dose when it
was selling for like $8 a dose. Then we
distributed all that. It was still legal
and then we made all this money and then
we used that to make legal MDMA and to
make 28-day toxicity studies in the dog
and the rat and to help support all the
effort to challenge the DEA.
>> Rick Doblin has spent 50 years fighting
[music] to turn the world's most
demonized drugs into medicine and his
story is truly remarkable. [music] He
taxed legal ecstasy dealers to fund the
first MDMA toxicity studies. He sued the
DEA with the drug profits from the MDMA
and got a Harvard PhD in public policy
to beat the system from [music] within.
He founded MAPS in 1986, a nonprofit,
but 35 years [music] later ran the only
two completed phase three MDMA plus
therapy as treatment for severe PTSD
trials in history, [music]
both published in Nature Medicine with
staggering effect sizes of Actually,
I'll just let Rick explain.
>> What we showed is that 32% of the people
who had therapy without any MDMA
at the two-month follow-up no longer had
PTSD. But when you add MDMA, now it's
2/3 no longer had PTSD. It's twice as
good.
And another 21% [music]
have what is called clinically
significant reductions of PTSD. Means
that their symptoms have reduced,
[music] their life is better, but they
still have PTSD.
So we had 88% responders and only 12%
non-responders. And the effect size was
large, very large effect size. The The
effect sizes for the SSRIs
are very small. They're barely
effective, but the effect sizes for
psychedelics are very large. The VA
spent 6 years, they
tested about 914 veterans with either
cognitive processing therapy or
prolonged exposure.
And what they showed was shocking, which
was half the people dropped out of the
study
because the therapy was too
re-traumatizing.
Right. It's like telling about your
worst trauma over and over and over. So
we had hardly any dropouts.
MDMA helps people process trauma. They
don't feel overwhelmed. They feel they
can progress. People [music] like the
therapy, and so it's it's going to be a
massive contribution to the [music]
reduction of PTSD, depression, and other
things in America once it becomes a
prescription medicine.
>> All of those numbers are just so
convincing. So that's why it just does
not make sense to [music] me how that
data doesn't automatically get something
approved and fast-tracked on medication.
>> Okay, here here's where I think you're
Yeah, here's I can explain.
>> [music]
>> Rick Doblin, you have a truly remarkable
story. For the listener at home who
might not be familiar, what's the most
important context for them to understand
you and what you've been trying to
achieve? Where does that story really
start?
>> Um
Well, I would say the story starts where
um
I won the generational lottery.
And what I mean by that is that I was um
just recently looking into my family um
history and back generations.
And so um on my father's side my um
great-great-grandfather
was in Poland and an illiterate laborer.
My great-grandfather
was a tailor. My grandfather was a
teacher and he left Poland in 1920
and came to America penniless and was
very poor. And um
his brother came later. His sister who
was left behind in Poland was
and her whole family were killed by the
Nazis.
Um my
dad was a doctor.
My mother's family was well-off.
And so I was born in 1953 right after
the Holocaust. Shortly after the end of
World War II and my parents said that
they would help me do whatever I wanted
to do
in in life. That I could and I just
looked at as I was growing up,
you know, uh
the stories you get as a Jewish person
is all the different people that are
trying to kill you and the Jews have
still survived.
But then it was the Cuban Missile
Crisis. Now, the Russians could kill us
and we could be blown up
with um nuclear weapons and then the
Vietnam War. So, I had all this strive,
all this poverty, all this re- refugees,
violence, but I grew up in the height of
American power with all the privileges
to do whatever I wanted. And what I
realized is that it was um sort of this
um mental illness, I would say, that
permits people to dehumanize others, to
project their shadows onto others, that
permits people to um
you know, blame others for their
problems. Um and so I felt that the
psychological problems were the most
important that needed to be solved. And
that's how I started focusing my life on
psychedelics.
Basically in 1972
is when I met with Stan Grof and read
his book about uh Realms of the Human
Unconscious and decided I wanted to
focus my life on psychedelics. And I
went to my parents and I said um I'm
dropping out of college. I was in my
freshman year of college. I want to
study LSD and I want you to pay for it.
And as people should know I was
>> dream, right? Every parent's dream.
>> Yeah, well I'm the oldest of four kids,
too. So I'm the first out of the house
and I'm like flaming out, dropping out
of college, doing drugs and stuff. But
um eventually they said yes.
So I had this support and to and and the
fact that psychedelics was so
criminalized
and the research was shut down all over
the world, it made me want to focus on
it even more.
And so I'll I'll give you this uh
statement E.O. Wilson
was a
a famous scientist at Harvard.
Mostly focused on ants and ant behavior.
But he said the real problem with
humanity
is that we have paleolithic emotions
with medieval institutions
with god-like technologies.
>> Wise.
>> So we really need to accelerate our
emotional and spiritual development to
cope with all of the
uh challenges that humanity faces. And
when I was going through a lot of this
thinking,
um
now this was 1972 that I met Stanislav
Grof, read his work. But earlier before
that, just in the few years, the
um America was sending somebody to the
moon.
And the astronauts were saying some of
the same things, looking back at the
Earth from space.
Um seeing how it's all together, you
don't see the religions, you don't see
the countries. So we need to move to a
sort of global
process of thinking of who we really
are, more than the ways that divide us,
there's more that connects us.
And so I felt that psychedelics are one
of the ways for people to go beyond
their sense of self, to have these unit
of mystical experiences, but you can get
them from
you know, looking at the Earth from
space. You can get them from meditation,
other ways people can get this. But for
me
I thought um for my contribution to the
survival of humanity and survival of
Jews people and
that psychedelics and helping people
process these um
emotions that are often difficult would
be the most important contribution I
could do.
>> Amazing. I'm trying to think what my
parents would say if I was if I was
going to drop out of college and say,
"Look, there's this super interesting
drug. We don't really know what it does
yet. It lasts 12 hours. Sometimes it
makes your plant look like an octopus.
Sometimes you see God. Sometimes you see
geometric patterns, but it's kind of
interesting. I'm excited about it. I
don't really know what it does yet.
There isn't really good research, but
I'm going to drop out of college and I'm
going to devote my life to this. I'm
really curious about what they would
say."
>> Well, I'd say the one thing that that
was
not quite accurate about the way you
described it is there was a lot of good
research in the '50s and '60s.
Psychedelics were the most important
thing in psychiatry for a long time.
There was
hundreds of studies.
And 20,000 or more people were in
psychedelic research with LSD and
psilocybin.
It's just that when the research was
incredibly promising, but the
psychedelics leaked out into being part
of the counterculture.
>> Right.
>> part of the hippies and the anti-war
movement, and that's what got it
criminalized.
But it wasn't because there was no
research. So, when I went to my parents,
I was saying everything basically you
said, but there's been this incredible
research that's been shut down for
political reasons.
And that's what I want to work on. And
my parents were sympathetic with that.
>> Very interesting. I actually wasn't
aware that there was sort of a golden
era of psychedelic research in the '50s
and '60s before sort of the
prohibitionist
policy came in, which banned everything
and made that research very hard to do.
I was under the idea that that we it was
still very much that we really didn't
understand these substances properly. I
mean, you could argue today that we
still don't fully understand them in
lots of different ways, but you know, in
the '50s I thought it was still very
novel to our understanding of how these
things worked.
>> Well, you know, there were no brain
scans at that time.
>> Right.
>> So, there was a lot that we didn't know,
but you know, shamans have used
psychedelics for thousands of years and
they didn't have the need for brain
scans. You can
look at the psychology and of what
psychedelics do in other ways.
So, I think that there was an enormous
interest in psychedelics. The the other
in the '50s and '60s, the other problem
with it
is that the the CIA was using
psychedelics
for mind control.
>> Right.
>> was this whole dark side of trying to
look at the military applications for
psychedelics. Or could you spray a mist
with LSD on the enemy battlefield and
then everybody's tripping and they
can't, you know, fire their guns and
stuff. So, or or how do we,
you know, get secrets from people or
different kind of things. So, there was
this underground of military secret
stuff that was really unethical in a lot
of different ways, but there was also an
enormous amount of research in
psychiatry.
And it was considered to be the most
promising frontier for a new kind of
understanding of the mind for new
healings.
Um,
you know, MAPS Albert Hofmann who
invented LSD and discovered it in 1943
and then in 1959 he was the one that
synthesized psilocybin from a mushroom.
Um,
and he worked for Sandoz Pharmaceuticals
and
he collected all the papers ever written
on LSD and psilocybin. So, the MAPS
website will have in the psychedelic
bibliography, um, if people want to go
look at the old research. There's an
enormous amount of it, but there's also
been a whole lot of renaissance research
in the last 25 years.
So, that's where we
started learning enormous new things as
well.
>> I do a lot of research for every single
guest that I have on the Joint Shoulder.
And since I'm just one person and I can
record six, seven, or eight episodes a
week, I use AI to help with that
research process. But something that
I've learned the hard way is that
ChatGPT and Claude just cannot be
trusted. When it says a paper stated
something, you just never have 100%
confidence that it didn't hallucinate. I
got really stung by this, and it
actually cost me thousands of dollars.
So, let me tell you about this new tool
I found called SciSpace. It's different
because it's built on top of the actual
papers, 280 million of them. When you
ask it a question, it pulls directly
from the source text, and it shows you
exactly which sentence in the paper
backs up that claim. So, you can have
100% confidence. You can check it.
That's what matters when you're dealing
with real science. The feature I like to
use the most is deep review. A topic
that I've been fascinated of
because of a few episodes I've recorded
is Michael Levin and Platonic spaces.
So, type it in, and it runs a full
structured literature review. Finds the
papers relevant, filters them, and
extracts the key data. And it maps out
where the field agrees, and then
crucially where the field doesn't agree.
I just feel a million times better using
a tool like SciSpace because I know that
the claims are grounded in the actual
papers. Use the code and the link in the
description to get 20% off a monthly
plan or 40% off an annual plan. I really
could not recommend them more. Now, back
to the episode.
>> Yeah, I will I will link it all down
below for anyone interested. So, you you
initially get interested in LSD, but
your story for people who do know you is
really centered around MDMA, right? So,
where does the where does the MDMA arc
start? What triggered that trajectory?
>> Yeah. So, um the the first thing to say
is that when I dropped out of college,
um
I was very interested in LSD, but also
in mescaline.
And so, um I was at this experimental
college, New College in Sarasota,
Florida, and uh somebody came by with
half a pound of synthetic mescaline.
And so I bought all of it and friends
and I did it and did it. So I had a lot
of experiences with LSD and mescaline.
But I was immature, I was not
emotionally fluid. I would get really
scared. I wasn't able to just sort of
let go.
Um and so I and I had the delusion that
the more drugs you take, the faster you
evolve.
And I I tried my best and I just got
more and more confused, more scared. I
couldn't do it. So I went to the
guidance counselor at college. And this
was again 1972 and he gave me Stan
Grof's book and that's how that started.
But what I'm saying is that I was so
unbalanced that I basically spent 10
years
um getting grounded from those early
LSD and mescaline experiences.
Um I didn't know anything about MDMA.
And I built houses to get grounded. I
would have an idea and I would try to
put it into the world. And so I I
basically spent 10 years from 18 to 28
um
trying to um prepare myself for becoming
a psychedelic therapist. I had to do my
own work first. And I also had to figure
out how do I do something in an above
ground way, but also it's criminalized,
it's illegal. How how do I do that? So I
I took 10 years
to do that and then 1982 I went back to
college.
To the same college, New College, which
also permits off-campus study
and making up your own curriculums. So I
went to Esalen my very first semester to
spend a month with Stan and Christina
Grof on a month-long workshop.
And it was called the mystical quest.
And it was um and Stan had developed a
way through hyperventilation
called holotropic breathwork to induce
experiences that are similar to LSD but
that don't require a drug. You can do it
on your own just with your approaching
uh breathing. So, I'm there during this
month and um this woman named Debbie
Harlow um
comes to Esalen. She's not part of the
month-long workshop, but uh she meets a
bunch of people in the workshop and she
starts saying, "Hey, there's this new
drug. It's called Adam
and it's a great therapy drug."
And it turned out it was Adam was the
code name for MDMA.
>> Mhm.
>> Never heard of it at all like that.
>> Yeah. Well, see like like you said that
you weren't aware of the uh work in the
'50s and '60s with LSD and psilocybin,
many people are not aware that MDMA was
a therapy drug before it became a party
drug under the name ecstasy.
So, when I learn about it and it was a
therapy drug from around 1976
with Sasha Shulgin, Leo Zeff, other
people
and there was about hundreds of
psychiatrists and therapists that were
working with. It was legal, but they
kept it quiet because this was around
the drug war. So, when I learn about
MDMA, it was both
the code name Adam as the therapy drug,
but it was starting to become ecstasy as
a party drug.
And so, I realized that I woke up to the
value of LSD
in 1971 and '72 after the backlash,
after the Controlled Substances Act of
1970. But now, I was waking up to the
value of MDMA before the backlash
because
the government knew about the public use
of ecstasy in party settings, but they
didn't know about the therapeutic use or
that there was all these psychiatrists
and therapists that were interested in
using it or that
by the early '80s around half a million
doses had been made, had been used in
therapy, personal growth settings, but
quiet homes, not in public settings.
Interestingly enough, a lot of this MDMA
was made at MIT by students there.
Um
so, a lot of the early work was came
from the Boston group, which was these
MIT students. And cuz it was still
legal.
So, that was really the the story begins
at that
when I heard about MDMA, I was told,
"Oh, this helps you feel love. It helps
you feel connection.
It helps you feel less fear. You're
you're more um
better listener. You're more open."
And I saw a group of people sitting in a
circle doing MDMA.
And they were talking to each other. And
I thought,
"How profound can it be?" You know, you
take a bunch of LSD or mescaline, you
can't even talk.
The same is true for 5-MeO-DMT or
ayahuasca. You know, there's periods of
time where you're nonverbal. You're
you're just so deep into your
experience.
So,
I pretty much dismissed it. So, I like
to say that I was um
uh stupid enough to underestimate it,
but smart enough to buy some.
And then I I took it home and did it
with my girlfriend.
And I was just absolutely shocked how
profound it was.
>> Right.
>> And how much better we were able to
communicate. And so, that's where my
story begins with MDMA.
>> Amazing. Beautiful beautiful background.
Can you talk about how you met Sasha
Shulgin? Because this for anyone that
doesn't know this man, they need to know
this man. Otherwise known as Alexander
Shulgin. Explain this man cuz everyone
needs to know him. He is remarkable. Um
just explain the backstory behind this
person.
>> Okay. So, um
>> [clears throat]
>> in 19 um '82, as I said, I learned about
MDMA. Um Sasha had been the one that had
really brought it back. It was MDMA was
invented by Merck pharmaceutical company
in 1912.
But they had no idea what it was.
And they never tested it in humans. And
it was now patents were expired and it
was in the
public domain.
Um in the '60s, there was this drug
called MDA,
methylenedioxyamphetamine, which is like
an LSD MDMA combination.
And it was criminalized in 1970.
Sasha was a brilliant, brilliant chemist
who had worked with uh Dow and had made
the first biodegradable insecticide. And
the Dow people, this is in the early
'60s, said um
"You're great, you know, we'll give you
a lab. You can do whatever you want."
And he's got more and more interested in
psychedelics. He had a mescaline
experience. It was profoundly spiritual
for him.
But over time it became clear that Dow
didn't really want him working on
psychedelics. So he left Dow, he became
a teacher, he set up a home lab, and he
invented hundreds of different
psychedelics.
And there's the two books he put out,
PIHKAL and TIHKAL, about all these
different psychedelics, the chemical
synthesis for them and what his
experiences were and others.
He would take it himself first, then he
and his wife Ann would do it. If they
liked it, there was a group of 12 that
they would meet periodically and they
would test these new drugs. And ones
that they thought had tremendous
therapeutic potential would be given to
Leo Zeff,
who is what we called the secret chief.
He was the leader of the underground
therapy movement. He was about to
retire, clinical psych PhD. But when he
did MDMA in the '70s, he was like, "This
is incredible." So he didn't retire.
Um and so
in 19 um
'83, after I'd learned about MDMA, um
and I'd already been on this mission
since 1972 to try to bring back
psychedelics and bring back psychedelic
research, I wrote this letter
to the assistant secretary general of
the United Nations.
A fellow named Robert Muller, and he had
written this incredible book called New
Genesis,
Shaping a Global Spirituality.
And this was the theory that um we need
to realize that we're all from this
planet Earth, that that the UN is
created for conflicts between countries,
but a lot of conflicts are religious
based,
and we need this sort of global
spirituality. So I wrote this letter to
Robert Mueller at the FDA at the UN.
And
I said, "Would you help us bring back
psychedelic research?"
And to my utter astonishment, he wrote
me back.
Now, I showed the letter to Debbie
Harlow who had given me the MDMA and she
showed it to Laura Huxley
who was the widow of Aldous Huxley
who wrote The Doors of Perception,
tremendous book, This Timeless Moment,
cuz Aldous
as he was dying in 1963 asked Laura to
give him LSD. And he died under the
influence of LSD. So, anyway, Laura read
my
message and she said, "We're having
these meetings at Esalen
that are
designed to try to bring some of the few
psychedelic researchers that are really
interested from the past that have not
abandoned it and some of the younger
advocates and we'll have these meetings
to try to strategize how to protect
therapeutic use of MDMA. And Sasha
Shulgin was at these meetings. So,
that's how Sasha and Ann Shulgin and I
got to meet was at Esalen
part of these groups trying to save the
therapeutic use of MDMA.
Fascinating.
>> A detail maybe worth mentioning that I
love is that if I'm not mistaken, his
lab was underneath a volcano.
And he looks exactly as you might
>> that's not true at all.
>> It's not true? I was lied to.
>> No, no, no, no. You might be thinking of
Leonard Pickard who was an LSD
manufacturer who did it in a missile
silo.
>> I was lied to.
Somebody on the podcast told me that
this was in like an inactive underneath
an inactive volcano that he built his
lab.
Sasha Shulgin.
>> Hilarious.
Yeah, that's hilarious.
>> And in fact, if you go to the internet,
Shulgin Farm.
So, after Sasha died, he he built his
little lab in his home.
He lived outside of Oakland
you know, 45 minutes about 30 minutes
away from Oakland in the East Bay.
And no, no volcanoes near there.
Nothing like that at all. But it's a
great story.
>> Yeah, I guess that's why it was
attractive. But somebody told me that
and I was like, what when you see
pictures of him and I'll put it on
screen inside his lab, it's like any you
can add any details of that and it seems
plausible, right? Cuz it just looks so
he looks exactly like someone who has
synthesized 100 psychedelics in a in a
in a lab like pure pure scientific
genius but crazy in a lab and
I need to know that. I can't remember
who told me that, but
>> Yeah, yeah, he looks like a mad
scientist.
>> Yes.
>> Yeah, yeah, but
no volcano. But but that's a great
story. You know, just as another story,
a bunch of
dealers who are selling MDMA
have said, oh, we're we've got maps
MDMA. This is the purest. We're selling
you maps MDMA.
All of that is a complete lie, too. It's
just marketing because the maps MDMA is
legal and it's under DEA control and
watch and there's no maps MDMA that has
ever escaped to the street. But it's a
good story. So people say, oh, I'm going
to sell you some maps MDMA.
>> It's funny that that has credibility,
you know, 2:00 a.m. in a nightclub or
whatever. Whatever we're in that that is
like, oh, it better be maps, you know, I
only I only do maps. It's like I haven't
really seen that level of
um specificity required for these people
in the in their needs at time.
>> Yeah.
>> Talk about the I wanted ground MDMA
scene in the '70s, '80s is like super
interesting. So people were synthesizing
it in a lab and legally just selling it.
So people like you could just kind of
make it in a lab and just go up and like
sell it on the streets and that's how
people were distributing it, selling it,
buying it, taking it and that was all
legal.
>> Yeah, so in 1970 with the Controlled
Substances Act,
what they did at the time is you had to
make specific drugs illegal.
So what Sasha Shulgin did is, okay, MDA
is illegal, but if I modify the chemical
structure of it, then it's a new thing,
it's a new molecule, and then it's not
legal not illegal.
So there was all this experimentation to
build on the ones that were illegal and
just change a few atoms or here and
there, do different things with the
structure, and then all of a sudden now
you got a legal drug. But because this
was in the midst of this drug war, and
then Ronald Reagan gets elected in 1980
with Nancy Reagan, and then drugs are
the biggest
problem in America, and the drug war
started. So even though MDMA was legal,
it was kept quiet.
>> Right.
>> So it wouldn't rise to the attention of
the government and become illegal. But
then those people that started marketing
it as ecstasy in parties and bars and
things, they didn't care. Actually, one
of them just said, "Hey, if it becomes
illegal, I'll just make more money."
>> [snorts]
>> So they didn't really care. So that was
um
But the this underground scene was
mostly in psychiatrist, therapist,
personal growth
in ways that were taken at home with
supervision, more or less in a
therapeutic or personal growth context.
And that never came to the attention of
the authorities.
>> It's just bizarre.
When you hear underground, you think of
like illegal, dangerous racketeering, or
like fight clubs in an underground car
park. You don't hear about mental health
therapy. Like underground mental health
therapy, is that not the most insane
Maybe it's not crazy to you cuz you
lived it. But I'm like, why would that
have to be underground? And we're trying
to we're trying to cheap treat people's
mental health here. That seems bizarre.
>> here's a good way for me to explain it.
So on April 18th
of 2026,
President Trump issued a
White House executive order on
psychedelics.
That was to promote the development of
psychedelics. That came about in part
because of Joe Rogan having sent this
message to Trump. So, there's a um
roughly 45-minute video tape of the
signing ceremony in the Oval Office with
Trump and Joe Rogan and others where
he's explaining why they're going ahead
with this executive order.
But, one of my my favorite moment of
this entire 45 minutes was Joe Rogan
leaning over the shoulder basically of
Trump and explaining
that psychedelics were not criminalized
because they were harmful. They were
criminalized in 1970 because of
President Nixon and his two main enemies
were the civil rights movement and the
hippies.
And he couldn't stop them from
protesting, but he could criminalize the
drugs they were using
and use that to bust up their meetings
and use that to try to go after their
political work and their cultural work.
>> Yeah.
>> So, Joe Rogan is explaining this to
Trump, which was incredible. But, that's
the reason that even though it was
legal, it was kept quiet for the fear
that if people learn about it,
you know, everything was drugs were the
scapegoat for all the different
problems.
>> Yeah.
>> It's all Oh, there's a new drug. So,
what I've like to say is that the real
problem with MDMA
was that so many people were taking it
without problems.
>> Yes.
>> They were having phenomenal time. They
weren't dying. They were they weren't
showing problems. And that was the
biggest problem for the drug war. You
got all these people having a good time
and learning and
you know, and also the early people that
were involved in distributing MDMA
were former um coke dealers.
And they started feeling like dealing
cocaine with all the addiction and abuse
and stuff that comes with it.
Once they tried MDMA, they thought this
is a better drug.
And some of them got over their own
addictions to cocaine.
>> Right.
>> And so I think that this idea was that
um
we're just in a culture a cultural time
where drugs are the cause of all the
problems and you got to keep it quiet
even if it's legal.
>> Yeah. Like I've heard the rationale of
the war on drugs, but it it's just so
unbelievably ridiculous and insane. Like
it's a movie plot that I just cannot
relate to in any way that even when it's
explained and I understand exactly what
the rationale of you know Nixon was
during the Vietnam war and the civil
rights protesters. It's like still hard
for me to believe that an actual human
being was making those decisions. Right,
he wanted to keep bombing another
country and the protesters who say who
wanted peace were annoying. Like that's
absurd. Like that's ridiculous. That's
like a play that was written by you know
a crazy director. Like that's just it's
hard for me to wrap my head around.
So let's go into the prohibition. You
had quite a funny and interesting
response to MDMA when the DEA were
trying to ban it, right? So like what
was your response to that? What did you
do?
>> So
>> [clears throat]
>> once I realized that MDMA was this
incredible drug this incredible
potential but that it also was this
party drug ecstasy
it was clear that it was going to be
criminalized eventually. So in 1984
I started a new nonprofit um Earth
Metabolic Design Lab. It had been
connected to Buckminster Fuller
and it was about alternative energy.
And we sort of redefined it as uh
alternative mental energy. So this was a
nonprofit that was designed to gather
support from the early advocates for LSD
and the researchers of the '50s and
'60s.
And then while we had MDMA legal, we
introduced it
to a bunch of different people
who would later become witnesses in this
lawsuit against the S- FDA um and the
DEA. And that these witnesses would be
um willing to try MDMA because it was
legal. So, we had a psychiatrist at our
medical school. We had
Roman Catholic monks using half doses in
the monastery to help them meditate. We
had a Rabbi Zalman Schachter, a Orthodox
Jewish rabbi comparing MDMA to the
Sabbath.
We had a whole range of of different
people that would talk about the
benefits of
um of MDMA.
And
in the uh summer of '84, the DEA said,
"Okay." They they said, "Now we're going
to criminalize MDMA." But the way they
did that is you have to put a notice in
the Federal Register, and then there's a
30-day public comment period.
And so, I waited almost till the end of
these 30 days, and uh we gathered all
these comments. We worked with lawyers
who were uh working for free, pro bono.
Big DC law law firm helping us.
Um some of the people that they knew
were big psychedelic advocates.
And then we um sued the DEA. And we got
uh
got these hearings granted, and we
delayed the criminalization by about a
year.
But we're winning in the courts. We're
winning in the media. We're winning in
the court of public opinion. And the DEA
freaked out. Like the DEA had a bad trip
because they were losing in this effort
to criminalize.
Um
and so, they uh
then tried to criminalize in Geneva
through the WHO, through the World
Health Organization,
to get the international treaties to
criminalize MDMA. And And they'd say,
"Okay, now we got to follow what the
international uh
treaties say because we're party to
them." So, that's where I went to Geneva
in 1985 to try to slow that down.
And I met with the
uh people at the WHO that were reviewing
the data
on whether to criminalize uh MDMA or
not. And so,
all of this momentum was terrific and
that's where the DEA uh you know, did
this emergency scheduling in the summer
of '85. Then when the hearing was over,
we won.
Meaning the judge said it should stay
schedule three as a medicine. It should
be illegal for recreational use, but it
should stay as a medicine.
And
the administrator of the DEA said, "I'm
not going to follow that ruling. I'm
going to keep it illegal." We sued them
twice in the appeals courts and won both
times and only by the third time did the
DEA figure out how to satisfy the court
and keep it illegal. But I could see
that coming and that's where in 1986,
actually April 8th, 1986, is when I
started MAPS
as Multidisciplinary Association for
Psychedelic Studies, essentially as a
non-profit psychedelic pharmaceutical
company,
also doing public education, that would
try to move MDMA through the system.
So, that that's the origins. There was a
non-profit before MAPS that was
successful in our effort to both slow
down the criminalization, but also to
win the case, but it wasn't good enough
to keep MDMA as a therapy drug. And so,
I thought
MDMA is a generic drug. It was invented
and it's in the public domain. It'll
only be done by charity.
And we've raised about $160 million
over time in donations to try to
do all different things that MAPS does.
Most of that went into MDMA assisted
therapy. And then
we ended up um opening the door at the
FDA, opening um the idea of for-profit
psychedelic companies, and there has now
been about 5 or 6 billion dollars
invested in for-profit psychedelic
companies.
And that started happening in 2018.
And that made it more difficult for us
to raise philanthropy. So, we've now
raised about $200,000,
$200 million, I mean,
in the for-profit psychedelic company,
and now it's separate from us.
It has a different management.
I'm not running it. Unfortunately, if I
were, it would be better.
But there
additional pharma people
you know, running this
pharmaceutical company. And it's going
to end up making MDMA into a medicine.
We can't say exactly when, but
it's it's looking pretty good.
This executive order from
Trump will help as well. So, I don't
know if it'll be made into medicine this
year or next year, but it's on track.
And what MAPS is now doing in a
nonprofit context
is
trying to globalize access
in high trauma, low-resource areas. And
the good news is that the owners, the
new owners, finally we brought in new
owners of the company,
they said MDMA should be generic in all
of Africa,
in India, in Lebanon, and in low and
middle-income countries of the world.
So, while they're going to try to make
money in the US
and potentially in Europe, we have an
opportunity now to bring MDMA all over
the world as an inexpensive generic
drug.
>> That's so amazing. What are you working
on?
>> I've spent years trying to make a daily
routine of meditation, but probably for
a different reason than most. If you've
been following the John Show for a
while, you know that I'm fascinated by
this question of altered states of
consciousness. I've interviewed top
scientists who study psychedelics,
sensory deprivation, lucid dreaming, and
they all say a similar thing that these
kinds of states of consciousness can be
achieved by trained meditation. Now,
while I've always been skeptical of this
claim, it's just been repeated again and
again by the top scientists, people who
I really trust. So, I had to try this
myself, but the problem that I've always
had is that when I do meditation, it's
very hard to stay consistent when I
don't know if I am improving, making any
progress, or if anything is happening at
all. That's where Muse comes in. It's a
portable EEG headband used by NFL
athletes, NBA stars to train focus
during stressful moments. I've been
using it to achieve deeper and more
focused meditative states and track my
progress over time as I improve. Now, as
you can see, it also has the added
benefit of making you ridiculously
handsome. This has been verified by
multiple sources. Muse measures brain
activity, heart rate, and blood oxygen
in real time and gives you live audio
feedback that shifts based on your
brainwave state. When your mind wanders,
you hear it. When you drop into deep
focus, the soundscape changes. There's
over 500 guided sessions, there's sleep
tracking, and a structured mental health
strength program built on top of the
world's largest EEG data set, over a
billion minutes of brain data. I've been
tracking my sessions for weeks now, and
I finally have a dash board I can see my
progress. I can actually see I'm
improving, and this has such a good
feedback cycle for actually doing it
every single day because I know that
that graph is going up. I'm getting
better. I'm going towards something.
Now, the device is definitely not for
everybody, but at least personally for
me, it has turned meditation from this
uncertainty of not really knowing if
anything is happening to an actual
structured plan that I can see something
improving, and that has massively
improved my own motivation to do it. And
just how cool would it be to have an
altered anomalous state of consciousness
and catch your brain in real time and
see what's happening. I mean, that idea
is so cool to me. Use the link in the
description for a special discount. Now,
back to the episode.
>> Yeah, I mean, that's so amazing. I truly
I truly believe that the the benefit to
humanity of that is just incredible. I
mean, you're such a pioneer all of this.
You're battling uphill at every stage to
to get us to where we are now. It's such
an interesting story. Am I right in
saying that in the period where you were
sort of pushing back against the
prohibition that before MAPS were
started and separate to MAPS, that you
were like collecting some tax from MDMA
dealers sort of using that to fund
toxicity studies and to fund lawyers. Is
there a true story there?
>> Yeah, that's that is true. That that's a
lot uh truer than the Sasha Shulgin
having his lab under a volcano.
>> I'm glad I didn't want to have two
details wrong here.
>> No, no. So, this part is right. So, this
movie um
called Prophet of Ecstasy. So, it's
about this fellow Michael Clegg that
turned MDMA into Ecstasy. But, there is
um a scene there. So, now it is it's
very public. So, I went to him
with Debbie Harlow and we said, "You're
screwing it up for the therapists.
You're making it illegal.
Um
you're making all these millions of
dollars.
Here we are, small amount profit. We're
trying to
um keep the therapeutic use, but we're
also slowing down the criminalization."
They'd ramped up to where they were
selling 2 million pills every month.
It's just incredible. So, I said um
basically um you should um
uh consider that that uh you should pay
a tax to us
with some of your uh profits. And that
um we can use that to to try to um This
is when the drug was still legal. We can
sell the drug, we can make all this
money, and we can use that to sue the
DEA.
And so they actually um
donated um
Well, they donated 20,000 pills.
And uh they gave me 19,000 at uh $3 a
dose when it was selling for like $8 a
dose.
So, then we distributed all that. It was
still legal, and then we made all this
money, and then we used that to do a to
make legal MDMA and to make um
28-day toxicity studies in the dog and
the rat, and to help support all the
effort to challenge the DEA. So, that
that part is true that we taxed the uh
ecstasy dealers, and they were willing
to pay it because they saw that we had
slowed down
uh the criminalization of their
operation.
>> Right, that's just shrewd
entrepreneurship. That is good business
dealings, right? They are incentivized
to give you that to give you that tax in
that situation. So, the the toxicity
studies you ran then, were those the
first toxicity studies done on MDMA cuz
that's what you were trying to do.
You're You were trying to get some
results and show it to the judge or
whatever was in that the legal process
the DEA.
>> Um those toxicity studies were required
by the FDA to get into human studies.
>> Right.
>> So, yeah, th- those were um
also beneficial in a way to talk to the
uh the DEA. But, we also did in the
summer of '84, we did a human study.
Um we kind of did it without um FDA
approval, without an institutional
review board, but we
gave around 30 people um MDMA, again
when it's still legal, on a beach in
Cal- beach house in California.
And we ended up um gathering safety
data, heartbeat, blood pressure,
temperature, cognitive tests, all these
different things. So, that was the first
ever safety study done with MDMA in the
summer of '84. And that was specifically
designed to
feed into the DEA process for them to
say, "Oh, we don't know anything about
it." We'll say, "Oh, yes, we do. Here's
this safety information." And then the
toxicity studies were more for the FDA
to get into doing human studies.
>> And was that data successful in pushing
it back? Was that part of the reason you
won two of those appeals and you were
successful with the start of the
process?
>> appeals were way later. So, um what what
happened was that um well, those appeals
were more legal appeals to of the the
uh to the lawyers. This this data So,
from 1986 when I started MAPS
>> [clears throat]
>> we had five different protocols from
Harvard, from UC San Francisco, from
other institutions submitted to the FDA
and all of them were rejected.
And so, the data of eventually became
helpful in 1992
when the FDA approved the first study
with MDMA. And when they also announced
that this several decades of suppression
of psychedelic research was coming to an
end and they would be open to
psychedelic research, the psychedelics
would be held to the same standard that
any other um drug would be held to. And
And when they made this decision, in the
room was the DEA the White House drug
czar, the National Institute of Drug
Abuse. And when they heard the FDA say,
"We're going to hold these drugs to the
same standard as we hold Big Pharma."
These other anti-drug groups thought,
"That's fantastic. Nobody'll ever get
through it. No little nonprofit will
ever make it." So, they said, "Okay,
that's great. You can start research
with MDMA, you can review psychedelics,
but we know nothing's ever going to come
from it."
And in a way
you know, [clears throat] now we're 40
years later
we're just getting to the point where
psilocybin and MDMA are going to be
approved in the foreseeable future.
So, they they were somewhat right about
that.
>> Right.
>> But, in the end
when I look back on the psychedelic
renaissance and and the critical moment
was 1992
at the FDA advisory committee where they
decided that they would formally open
the door to psychedelic research again
after several decades of suppression
around the world.
>> So, '92 is when MAPS were really able to
kick off proper clinical trials,
well-researched. Is that Is that when
you really started when MAPS really hit
the ground running with its research
efforts?
>> Yeah, now that was a safety study.
And it took until 2000 for us to do uh
uh
the first work with PTSD patients.
So, it took basically 14 years of
struggle before we could get into the
first therapy study with MDMA. And the
first one was a little bit heartbreaking
because it was in in Madrid.
And
>> [clears throat]
>> we Before we were able to get approval
in the US, we got approval in Madrid.
And this was women survivors of sexual
assault. Um it was also a dose-response
study.
And
>> [clears throat]
>> after only about six people or so had
been treated um
La Paz, one of the big uh newspapers and
the media in Madrid
wanted to cover the study. And we said,
"Sure."
But, that
notified the Madrid anti-drug authority
that this research was going on
which they had not approved. And then
they thought,
>> [clears throat]
>> "All right, we're going to shut it
down." So, the first study that we ever
began with MDMA for PTSD
was shut down for political reasons. And
it wasn't until around 2004
that we could start the first study in
the US.
>> That must be so frustrating. It's just
so many Like Like you have got You've
spanned a time in just the last like 5
minutes is like longer than my entire
lifetime, right? Like this is longer
than I've been alive that you've just
spanned of like just banging your
forehead against the table trying to get
this work done.
>> Yeah.
>> I just
It's unbelievable perseverance. So, is
this just constantly like you applying
for grants, applying for proposals, like
trying things out, figuring out what
proposal might be easiest to get
through, where is most likely to be
successful?
>> They Basically, that's right. Although,
I would say that um only [clears throat]
recently
in the last few years have we been able
to get grants. So, what I mean by that
is that we would find people the the
donations came from wealthy individuals
or or not so wealthy individuals who had
interest in um psychedelics for one
reason or were wanting to end the drug
war, who were who thought that
promoting um research to show the
benefits of marijuana, the benefits of
MDMA, the benefits of other
psychedelics, that would change people's
minds
about how these are not evil drugs. I
was um
raised in the '60s and told that if you
take LSD five or six times that's all
you need to be certifiably insane.
You can get rid get out of any crime
because if you've taken LSD five or six
times, now you're certifiably insane.
And also that it hurts your chromosomes.
You're going to have deformed babies and
all this stuff. So,
I just want to emphasize that
>> [clears throat]
>> it was not institutions, but individuals
that made the difference that gave us
the first funding. And it's only
recently when it's become a little bit
less controversial
our foundations
willing to do it. And And the the sort
of example, the best example I say of
this is that the federal government
has put in $10 million
to the Department of Defense to do MDMA
research in active duty soldiers with
PTSD.
>> Amazing.
>> We've also got the VA has put some money
into [clears throat] MDMA research for
veterans with
um PTSD.
Um and so there are now starting to be
some grants. We also have a $12.9
million grant that we got from the state
of Michigan to do cannabis for
320 veterans with PTSD.
>> Awesome.
>> But cannabis is palliative, it's not
curative. It just
helps people not have nightmares, helps
them focus on the present, but it
doesn't get to the root cause. And so
you need to keep using the cannabis. So
it's like an SSRI, it's like a medicine
that you get from the pharma companies.
But still, if we can get it approved by
the FDA, then people will get it covered
by insurance.
But our preference is
go to the root cause with psychedelics
plus therapy,
with a lot of therapy, and really help
people overcome the core wounds so that
they don't need drugs. And the the
problem that I see as the way that a lot
of the psychedelic pharma companies are
going
is that they're trying to minimize the
use of therapy.
And they're not it's not what's best for
the patients. They think it'll be easier
to get approved from the FDA. The FDA
just knows about drugs. The FDA doesn't
know about therapy.
And in August of 2024, the FDA rejected
the approval of MDMA. And one of their
reasons was that oh, they didn't
understand the therapy.
>> Right.
>> there were other reasons, but that was
one of them. So
I think this idea that um
drug plus therapy is better than drug
alone or therapy alone.
>> Yes.
>> And so I think that's the way that we
really need to move forward. Um and and
hopefully more and more people will see
that. And then the big challenge is
getting it covered by national health
insurance, by insurance companies,
things like that.
>> Yeah. 12 million and 19 million, these
seem great. But I mean, when you see the
budget that the US military has, it's
like, you know, it's like a millionth of
a cent, right? Like, and and this is to
treat the, you know, entire generation
of young men that they sent off to fight
political proxy wars and lied to them
about their true purpose, right? And
they all came back traumatized cuz
obviously what they went through. And
then they won't give them the the proper
treatment. That's what seems like really
corrupt and horrible about this whole
thing is that like
>> That that's all true, but that's where
our work with the veterans is what has
established bipartisan support. And when
Trump signed the executive order on
psychedelics in April 18th, there was
veterans there in the room with him
talking about how important psychedelics
were.
>> Right.
>> So, I think that this way that you could
say we betrayed the veterans
um by sending them to go wars that um
were a mistake and then not giving them
proper treatment when they come back,
there's over a million veterans
receiving disability payments from the
Veterans Administration at a cost of
over 17 billion dollars a year.
Just to pay for disability. Plus, one of
the things that came out um
in you know, tragically, is that since
um 2001 when um
you know, the Twin Towers were attacked
uh by a lot of Saudi Arabians and
others, um
there's been around 10,000 soldiers that
have died uh US soldiers that have died
in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But,
there have been um
more than 10 times that many who've died
by suicide since then.
There's an enormous suicide problem.
>> Yes.
>> Somewhere in the neighborhood of six um
thousand
veterans every year kill themselves.
And there's, you know, 20,000, 30,
25,000 or more other people that kill
themselves with suicide in America. Um
deaths of despair.
There's a lot of that going on. And
deaths of despair are defined as
alcoholism, drug overdoses, or suicide.
>> And it's horrible. It's it's disgraceful
and and disgusting. And and that's
almost why I have that response of like
12 million's great, but it still seems
to me like a bit of a spit in the face
with the towards the actual problem. You
know, like the size, the scale of the
problem here, I am just seems like it
demands a lot more than that when the
these therapeutic seem like they'd be
the best way to to to really make a dent
at this problem.
>> Yeah, so, you know, one way to look at
it is all the people that committed
suicide since 1985 when the DEA
did the emergency scheduling of MDMA.
If they hadn't done that, so many lives
would have been saved. The other thing,
just as a curious historical note, is
that the DEA did not have the power to
do emergency scheduling. Congress had
given it to the Attorney General, but
the Attorney General had never what's
called subdelegated the power to the
DEA.
So, those people that were arrested
between '85 and '86,
um when their lawyers finally figured
out that the DEA didn't have that power,
everybody got free.
So, the first criminalization of MDMA
was itself illegal.
>> Yeah.
>> They were just in such a hurry to go uh
short circuit the case that we won in
the public media that we were winning,
that they uh did something illegal.
>> The story's just so insane.
Is there any reason why MAPS was so
focused on MDMA? Or were you also
looking at psilocybin and LSD and DMT
and ayahuasca? Were these also on your
radar?
>> They they were on our radar. We we were
able in 2008 to get the first LSD study
started.
Um in um
at this point um in over 30 years, in
about 35 years.
And we were very interested in um
ibogaine. We did early studies in
ibogaine. Um but
it takes a lot of money to take
something through the FDA. So, we
focused on MDMA. And there's a couple
different reasons why that is. MDMA is
the most gentle of all the psychedelics.
It doesn't do the ego dissolution the
same way the classic psychedelics do. It
promotes a sense of safety, love,
compassion, you know, releases oxytocin.
So,
also, we're trying to bring it in
initially as a tool for therapy and
psychiatrists. And one of the things we
believe that's obvious, I think to
anybody who's worked in this area, is
that therapists will be more effective
if they've done the drug themselves. If
they know what they're giving to their
patients.
And in general, um psychiatrists and
therapists are more scared of LSD or
psilocybin than they are of MDMA.
All right, so that's one part of it.
MDMA is incredibly profound. It's
incredibly deep. It's very positive. It
doesn't do the ego dissolution. But the
other part of it was this political
analysis. So, what I've um
like to [clears throat] say is that we
don't do science. We are we don't just
do science. We do political science. Our
science that we do is informed by
politics. And the key thing is that we
needed sympathetic patients.
When you have demonized drugs, you know,
so psychedelics are are excellent with
therapy for addiction.
You know, Bill W, who started Alcoholics
Anonymous, did LSD in the '50s and
thought it had a major role to play
um in the treatment of addiction. But
the addicts are the other. We we
demonize the addicts. They're they're
not us. They're the others. But veterans
in America
are put on a pedestal. And
>> Yes.
>> when I started this in '86, there was
around two over 200,000 veterans on
disability
for uh PTSD from the Vietnam War.
And it cost around $4.3 billion
every year. So, when I started this, I
thought MDMA, it's great for PTSD.
But I did not anticipate that we would
have the Iraq War, that we would have
the uh Afghanistan War, that we would
you know, be producing
as I say now, over a million veterans
disabled with PTSD.
But that was a big part of it is trying
to get sympathetic patients. So, the big
issue was what psychedelic and then what
patient population. And so, MDMA
because I think it's it's it's profound,
it's deep, but it's uh easier for
therapists and patients than LSD or
psilocybin. And then
um the veterans on the other side with
PTSD because at this time, even then, um
there was a lot of there wasn't a lot of
good treatments for PTSD. A lot of
people had chronic PTSD or Yes. a lot of
people had PTSD from childhood. And And
so, that that's how MDMA for PTSD became
the opening wedge to bring psychedelics
back.
>> To bypass an argument that really nobody
with a soul or heart could argue against
makes complete sense.
>> Yeah.
>> Let's put some numbers on the really
foundational MAPS clinical trials that
were run in 2023 and 2024, I believe. Do
you have those numbers out of those
clinical trials of the MDMA and PTSD cuz
these are phenomenal effect sizes?
>> Yeah.
Um
Yeah. All right. So, I'll I'll say
there's two things. Statistical
significance
is what you need to get for the FDA, but
effect sizes is um how large is the
effect? And you need that more for
insurance companies. You know, if you
just have a little marginal something
that's barely statistically significant,
you can still get it approved by the
FDA.
A lot of these times are called me too
drugs, but
doctors and therapists might not use it
unless it's really strong, unless
there's a large effect size.
All right, so the first phase three
study that we did was severe PTSD.
And we worked with the hardest cases.
Again, when something is demonized as
you need to really make a case where
people are suffering.
Um that we could be helpful. So we
worked with the hard hardest cases.
And
we enrolled people who previously
attempted suicide. A lot of studies
don't do that, but we we will enroll
people who previously attempted suicide.
And we enrolled people who had tried
other medications or other therapies and
it hadn't worked.
And they were severe PTSD.
So
the study was designed is controlled
study. One group got therapy with
inactive placebo.
And the other got therapy with MDMA,
full dose MDMA.
And so what we showed is that 32% of the
people who had therapy without any MDMA
at the two-month follow-up um no longer
had PTSD.
And the treatment is um 42 hours of
therapy, three
eight-hour day-long MDMA sessions or
placebo sessions
with 12 90-minute non-drug psychotherapy
sessions, three for preparation for the
first MDMA session, three for
integration after each MDMA session.
And we have two therapists, usually a
male-female co-therapy team.
Not only, but but usually that's our
model. A lot of times people have trauma
from childhood and having
well-functioning you know, female team
is often things that people didn't have
when they were growing up.
All right, so 32% no longer
had uh PTSD just from the therapy. But
when you add MDMA, now it's 2/3 no
longer have PTSD. It's twice as good.
And another 21% have what is called
clinically significant reductions of
PTSD. Means that their symptoms have
reduced, their life is better, but they
still have PTSD. So, we had 88%
responders and only 20 12%
non-responders. And the effect size was
large, very large effect size.
The the effect sizes for the SSRIs
are very small. They're barely
effective, but the effect sizes for
psychedelics are very large. All right,
so then our second phase three study, we
we switched to moderate to to severe
PTSD.
Because we didn't want the FDA to say,
"Oh, we're only going to give this to
severe PTSD."
So, with um moderate to severe people,
3/4 were severe, 1/4 was moderate. Now,
all of a sudden we had 47.6%
no longer had PTSD, which is better than
the other therapies, and better than the
pharmacotherapies just with our therapy
without any MDMA.
But,
you add MDMA, and now all of a sudden,
um
it's about 72%.
With another 15% clinically significant.
So, and with a very, very large effect
size, and these were highly
statistically significant, one in 10,000
chance that it was due to our random
factors and not to the MDMA.
So, highly statistically significant,
way high effect size,
and very minimal dropouts. So, here's
another thing to say, the two main
non-drug therapies
for PTSD used in the Veterans
Administration, prolonged exposure and
cognitive processing therapy,
um the VA spent 6 years, they um tested
about 914 veterans with either cognitive
processing therapy or prolonged
exposure.
And what they showed was shocking, which
was half the people dropped out of the
study
because the therapy was too
re-traumatizing.
>> Right.
>> It's like telling me about your worst
trauma over and over and over. So we had
hardly any dropouts.
MDMA helps people process trauma. They
don't feel overwhelmed. They feel they
can progress.
So we have a you know highly significant
high effect size and very low dropout.
People like the therapy.
And so it's it's going to be a massive
contribution to the reduction of PTSD,
depression, other things in America once
it becomes a prescription medicine.
>> It's staggering. And I like how you
brought in the comparison with SSRI and
all of those numbers are just so
convincing. So that's why it just does
not make sense to me how that data
doesn't automatically get something
approved and fast-tracked on the nation.
>> Okay, here here's where I think you're
Yeah, here's I can explain.
You're coming initially from a rational
point of view.
Here is data.
>> I'm learning that's not the right
approach more and more as I age.
>> That's exactly what I'm saying. How did
we get um
you know Trump elected in America? It's
not because it's because he motivates
people's emotions and fears and
anxieties then gives them a common
enemy. That's not rational.
So
we as humans are not that different from
humans 2,000 years ago.
I mean you read the Greek tragedies. You
read philosophy.
We've made hardly any progress in our
emotional and spiritual development over
the last 2,000 years.
And so mo- and this rational part of our
brain is the newest part of our brain.
Um and that that's what we we really
need to accelerate um this emotional and
spiritual development to cope with the
technology. So Albert Einstein said the
splitting of the atom has changed
everything except our mode of thinking.
And hence we drift towards unparalleled
catastrophe.
What's up [snorts] with required if
mankind is to survive is a whole new
mode of thinking.
So, what is this whole new mode of
thinking? It's psychedelic thinking.
It's It's this merger of rationality and
also experience.
And experience of beyond ego states,
transpersonal humanistic psychology. I
think we really need to um go beyond
this fear of life and you know, that
we're just bound um ego skin
encapsulated ego between birth and death
and there's nothing before, nothing
after, and it's meaningless and
you know, to be realized that we're part
of this spiritual continuum, this vast
billions of years of evolution that
we what we do matters um
a lot and that there is this um
whole other way to process. So, we need
to really blend
um emotional and spiritual wisdom with
the rationality.
And right now,
you know, a lot of decisions are not
based on rationality. So, that's why you
could say, "Look, this evidence suggests
that this should have been a medicine
long ago. It should never have been
criminalized. There was never any real
evidence to suggest it It was just
cultural prejudices and scapegoating."
>> Yes. And it seems really really silly
the examples they gave on why it was
rejected like like you didn't mark you
didn't make notes of the euphoria. You
know, when I read that, I was like I
just like I get tracking all of your
data points and and and all of that as a
as a good scientist, but I'm like, have
you ever heard about MDMA before? Like
Like
Like Like not track Like not not
noticing that it causes euphoria seems
like the dumbest rejection criteria I've
ever I've ever heard. I don't even have
an exact Like that's It just seems
ridiculous. Maybe I'm thinking too
rationally again, but
>> how they think about that. Is that if
you like the drug,
then you're going to abuse the drug
after the study's over. That's what the
fear is. That now a bunch of the people
in our studies said, "I don't know why
they call this ecstasy."
Because when you are traumatized and
it's
disabling your life,
when you get MDMA in a therapy context,
the trauma comes to the surface. You can
work with it. You can process it. But
it's not like, "Oh, all my problems go
away. Now I feel great." It's like you
deal with the most difficult things in
your life, but you can deal with them
rather than suppress them or ignore
them, which doesn't do much good. So, I
think this idea that there is this um
big risk of all these people in our
therapy becoming ecstasy addicts
is ridiculous because
it's been now um
you know, well over 40 years that people
have been doing ecstasy or MDMA, and we
don't see ecstasy addicts. We do see
sometimes people really like MDMA. They
do it um very frequently for a year or
so, and then they burn out. And the kind
of drugs that you get addicted to are
the drugs when you get a tolerance,
what you can do is you just up the dose.
And that's the story with um cocaine.
That's the story with methamphetamine.
That's the story with uh opiates. But
the thing about MDMA is if you get to
sort of doing it too much, you get a
tolerance. When you up the dose,
you get the speedy effects, but you
don't get the open-hearted effects.
So, it's not And MDMA is sort of unique
in that somehow or other, we don't know
exactly why, um
for many people, myself and and many
people report that the effects diminish
over time.
So, it doesn't mean that you can't be
happy or you're depressed or anything,
but just there's something unique about
MDMA. So, it's not that way with
cannabis. You can smoke cannabis your
whole life, and if you, you know, you
still get high.
In the same way. The same was with LSD.
But but with these other drugs. So,
um there's built-in mechanisms in the
molecule that make it unlikely that
people are going to have these long-term
concerns.
Um what what's even more irrational
is that the penalties for if you're uh
distributing, manufacturing,
uh possessing psychedelics or all drugs
are set by the US Sentencing Commission.
The sentencing guidelines. And I
testified in 2001, as did several other
people, about
MDMA. But this was at the height of the
MDMA neurotoxicity fears.
And
the members of the Sentencing Commission
were completely misled by government
scientists and all.
And so right now, that has not been
reviewed
in 25 years. But right now, if you get
caught with a pile of MDMA in one hand
and the same weight of cocaine in the
other hand,
you're going to go to jail more for the
MDMA
than for the cocaine.
>> It's totally insane.
>> That's ridiculous. That's so it's so
backwards and and archaic and absolutely
ridiculous.
>> Yeah, exactly.
>> Yeah.
Speechless. I know I know we're out of
time, but do you have a couple of notes
on what you want to see going forward?
What are your predictions over the next
5 10 years? What would you like to see?
What needs
>> Thank you for this. What I want to see
going forward. So, a good way to say
this is that for the first 40 years of
MAPS, the main goal has been make MDMA
into a medicine.
You know, change the culture, open the
door to psychedelics, but now that's
underway. That's going to happen. So, we
need a new big vision.
So, I'm calling the new big vision net
zero trauma by 2070.
So, what net zero trauma means, it
doesn't mean no trauma,
but it means that there's two basic
kinds of trauma. One is stuff you
experience, the other is stuff you
inherit, multi-generational trauma
through epigenetic mechanisms.
So, now that we're going that the pharma
company called Resilient will eventually
make MDMA into medicine in the US,
I'm thinking global, and I'm thinking
that we need to think of humanity as a
as a whole, and
I think unfortunately, that things are
probably going to get worse over the
next 10-20 years.
With depression, with anxiety, with
mental illnesses,
as we have more climate change problems,
we have more authoritarianism, we we
have a lot of things.
So, what net zero trauma means is that
we need to bend the arc of this trauma
so that as a
as humanity as a whole,
um we're just now not adding to the
burden of trauma.
So, Bhutan, you may have heard some
people may have heard Bhutan has created
this measure, gross national happiness.
It's a way to measure happiness in
in different countries. So, we need a
gross national trauma measure
that then we can track progress over the
next uh
you know, 45 years or so.
And so, the the hope is eventually we go
to net negative trauma,
and that we, you know, stop adding to
the burden of trauma, and then we start
reducing it. But,
what that means is bec- And because of
the um owners of Resilient want MDMA to
be generic in Africa, India,
Lebanon, and low- and middle-income
countries of the world, I'm focused now
on trying to bring MDMA to high trauma,
low-resource areas,
and as a generic.
And so, um
the other thing we're looking at, which
is um sort of going back to some of the
early things, is MDMA for couples
therapy.
Right. So,
you know,
but it's not we're trying to do it
without it being a disease. We we don't
want anybody in the couple to have to
have a diagnosis. They just say, "Hey,
we want to work with our relationship."
But the FDA has never approved drugs for
just that. They've only approved drugs
to treat illness
in some way.
So, we're going to then do MDMA for
couples therapy in the US and then we're
going to try to challenge the DEA I
excuse me, the FDA to approve and then
if that happens we get um insurance
coverage. So, those are sort of the main
things that MAPS is trying to do and
also train therapists. So, we've been in
Ukraine training therapists. Ukraine has
laws left over from Russia. You can't
even do research
with schedule one drugs. We've got
projects in Bosnia and Somaliland. We're
working to start projects in Rwanda.
We've got projects in Lebanon.
And uh we're working on a project in in
Palestine. We're trying to start
research with MDMA in Israel and
Australia. So, basically globalizing and
then I'll just say that in um
2027,
um in May, we're going to have a big
psychedelic conference
in Denver. We've had these 2010, 2013,
2017, 2023, 2025. We had 8,000 people at
the conference in 2025.
12,400 people at the conference in 2023.
So, we're we're sort of convening the
field and what we're trying to
communicate is that we should really be
thinking
ideally about what's best for patients
and it should be legal as well. So, MAPS
is doing both
you know, drug policy reform as well as
drug development. Because I think it's a
fundamental human right that we should
be able to explore our consciousness. We
shouldn't be against the law. We should
punish people for behavior but not for
their states of consciousness.
>> I couldn't agree more, Rick. You're a
legend. You've been fighting this
mission for again, a lot longer than
I've been alive and I'm so appreciative
for it and 2026 Psychedelic State has so
much to thank you for your work. So,
it's been just so much fun. Thank you so
much for telling your story. Again, I
wish we had more time. I'd love to have
you back again, but the Giant Shoulder
can ever help with anything that you
just mentioned there. You have us at
your will. Thank you so much again for
your time. It's been It's been awesome,
Rick. Thank you so much.
>> say what what you know, let's say in a
year from now, I'd be glad to come back
and we can talk about what's changed.
>> Awesome. Thank you so much, Rick.
Pleasure.
>> Great. Bye.
>> The Giant Shoulder mission is to explore
radical ideas in biology, neuroscience,
and consciousness and elevate those
stories to the highest possible level
while keeping them accessible to
everyone. If this interests you and you
want to support independent science,
then please consider subscribing to the
clips channel. Check out our 26
neuroscience book. You can download it
for free.