Hi, I'm Miami-Elect. And I'm Jonathan Cohen. And welcome to part two of our conversation with Dr. Rick Doblin. He's the founder and president of Maps, the multidisciplinary association for psychedelic studies. His professional goal is to develop legal contexts for the beneficial use of psychedelics in particular in cases of trauma and treatment-resistant depression. We're going to talk to Dr. Doblin about his IBegaine LSD experience, what he learned from his transcendental journey and how he uses that information to inform the research that he continues to support. We're going to talk about MDMA-assisted couples therapy. We're also going to talk about Trump's executive order directing federal agencies to expand and expedite research, increasing the timeline that these therapies are going to be available. Also, don't miss our conversation about membership in psychedelic churches. This is a wonderful conversation. Please enjoy part two of our episode with Dr. Rick Doblin. Break it down.

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Tell us a little bit about your personal experience because I think it's important from 1985, you said, correct? Yeah. was when I started a nonprofit before maps in 1984 maps I started in 86 the nonprofit I started in 84 with Debbie Harlow and Elise Eger the three of us were doing this were was to gather support from the psychedelic community that was now surfacing in a way to try to protect MDMA. Everything was criminalized, but MDMA was legal under the name Adam from around 1976. That was the code name. And around 1980, 79, 80, 81, it's sort of escaped from these therapy settings and began used as a party drug under the name ecstasy. And so that's what attracted the attention of the government. And that's what presented an incredible opportunity because those of us that had started learning about psychedel therapy and the elders that had really taught us about this, realized that MDMA should be used in quiet circumstances at homes. You know, it was not used in any public settings. Are you sure? Let's take a warehouse and have a lot of music blaring really low. Okay, but that didn't happen until it became ecstasy. So it was a therapy drug before it became a party drug. Then the party drug is what attracted the police. And then we had this period of time where we could introduce various people to MDMA when it was illegal to prepare them to be witnesses. You know, some of them were Rabbi Zalman Schochter who started the Jewish Renewal Movement, brother David Steinal Ross, who's a Roman Catholic monk, Lester Grinspoon at Harvard Medical School, all sorts of luminaries in different ways that we could do that. And so Leo Zepf, who was the secret chief, as I mentioned, who had really introduced MDMA into therapy, he came to me and he said, you're about to do this political work and the more you more you're Emotionally balanced the more you own your shadow So this is a concept from Jungian therapy that that that you're the parts of you that you disown And we we could say that Trump is a master of projecting his shadow onto others That's the most psychologically sophisticated analysis I've ever heard. Yeah, it's whatever he's doing, he accuses other people of doing and in any case, this idea was Leo said we need you to own your own shadow because if you go to these meetings with the DEA and the National Sun Drug Abuse and stuff, if you are all good and you're thinking they're all bad, you're not gonna be able to build bridges, you're gonna be pushing people away. I want you to have this big therapy session. Would you be interested in this? Cause I also was training to be a psychedelic therapist. Wait, wait, so hold on a second. So I just wanna like, this subtlety of the motivation for getting to know yourself is, is not coming from a perspective of like, let's blow your mind open. Let's have this amazing access. The notion is if you are up against challenges in life and all you see is that you're right and other people are wrong and you do not own the parts of yourself that have judgment, resentment, hurt, trauma, you will not best be able to present what is actually true and accurate in the larger sense of the world. That's fascinating. Yeah. And also you will project onto others that they're all evil or all bad. So let's go back in a moment just to Martin Luther King. So one of the things that he's most famous for saying is that you don't overcome hate with hate. You only overcome hate with love. So and then just to talk about multi-generational trauma again, we have conflicts that have been going on for thousands of years. between the Shiites and the Sunnis, not quite thousands of years, but between Protestants and Catholics, between all sorts of conflicts have gone on and sustained and get passed on generation after generation after generation. So, actually, here's a funny part about the Maccabees. Many people don't realize that Judaism has been saved not by the Orthodox but by the reform. So the Maccabees, which are up against the Greeks, at the time it used to be something that you did not fight on the Sabbath. You did nothing on the Sabbath. And so people would be attacking Jewish communities on the Sabbath. They would run away and stuff. But the Maccabees said, no, we can fight on the Sabbath. So it was the reform. I mean, I don't know if I'd call the Maccabees reform. They were the progressives of some variety. Yeah. Yeah. But they were deviating from the tradition. The rebels, that's right. The rebels, the rebels among us, that's correct. Yeah. Well, okay, I'll just deviate one other moment here about a Jewish story. So, Benny Shannon, who was head of cognitive psychology at Hebrew University, was very cognitive, but he really got into ayahuasca. And he wrote these great books on ayahuasca, the varieties of ayahuasca experience. So then he went to try to figure out what's the history of psychedelics in the Jewish tradition. And so he wrote the scientific paper. What was his last name? Say it again? Shannon, S-H-A-N-O-N, Benny Shannon. But his paper was that Moses was high on psychedelics when when he saw the burning bush. He's not the first one to think this. Yeah, but he said, oh, the manna,

the manna was psychedelic.

And so, so it was in the New York Times and I contacted my dad and I said, you know, look at this. My whole life is justified. I'm just following in the footsteps of Moses. So my dad was like a hilarious. He's like, well, in order for me to believe that Moses was high on psychedelics when he saw the burning bush, he said, first off, I'd have to believe in Moses. And I was like, you know, you're right. Checkmate. What can I say? I mean, a conversation for another time, the revelation at Sinai, we saw sounds when is the only other time that you have synesthesia is usually under the influence of something that causes that kind of mixing of modality. Yeah. Yeah. And there's no archaeological evidence that the Jews built the pyramids or that they spent 40 years in the Sinai. So, these are like, you know, mythic stories that if you take literally it's one thing and that and that's the fundamentalist approach. When trees start talking to you and you're seeing sounds like something interesting is happening historically, that someone chose to write that down. Well, what we have is this growing sense in the the therapeutic community, the US, the war fighting community and stuff that there was something more needed. And I began, which was available. If you're going to be going up against the kind of challenges that you're going to have as an advocate, you need to own that part of yourself. And so that's what led to your journey. Yeah. And so I bogey, when you take it in the plant form, it takes quite a few hours for you to start really feeling the effect. So Leo was like, you know, I don't want to just sit here waiting for taking effect. I want to give you a 350 micrograms of LSD with the I Bogey. So because the LSD really peak, you know, comes on around an hour, peaks around three

and a half hours.

And I was like, sure, you know, give it to me.

You were like, sure, give me the Iboga and LSD.

Yeah.

I mean, I had great respect for Leo.

He, by the way, had his own copy of the Torah.

Well, he had his own Torah scrolls.

Amazing.

He was a clinical psychologist and I very much trusted him. I'd worked with him before on an LSD Harmelene experience that he had said for me. Harmelene, interestingly enough, is part of Ayahuasca, you know, it's a MEOI inhibitor. But Harmelene, I think it was in the 20s It was identified. And the scientific name was telepathine because the Indians claimed that it made them telepathic that they could tell where the animals were that they could read each other's minds, things like that. But in any case, what turned into, uh, the experience for me was not about my ancestors. It was more this psychological sense that I'm in this incredible opportunity. I'm going to battle up against the government. I'm trying to help bring back psychedelics. I have to be as prepared as I can. And, and yet, I'm scared. I mean, the LSD and the IboGo, I began to dissolve your sense of self, move you into something bigger. And I was just really, really scared. And it was hard for me to let go. Mine be Alex breakdown is supported by RULA. No matter how you handle emotional stress or life's challenges, everyone can benefit from therapy. Affordable and accessible mental health care shouldn't be out of reach, but too often it is. That's where most online therapy platforms fall short. Rulah does things differently. They partner with over 100 insurance plans with an average copay of just $15 per session. That's real therapy from licensed professionals at a price that actually makes sense. And Rulah's tailored around you. They consider your goals, preferences, and background to provide you a curated list of licensed in-network therapists to align with what you need and make it easy to find a mental

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