← 10% Happier with Dan Harris
10% Happier with Dan Harris
Should You Be Taking Psychedelics? The Benefits, the Risks, and the Science. | Jay Michaelson
01:20:44
Loading summary
Transcript79 lines
- [00:01]
Dan Harris
Wondery subscribers can listen to 10% happier early and ad free right now. Join Wondery in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. This is the 10% Happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey, hey. How we doing everybody? As you probably know, there is a renaissance, dare I say a revolution happening right now in the psychedelic space. Said revolution is being fueled by a growing body of evidence that suggests that medicines such as psilocybin, lsd, mdma, ketamine, and many others can have beneficial impacts on everything from anxiety to addiction and from depression to PTSD and more. But here's the question you might have, and this is one I've been struggling with mightily myself. The question is, should I do this stuff personally, while I do once in a while take some mdma, socially, I've not been able to bring myself to do any of the other psychedelics like psilocybin or LSD or ayahuasca, which many of my friends and meditation teachers have strongly recommended to me, largely because I'm afraid that as a person with panic disorder, I might be pretty much guaranteed to have a bad trip. Today I'm talking to my great friend Jay Michelson, who is a meditation teacher, author, lawyer, and dedicated experimenter with these molecules. We're talking about everything you need to know about psychedelics if you're wondering whether you should give them a try. And I should say, if you're already a dedicated psychonaut or somebody who's got some experience in this area, there's a lot in here for you as well. Jay and I talk about what the research on psychedelics shows thus far, the differences among the various drugs or medicines, the overlap between meditation and psychedelics, the difference between spirituality and healing, the dizzying question of whether these medicines have a separate consciousness, and much more. A little bit more about Jay before we dive in here. As referenced above, he's had quite a varied career. He's been a journalist for cnn, Rolling Stone, the Daily Beast, and many other platforms. He's been a lawyer, an LGBTQ activist, a rabbi, a meditation teacher, and in recent years, he's started focusing more on psychedelics as a professional pursuit. Jay is now a field scholar at EM University's center on Psychedelics and Spirituality, and he's a fellow at Harvard Law School's Project on Psychedelic Use, Law and Spiritual Experience. There is a lot in this conversation. Paid subscribers@danharris.com will get a cheat sheet which includes key takeaways and a full transcript. You will also get a guided meditation from Jay in which he helps you incorporate some of the learnings from psychedelics into your life, whether you take the medicines or not. My guy, Jay Michelson, Coming right up. Hey, before we get started, I want to make sure that you know about all the good things we've got going on@danharris.com that is my new ish online community built in partnership with Substack, where paid subscribers get cheat sheets and transcripts for every podcast episode. Plus, I do regular live AMAs, that's ask me anything sessions where I take your questions and more. It's a lot of fun. You'll also get to meet virtually lots of other folks who take all of this stuff seriously. Go to danharris.com and check it out. If you deal with anxiety, you're definitely not alone. The bad news is that it doesn't go away overnight. The good news is that you really can change your relationship to it. The Happier Meditation App offers a course called Taming Anxiety. Over the course of 10 sessions, meditation teacher Leslie Booker and anxiety expert Dr. Luana Marquez guide you through strategies to cope with challenging situations, break free from anxiety loops, and build mindfulness, compassion, and bravery. To start the Taming Anxiety course, download the Happier Meditation App today. Wherever you get your apps. I love Airbnb. I stayed in one last winter with two other families. It was in Plantation, Florida, and we all had our kids with us and the backyard was like a private playground. It had a soccer pitch, a volleyball, whatever you call it, a pool. And inside there was a whole playroom with games. It was nuts and it wasn't even super expensive. The thing I often say about Airbnbs is as much as I love hotels, when you're traveling with other families, to stay in the same home together is a level of bonding that you're not going to get at a hotel. So for you, maybe you want to go somewhere warm over the winter. And while you're away, you could Airbnb your home and make some extra money toward the trip. Whether you could use a little extra money to cover some bills or for something a little bit more fun, your home or spare room might be worth more than you think. Find out how much@airbnb.com host have you ever gotten tired of searching for your favorite movies and TV shows across your numerous streaming accounts? It can be incredibly frustrating to have to click among all the different apps and figure out where's that phone football game being played? Or where can I watch that movie? And I say this as a dude who watches no small amount of TV So there's good news here. On Prime Video, you can add over 100 premium subscriptions, including Macs, Apple TV and Paramount plus all in one app. In other words, you can watch all the stuff you want to watch all in one place. No more clicking around, frustrated and confused. Experience the convenience of having your favorite subscriptions in your prime video account with one login and one password. There are more than 100 premium and specialty subscriptions that you can check out and unlock a world of movies, TV and sports all in one app. On Max. I love the White Lotus and I also love the Last of Us. And I hear there's a new season of that coming up. Check out the add on subscriptions on Prime Video. Jay Michaelson, my old friend, welcome back to the show.
- [06:06]
Jay Michelson
Thanks, Dan. It's good to be back. It's been a while.
- [06:09]
Dan Harris
Yeah, it has been a while. Too long. We should be doing this more regularly. All right, so today we're talking about psychedelics, which I'm really excited to talk about with you. As you have pointed out, you have a long history in meditation, leading retreats, working at meditation apps, writing about it, but you're kind of switching your focus of late to psychedelics. That's not to say you're like forsaking meditation, but your psychedelics are really of taking up more of your bandwidth these days. So I'm just curious, like, what, what happened there?
- [06:39]
Jay Michelson
A few things, I think. First, you know, I actually have a longer psychedelic history than a meditation history. My first experience was, gosh, 1991 at Columbia University with not a great mindset, not a great setting, and definitely not the experience I would recommend to others. But, you know, there was, there was not just stigma around psychedelics, but I really do feel like there was a sense of, well, this will never gain wide acceptance. And I remember meeting Rick Doblin, who's one of the foremost figures in contemporary psychedelics, at burning man in 2003 or four, somewhere around there. And he was running around telling people we were going to legalize MDMA and for medical use. And I just thought he was nuts. I was like, well, that's never going to happen. So it just felt like something that was in the background of my own spiritual practice or contemplative practice, but not something that would really gain wider purchase. And, and, you know, obviously there was a psychedelic underground for decades and I, I wouldn't say I was really part of it. I mean, I participated a little bit, but it didn't feel like, I don't know, it wasn't leading to the kind of liberation that I was seeking at the time. You know, meditation really was. And just in the last few years, so obviously it's. There's been a public change around psychedelics and I think it's pretty remarkable how quickly it's happened. And there was also a personal change for me. You know, I used to go on long meditation retreats, you know, six week meditation retreats, three month meditation retreats, and now I have a seven year old and I'm not doing that. And you know, I know you've been on a few retreats finally again, you know, also as a parent, but it's, you know, it's. It's a bigger lift. And the kind of meditation work that I found and still find really healing just takes. It's not the day to day. You know, I'm not disparaging that, obviously, it's like your bread and butter, but. But the kind of deep work that I want to do is really work that happens on retreat and that just became less accessible because of the way I want a parent. And psychedelics kind of stepped into some of that. That space.
- [08:46]
Dan Harris
H. So there's the personal aspect of this and I really want to go deep on that when the time is right. And then there's also this sort of sociopolitical aspect too, that meditation had its journey. I mean, it's still happening. There was a time when it was. It wasn't socially acceptable to admit you meditated in 2003 or even 2010, but that's really changed. But we're earlier in the hype cycle or the public acceptance cycle or the movement with psychedelics. And so that's also interesting to you as well.
- [09:20]
Jay Michelson
Yeah, definitely. I mean, you won like, you know, you persuaded America that meditation was for normies also. And obviously I'm joking a little bit. Avi did play a real role in that. But there has been this transformation and I think. Yeah, you know, so part of it is just flitting to the next exciting thing a little bit. But I want to give myself a little more credit than that. You know, I think there really is this moment of excitement in the field and there's a lot of. Just like there was in mindfulness. I remember when, you know, when you and I were working together, almost like 10 years ago or something. You know, there's a real mix of quality, there's a mix of motives, there's people who you definitely trust and you feel like, wow, this person is for real. And then you meet someone else and you're like, well, that person's maybe not so for real. And that's true in psychedelics as well. It's not like a rosy Eden of idealists. It's a very broad field, just like going to some of those big meditation conferences five, 10 years ago. But there is this kind of exciting moment and I also felt like I loved our work together at 10% happier. I still teach meditation a little bit. You know, I'm leading a winter meditation retreat. But it doesn't have the edge for me that the psychedelic work really does. And so for a while I was like figuring out what's my lane. And it ended up being not working, not being a facilitator, which I don't feel called to do, and not working for one of the kind of companies, but actually being back in the academic world where I have a PhD in religion and the rabbinic ordination as well. And so it's kind of looking at using some of those lenses that I've developed in contemplative practice to look at psychedelic practice.
- [10:59]
Dan Harris
So you're now, and I will have said this in the introduction, but just to make it clear, you have a perch at Emory. Maybe say a little bit about what your work consists of.
- [11:09]
Jay Michelson
Sure. So I have two perches. When this episode airs, I'll also be a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, where I'll be for the spring of 20. In March of 2025, I'm co facilitating, co organizing a symposium on psychedelics, law and religion, looking at the kind of religious, theological, philosophical bases for contemporary psychedelic use and also the legal doctrines that might enable it to gain legal recognition. And that's super exciting. Also teaching on that subject at the law school and at Emory. I'm part of a center called the Emory center for Psychedelics and Spirituality, which really wants to kind of bring these pieces together. It started out a lot around spiritual care or chaplaincy and psychedelic chaplaincy in particular. But also there's a number of scientists on staff doing a lot of kind of scientific work there. I'm working on, I'm co editing with my amazing co editor Caroline Peacock, an anthology of psychedelic spiritual experiences so focused on what in our corner of the meditation world, we would call the deep end. But what's interesting, and I think unlike most meditation, is that people dive into the deep end by accident on psychedelics. Right. So you might go to a psychedelic assisted therapy session, you know, a legal session with ketamine, for example, or a study around MDMA or some other compound, and have an intention that's about mental health, right? You're suffering from PTSD or depression or anxiety or some other condition. And then you become what I call an accidental mystic. Like you have some kind of. And this happens to atheists. Like you have some kind of profound. The acronym that's now used in the literature is cert S E R T Spiritual, existential, religious or theological experience. So again, if you're an atheist, you might not interpret it as theological, but you would have some kind of peak experience. And those can even be unwanted. And that can happen occasionally. Certainly happens in deep meditation on retreat. It doesn't happen that much in daily practice, but in psychedelic practice it really can. So we're looking at those kinds of folks as well. And what experiences are generated in those contexts. And it also, the greater your S E R T experience, the more effective the psychedelic therapy tends to be for the mental health outcome. So you get better mental health outcomes, the more you have these kind of profound, sometimes life changing experiences. And we don't really know why you.
- [13:30]
Dan Harris
Say that people can have unwanted or unplanned mystical experiences. But I, I thought the mystical experience was. That's what you're signing up for because that's the healing part.
- [13:41]
Jay Michelson
Yes and no. I mean, I think it depends. You know, sometimes the healing part is just what I would call more psychotherapeutic. It's used a lot in trauma, for example. You know, being able to be present with one's trauma experience can be really powerful. But then material just comes up that you didn't really plan for. I mean, I remember we love to tell our meditation stories now I also can tell my psychedelic stories. I went down to Peru to try ayahuasca for the first time in 2007. And yeah, I had a set of intentions, but then I didn't expect to spend hours of that experience locked in a coffin with my father who had died 15 years earlier. And that was hard, right? That was really hard. I do look back on it as ultimately really powerful in a good way, but it was also just really hard. It might not be that intense for, you know, a different medicine and a lower dose, but stuff comes up just like on meditation retreat. My very first meditation retreat was. What was that? 2002, I think. And I had, I've written about this. But then I actually did have spiritual intentions. I'd read about meditation and nobody told me that in order to get to like the yummy parts at the end of retreat, you have to go through four or five days of potential hell, right? Not just Restlessness, but also, and doubt and uncertainty and can I do this? But stuff comes up and there again, I mean, coincidentally or not, stuff around my parents came up and I was seeing all kinds of patterns that I had that I hadn't really noticed before. And that's not what I thought I was signing up for on that meditation retreat at all. But that's the nature of these processes.
- [15:14]
Dan Harris
But to me, to me, as somebody who, as you know, has a lot of reluctance around certain psychedelics like ayahuasca and psilocybin, not to mention 5 Meo, DMT and all the heavy duty stuff, I have some reluctance around for precisely that reason. Being locked in a coffin or just being locked in a thing I can't escape. If I go on a meditation retreat and tough stuff comes up, I know I can walk to my car and leave. But if you're in one of these locked in a coffin on ayahuasca and fucking Costa Rica experiences, there's no getting out. And to me, that's why I'm not doing this stuff.
- [15:57]
Jay Michelson
I have a lot to say about that first, you know, I think that's actually the right understanding, maybe not the fear and stuff. I'll talk you into this eventually, but more the distinction. There's a lot that meditation and psychedelics have in common, but there's a lot they don't have in common. The potential for harm in the psychedelic space, intentional or not, on the part of the facilitator, is really an order of magnitude different. These are dangerous things that for if, if people enter into them without proper guidance, without proper screening. I'll do another analogy. You know, in the meditation context, there were some teachers who would say up until around 10, 20 years ago, just sit with it, no matter what the it was. But then we learned over time, like sometimes the it is deep childhood trauma and it's really bad advice to tell somebody, just sit with it. Like they may not have the mental emotional infrastructure to just sit with it and tough it out or something. And so now we have trauma, informed mindfulness, right? Where sometimes you don't want to sit with it, sometimes it's too hot to the touch and it's not something that you're ready to just be with in some kind of meditationy way. Similarly, in psychedelics, you know, there should be any responsible facilitator, shaman, whatever, spiritual leader, mental health practitioner will screen, you know, a participant. And if somebody has kind of an anxiety disorder or panic disorder around enclosed spaces and things like that, yeah, you want to choose the physical setting and the dosage of the. Of the medicine appropriately. And just look, psychedelics are incredibly suggestive, meaning they lead to a lot of suggestibility. And that can be really helpful with a good therapist or with a good guide. You can be suggested all kinds of healing that could actually work because we're just talking about the brain anyway. Right. If you actually. It's like the placebo effect on steroids, you really can think yourself into healing in some of these conditions. But you can also be suggested all kinds of things that are negative, like negative suggestibility. You can go in a little bit of a narcissist and come out an even bigger narcissist. You can go in with some struggle with anxiety or with panic and come out with an even greater struggle because it wasn't handled carefully and thoughtfully. So it's not. This will sound very woo. And you can edit it out if it's too woo. I honor your anxiety around it because it's true. I did have one experience also in Ayahuasca, a different one, where I was able to speak just barely. And I said to the person who was guiding me, I want to come down. And he said very compassionately, you cannot. I mean, you just. You cannot absent, you know, massive medical intervention, which was not on the table. And it is. It is setting sail for that journey. But I do think, you know, I mean, there was a lot of stuff that came up in those early experiences. This is already now, 17 years ago, that ultimately I was. I am the better for having experienced. And I'll hasten to add, that's not necessarily true for everyone. There is sort of an overbelief in psychedelics that one finds sometimes, just like there's an overbelief in meditation, that any negative experience ultimately, or any difficult experience is ultimately for the best. That's also not true. Sometimes it is. I would say even a majority of the time it might be, although that's not based on data. But sometimes difficult experiences are just really difficult. And I think the field is quickly having to mature a little bit as psychedelics move beyond, you know, the kind of people who are interested in new and exciting things to normal people. It's just like sushi. Right. Remember when sushi came out in America in, like the 90s or whenever it was the 80s, I guess.
- [19:33]
Dan Harris
Yeah.
- [19:33]
Jay Michelson
And it was just weirdos, right. Who ate sushi. So, you know, you could. It was fine when it's just the. The adventurers doing it. But now, Right. Everybody does. Although it still correlates with political affiliation, by the way, depending on how progressive or conservative you are, it correlates with how much you like sushi for Americans.
- [19:51]
Dan Harris
I wonder if the same correlation is there for psychedelics.
- [19:54]
Jay Michelson
I don't think it is, actually. It's a really interesting. I would say the psychedelics field is more politically diverse than the meditation field. Most sort of, we could say Western Buddhists or whatever the term is. We want to use people who come to Buddhism later in life and don't have that as part of their family heritage. They tend to be on the more liberal side. Not entirely, but mostly, certainly in the mindfulness world, TM has more people who are more on the conservative side of the spectrum. Transcendental meditation. But in psychedelics, no. I mean, obviously it's at the highest levels of power. Right? Elon Musk, Peter Thiel. These are people with deep psychedelic experience and not quite conservative. Maybe too broad of a term. I mean, these aren't, let's say, Christian conservatives, but they're in. Obviously they're in the Trump administration and they have their view about the world that they want to live in. And that's true of a number of the leading funders in the psychedelic space and some of the biggest investors. So it's actually, I think it actually speaks to changes in American politics more than anything else. I think to be on the right politically used to mean you were a very traditional sort of buttoned up kind of person and you might have been religious or whatever, but you were a conservative with a small C person. And now, for better or for worse, I'm not making a value judgment here, although, as you know, I have plenty of them to make for now, for better, for worse. To be on the right politically does not correlate with being a sort of tight, buttoned up person necessarily. And so these aren't, you know, Reagan conservatives, but they are people on the right politically. And, you know, for some people in the psychedelic world, that's welcome, and for others it's troubling, but it's certainly a reality and it's a fascinating thing. I mean, I think we have a general idea like, oh, you're like dropping acid. You must be some hippie. Definitely not the case.
- [21:37]
Dan Harris
I just want to orient the listener for a second. My mind as the interviewer here is racing a little bit because we've touched on so many things that I want to go deeper on and I want to just let the listener know that I. There are a lot of threads that JS tantalizingly dropped, including this Whole question of should you do psychedelics even if you're terrified of it. We will come back to that. Let's just stay on the, on the high level for, for a little bit. We talked about the fact that psychedelics is kind of in an earlier stage than meditation is in terms of public acceptance. I would imagine that what's driving both of them, and I'd be curious to see what your view is on this, is a combination of one, high levels of unhappiness in the culture, so people are looking for things, and two, a growing body of science suggesting first that meditation is actually quite good for you and now that psychedelics can be quite good for you. Would you agree with that analysis?
- [22:31]
Jay Michelson
Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, I think the mental health crisis in this country goes by many names. Sometimes it's a crisis of meaning. You know, people losing, certainly losing faith in traditional religion, but also in other forms of meaning. And sometimes it goes by the loneliness crisis and the loneliness epidemic, which is pervasive. And I know listeners of the podcast know about that. And I think. Right. A lot of it is just, you know, we do live in unsettling times. And again, we don't even need to do the political side, just the pace of technological change, right. The pace of social change in America that has led to a lot of different phenomena. That this is where I do a lot of my work, is this nexus, I would say, between psychology, spirituality, et cetera, on the one hand, and politics on the other. It's led to a lot of political consequences. And I think it has also led a lot of folks to look for ways to find meaning and purpose and balance that might not have been in the mainstream, you know, a generation ago. And the data is solid, right? I mean, it's very solid on meditation and mindfulness and it's. It's very solid for, I would call it. What's really been studied on the psychedelic side is more dealing with acute mental health conditions or problems, like I've mentioned already, ptsd, intractable anxiety, medication resistant depression, psychedelics of the data again, is kind of almost off the charts for many people. So I think that's right. I think it's the combination of this profoundly unsettling or dislocating moment and on the one hand, and like you said, the science on the other, and I wonder, just looking as a scholar of religion, the growth in the nones, the N O N E S is the fastest growing religious denomination in America. Those are people who have no religious affiliation. They might be Another acronym for listeners, the sbnr, the Spiritual but not Religious Folks. But again, these are folks who may not have a structure and a community and a kind of practice that infuses their whole life the way that traditional religious people do. And for a lot of reasons I don't think people are going to go back to traditional religion. And yet we know what it's like. We're still in that. You remember that book like 30 years ago, bowling Alone, that most Americans used to bowl in leagues and now we mostly just bowl alone with a couple of friends. We're with that magnified. Right. And now we're bowling alone on our computers. Right. We're not even going to the bowling alley. And if we're gaming alone or whatever it is that we're doing. And, and that's not, that's in tension with some fundamental aspects of Homo sapiens as evolution has, has designed us.
- [25:07]
Dan Harris
Yeah, I think that's all spot on. Can you say a little bit more about what the research is saying or suggesting about the benefits of psychedelics?
- [25:16]
Jay Michelson
I think it's the most exciting question right now. I don't know if it's the most pressing for everybody, but for me it's like what exactly is doing the change? We don't really know that in mindfulness either. We know sort of try this intervention and here's the outcome. And we have ideas about neuroplasticity and about growth in neural functioning in the prefrontal cortex and so on. But even in meditation we're not 100% sure what really is the agent of change in psychedelics. The question, and I'll put the question first before where I think the answer may be headed. Is it the experience, right. Is it the difficult stuff that comes up and you sit with it and you confront it and so on, or is it actually the chemical, one of the psychedelics that's now in front of the FDA for approval basically is a trip free form of psilocybin. You don't really have the kind of full on mushroom trip that you might have with psilocybin. You have some effects, but you do have chemical changes in the brain and it's might. It might be the case. I was just reading a study that was now saying that some of the thinking around SSRIs, right. The most common medication for depression has switched in the last 10, 15 years. That it may not even be about serotonin reuptake inhibiting. It may just be about neural growth. Right. We're stimulating the growth of new neural functions New neural pathways. That may be true for psychedelics. We do know that they have that effect. So that people have been put in, you know, the various kind of brain scans and it's like the kind of growth in just in brain matter and brain mass after psychedelics is unparalleled in anything else, even advanced meditators. So it could just be that it could be a physical thing happening to the brain, which is an interesting conundrum for those of us who are interested, as I am, in psychedelics as a kind of contemplative practice or a spiritual practice, because it may be that the majority of people who encounter them won't have those experiences because that's actually orthogonal to success. So I didn't answer your question because I got so interested in this other question. But the clinical data. The clinical data is very promising. It is, as I mentioned, it's less focused on, I would say overall happiness than meditation. Mindfulness data is. And it's more focused on treatment for difficult mental health conditions. But yeah, again, just on ptsd. So listeners may not know. I'll just do a short thing. The first psychedelic related application for medication just got turned down by the FDA in August of 2024. And this was using MDMA plus therapy to treat people with post traumatic stress disorder. The data was really off the charts in terms of success. These were folks, you know, veterans and others, survivors of abuse and people who have really gone through very serious trauma, had more progress on psychedelics than in any other intervention. The application was refused for a whole variety of complicated reasons that probably would take us too far astray. But the promise of MDMA assisted therapy was really quite clear. And I think eventually that application may actually be re approved very soon because of the change in administration in Washington. But even if not that, I think it's just the promise of the medication is remarkable. And I've seen this anecdotally as well. People just really stuck. And this I think too I've seen it more in psychedelics than in meditation, with meditation, you know, I've seen my like family stuff so clearly so many times in meditation, in therapy and other contexts. And I think one of the frustrations that we just have to work with if we're practitioners, certainly if we're Buddhist practitioners, is to just, you know, it's like the serenity prayer. It's accepting the things that we can be with but maybe not change. And so maybe I can have a better relationship with the inner critic. Maybe I could have a more self compassionate relationship with panic or Anxiety disorder. But I got to admit, I'm not a really good Buddhist sometimes. And I actually sometimes want it to go away. I want the condition to change. And there is a capacity for these psychedelic interventions to get in there and make a change that even long term meditation sometimes doesn't do. We will cure you, Dan. We're going to lock you in that coffin and you are going to fly Cessnas on your own. Is it the flying? Is it. Would that be easier maybe if you're in control of the plane? Would that be easier, you think, or harder? It'd be a smaller plane.
- [29:35]
Dan Harris
I mean, certainly control is part of this, but if you're. Even if I'm flying the plane, I can't get out of it.
- [29:41]
Jay Michelson
Right.
- [29:42]
Dan Harris
At any moment. Right. And so for me, that seems to be the hang up. If I'm in an elevator and it's small and I don't have control, I can't get out when I want, or if I'm on a plane and they've just locked the door, that can be a very terrifying moment for me. And so that seems to be the hang up. And that's why I'm worried about psychedelic experiences. Because my earliest panic attacks in my life when I was 13 or 14 were smoking weed and having a bad trip. And I know what that's like. You're in hell. You are. It feels like hell.
- [30:12]
Jay Michelson
Yeah. I would say two things. First, I want to go even earlier. Like, have you done it in any, like, therapy stuff? Like, were you locked in a closet when you were five or something like that? Or has there ever been a narrative exploration of where this comes from?
- [30:25]
Dan Harris
There has. My psychiatrist has been very diligent and dogged in trying to get to the root of all of this, and we have not. Or I've been a terrible patient in that I can't remember anything other than those first weed experiences where I felt really trapped and claustrophobic.
- [30:44]
Jay Michelson
Interesting. Yeah. So that's the first thing I was like, just curious about that. What's tricky with psychedelics is that aspect of suggestibility. So, you know, you could easily actually get in contact with some suppressed memory that you have that might be at the root of this. Or you might invent it. You know, you might actually. I mean, then it. So then it, like, comes up. I mean, in a certain way. If you invent a false memory and then come to peace with it and now you're cured, maybe that's not a bad result. On the other hand, you might also create some kind of new Story that may not be true and may not actually be healing. I mean, a lot of my early experiences were unguided, right? It's like just me in the desert at Burning man or something. And I did actually, I then went, I had some, what I thought might have been memories of suppressed trauma. And I then went to like a very trusted guide and teacher. And we work through it in a more narrative way in ordinary mind. And it just doesn't seem like that was true. That was something that was suggested in the experience. But anyway, imagine if that is at the root of this struggle and then you did actually uncover it. Let's say it was true and not a false memory. You can see already the kind of tantalizing liberating potential or just realizing that you can survive it. You know, you can actually be in that tight enclosed place and not get out for an hour and you survive. There's a lot of ways in which that kind of work can happen.
- [32:12]
Dan Harris
That all completely makes sense for me and lands for me. And I don't want to do it.
- [32:19]
Jay Michelson
No, don't do it. Let me just be really clear, like don't do it. Like if you're. So for folks who aren't familiar this, the standard formulation is like, what, what are the conditions that determine your kind of experience, your psychedelic experience? So it's usually drug set, which is mindset and setting. So the drug obviously and the dosage determines what the experience will be like. But equally important is what you have going in. So if you have a lot of fear and resistance and reluctance, that shit's going to hit the fan. That may be a difficult experience because of what you have going in. So you want to like really get in a mindset that's a little more open to the experience before having the experience, rather than think like, well, I'm just going to jump off the cliff and see what happens. And then the setting, right, the setting includes your physical setting, but also, you know, making sure it's a safe space. I don't know, I'd be interested to know your 13 year old weed experience. If it was anything like my like 17 year old weed experience, this was not the best set and setting probably wasn't the best drug either. Probably didn't get, you know, really good stuff. But it also like it's the setting is also your guide, it's your companions, it's the people that you're with. Are you in a safe place? Are you in a supportive environment? Obviously you wouldn't physically be in an enclosed space, right? Most of these, like, psychedelic assisted therapy spaces are just like cozy living rooms, you know, with the couch and stuff. But no, I. Yeah, I just, I joke that I, I do want to talk you into it, but I want to talk you into it first. Right. Like, I want to get. Adjust the mindset first because, yeah, if there's, you know, a lot of folks who have success on the therapeutic side as well as the spiritual side and those. We can talk about the relationship between those two if you want. A lot of them are desperate. The stories that you read from some of the veterans who were in the MDMA trials, you know, these were people who had either attempted suicide or experienced suicidal ideation for years. These are people whose lives had been wrecked, their relationships that they couldn't hold down a job. These were people really, really struggling and they were desperate enough to give this a try. I mean, there are people working with vets with ptsd, with ayahuasca as well, not just mdma. And when there's that much of a real yearning to heal from something that's that hard, that mindset can carry you through even a really difficult experience.
- [34:37]
Dan Harris
I believe it.
- [34:37]
Jay Michelson
I remember what it was like working with you in Covid. Right. I mean, you know, sometimes meditation can feel like, I would say, at its. Well, maybe not at its worst, but at its close to worst. It's like helping the worried. Well, you know, like the people who are. They're basically doing fine and they're just like, would like to do a little bit more fine. And look, I'm. I'm for alleviating suffering wherever it is, like, that's fine. I don't want to denigrate that, but sometimes it's really not. It's really more profound. Right. And during the pandemic, it was like that people working with mindfulness, people who are incarcerated is like that. And people who are really, you know, really suffering. Again, I don't want to minimize what I'd call everyday dukkha. Everyday suffering. You know, we all experience it and. And meditation really helps. But when you encounter folks who really are hurting and this can really help. It's been true for me in meditation and in psychedelics. It's really quite profound.
- [35:34]
Dan Harris
I agree. Coming up, we get into the nitty gritty of the various psychedelics, and this is where things get awesome and weird. We unpack the question of whether some of these medicines might have a separate consciousness. I got a great new pair of running shoes the other day sent to me by the folks over at Brooks who make running shoes and they're sponsoring this episode. These shoes are their new glycerin twin 22 shoes and I worked out in them and they're great. The glycerin 22 is for anybody who craves a cushioned, distraction free experience that allows you to savor every step. Their new DNA tuned next generation nitrogen infused foam is created with dual size cell technology. Larger cells in the heel provide plush landings while smaller cells in the forefoot invite responsive toe offs. The wide platform plus the tuned heel and forefoot help your foot to land and transition from heel to toe smoothly and steadily. It's very obvious wearing these shoes that these folks over at Brooks spend a lot of time thinking about how to up your game, whatever workout you're doing, or even just taking a walk. Also, the shoes look great, so there's that. Learn more@brooksrunning.com this message is brought to.
- [36:54]
Unknown
You by Apple Card Apple Card is everything a credit card should be. It's easy to manage, built to be secure, and gives users up to 3% daily cash back on every purchase. The best part about Apple Card is applying is quick and easy. Apply in the Wallet app on iPhone and see your credit limit offer in minutes subject to credit approval. Apple Card by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City Branch Member FDIC terms.
- [37:16]
Dan Harris
And more@applecard.com the Happier Meditation app has a new course. It's called Even Now Love A Prescription for Connection. It is taught by Joseph Goldstein and others and it invites you to pause, breathe and choose love, even in life's messiest moments. With tools to strengthen connection, rethink relationships as a lab for love, and build self compassion, it's a useful way to approach the new year with clarity and care. You can download the Happier Meditation app and check out Even Now Love Today. And just to be clear, I'm super intrigued. That's why I'm doing this episode in the Promise of Psychedelics. I'm just being very open about some of my reservations, in part because I want to work it out with you and talk to you and but the other part is that I think I'm speaking for a non trivial percentage of the audience who are trying to figure out should I do psychedelics? Should I do more of them if I've already done them? And so I want to help people think this stuff through for themselves.
- [38:17]
Jay Michelson
Yeah, and I want to throw a few more ingredients onto the salad bar. There's also microdosing. So if people know the book by Ayelet Waldman called A really Good Day an Excellent book. Just about microdosing, which you might experience a little bit of conscious effect, but really very, very little. And that itself can be incredibly helpful for people. Her book just describes her own struggles with depression and how it helped where nothing else helped. I also want to maybe distinguish between MDMA on the one hand and some of these other compounds on the other. It's not impossible to have a difficult MDMA experience, but the odds are a lot lower and it's just a lot softer. A friend of mine once said that LSD maybe shows you the truth, but MDMA shows you the love. And so it's less, it's just, it's just easier in that way. And also I think, you know, one area where I'm very active is in folks who are, in addition to the kind of healing that we've talked about, also spiritual seekers. These are people who are, who are interested in non ordinary experience and what we can, not even what we can learn from it. Yes, what we can learn from it, but also just having the experience. And you know, I know I'm a little further off on the weird continuum than you usually, but I own my place in the weird land. And you know, these are some of the most powerful experiences of my life. You know, at one of the most famous recent experiments there was a study at Johns Hopkins of clergy. And so these are people who are like make religion their life as Christians, a few Jews, a couple of Muslims as well. They focused on those communities and of clergy. Something like, I forget the exact number. It was like around half of the participants said that their experience on psychedelics was the most powerful spiritual experience they'd had in their lives. And these are professional spiritual people, right? These are guys who are there week in and week out. And that's true for me as well, mostly with 5 Meo DMT, which we haven't talked about yet. And I think that that's like another, that's like I said, it's like another item on the salad bar for some people that's actually the most profound part of the practice.
- [40:25]
Dan Harris
Can you describe some of those experiences? I'm curious. I suspect listeners are too. Like what is actually happening in the mind and then what are the downstream consequences of having those experiences?
- [40:37]
Jay Michelson
Yeah, it's all over the map. I think for some people there's like the classic unitive mystical experience where there's a sense that the ego as we see ourselves as a separate self, you know, kind of like similar to the Buddhist concept of non self really shuts down and we don't see that difference or that distinction between the individual and everything that there is. There are a lot of different ways to talk about that. We could talk about it neurologically, or we could talk about it philosophically or dharmically, but a lot of people have that experience. A lot of people, depending again, on drug set and setting, have totally different experiences. And Sidebar. One aim of the anthology that I'm working on is to complexify our notion of psychedelic spiritual experiences. To not just limit it to, like. I think there's a way in which a certain narrative, the one I just gave, became the dominant one. So, like, if you didn't feel this yet, just take more LSD or more mushrooms and, you know, then you'll really merge with all of being and you. And you'll realize that, you know, your separate self is just the wave on the ocean and doesn't have any real reality that's available. That is one experience. But they're also totally different ones. Contact with what seem to be other entities, contact with relatives who are dead. And we could say that these are memories or whatever, but I can say firsthand in the experience, they seem as real as this experience does. So whether. So I'm not saying. I'm not taking a position as to whether that is real, but I could just. The experience seems very true and seems very real in the experience itself. So with entities or other beings and so on, and there are experiences that are just profoundly suffused with a sense of beauty and love. I would say that there's a traditional Hindu formulation of like, what is ultimate reality? And that iteration is sat chit ananda, which is kind of being, consciousness, bliss. And yeah, that's kind of it. That's all that there is. In some of those five MEO experiences, there's definitely not the sense of J as separate. There is that more expansive consciousness, beings from other realms.
- [42:52]
Dan Harris
Did you say something like, I know.
- [42:55]
Jay Michelson
I don't. I don't know what to tell you, Dan. I'm telling you what the experience is. I'm still. I. I mentioned that first ayahuasca experience is 2007, so 17 years ago. I'm still processing. Like, I don't know what I think as to whether the medicine has its own separate consciousness that is out there independent from mine. But I can definitely tell you that that's what she said in the experience itself. And yeah, the ayahuasca entity is almost always experienced as a feminine presence in some way, sometimes a snake, sometimes. I don't know what it is. And it's hard from a like a rationalist sense to really square that with how I understand reality. But I guess I've definitely become a lot more woo agnostic in the last 15, 20 years than I used to be. I used to be very sure that those were just projections, mental projections. I don't know. You know, there's a scholar of religion named Jeffrey Kripal K R I P A L who's written a series of books. It's really interesting. He's kind of gone along this progression from just being a very traditional Western scholar of religion to kind of admitting like a lot of the things that seem to be paranormal he just feels are true at this point. Having spoken to hundreds of people who experience precognition, for example, or who have, you know, various non ordinary experiences. And for me, I don't. It's not a center of my life and it definitely. I'm aware that it can kind of invalidate one's credibility like oh, so you're actually just now Looney tunes. I get it. And so I'm aware of that. But I'm also want to be honest about what the experience feels like. In the experience. I forget which failed Democratic presidential candidate I think it was John Kerry said you can be certain but also be wrong. He was saying that to. I think it was George W. Bush at the time. And that's true. Right? You can definitely be certain and be wrong. And I think I have a kind of skepticism even of my own peak experiences and whether on meditation or psychedelics or spiritual practice or any other kind that is. I don't know if it's so helpful, but it's definitely part of how I relate to these experiences. So I am with you on the skeptical side. And also I could lie about the experiences and just stay in the closet and say no, no, no, it was all just me and my psychological material coming up. But that wasn't the reality of those experiences. And I should add there's a lot of different items on the salad bar. This is at the more spicy end of the salad bar. All right, these are, these are high dose ayahuasca experiences or 5 Meo DMT experiences that doesn't usually happen on even a moderate therapeutic large dose of LSD or psilocybin, certainly not mdma.
- [45:44]
Dan Harris
I may have committed a little bit of malpractice in this interview thus far in that we're talking about the various compounds as if everybody knows what they are. So 5 Meo DMT, MDMA, Psilocybin Ayahuasca, Ketamine. Can you just walk us through the salad bar in terms of like, what these different compounds are?
- [46:03]
Jay Michelson
Sure, yeah. And I assume, by the way, you know, your introduction to this episode will emphasize that we're not encouraging anyone to break the laws of any state or country and that currently a lot of these compounds are still illegal in most of the United States. So certainly, I guess there's. There's my inner lawyer coming through for folks listening. Dan is now writing a note to himself. Oh, right, cover my ass. Remember, we're not asking, not advising anyone break the law. Which is true. Yeah. I mean, it's funny, there's a large array of psychedelic compounds out there, but the ones that get talked about enough are a lot are probably fewer than 10. So I guess maybe a good way to do this is actually to back up out of our little Western bubble for a second and remember or remind folks that indigenous cultures have been using these compounds in the forms of plant medicines probably for thousands of years. We don't really know how far back ayahuasca goes. This is a brew that came along kind of in the Amazon. It's used drunk by indigenous groups in Brazil and Peru, various parts of South America. And it leads to a 4 to 12 hour experience that seems to be on another realm than this one. I guess we would call it in a Western model, we'd call it a dissociative experience in that, yeah, you're physically still present. You can check back in with the body and so on in this reality, but you also are in a. Whether it's an interior experience or some other realm experience, that's up to interpretation, but you're definitely somewhere else. So that goes back to a very long time. There's also, in some Native American groups, uses of either cactus or mushrooms of different kinds. I kind of hate the word magic mushrooms, so I just don't really like that term. But there are a variety of psychoactive mushrooms that are used that archaeological evidence as shown, and it's been used for a long time in different parts of the world, not just in the Americas, but also in Asia. And there's iboga, which is used in parts of Africa. So there are a lot, I guess I sort of give this quick tour to just remind us that this is not actually new technology as it sometimes is depicted. It's a new use of very old technologies. Obviously these cultures have very different and varying interpretations of what's going on from let's say a western scientific one. The distinction that I'VE drawn between, let's say spirituality and healing is not a distinction in a lot of indigenous. I mean, it would be ridiculous to kind of draw that distinction in some indigenous cultures. Like why would you separate out the different parts of a single process that are both healing and kind of spiritual awakening? So I guess that's helpful. Psilocybin is a synthesized version of the active ingredient in some of these psychoactive mushrooms, just as mescaline is a synthesized version of the active ingredient in some psychoactive cactuses that are also interesting. LSD was synthesized just in the 20th century, first by Albert Hoffman, kind of by accident. There's a great story which appears to actually be true that he was working on in a lab and working with different kinds of fungi and basically synthesized LSD by accident, tried it on himself, and then had a very interesting LSD trip, including riding home on his bicycle. So the day that this happened is commemorated as Bicycle Day. I've had limited experience of psychedelics on bicycles at Burning Man. I would not recommend that particular practice. And if you do do it at a place like Burning man, where there's not traffic like there is here, so. And the LSD and mushroom experiences can be somewhat similar. They're different in various ways, but they tend to last for around 4 hours. Ish. They do sometimes have a visual. I remember my first time trying lsd. I expected from the song Lucy in the sky with Diamonds by the Beatles that I would see, you know, tangerine trees and marshmallow skies. That doesn't usually happen. It's usually a little more subtle than that. But there's some visual piece and then. Yeah, it's hard to explain the shift in consciousness. It's easier to convey. And maybe you should try kind of a medium microdose where it's very, at that level. It's actually very similar to a concentrated mind state from meditation. And I think, you know, we can talk about the more. I mean, for me, I don't actually know how anyone does psychedelics without a meditation background. I mean, for me that letting go and being with the experience, including the fear that might be around the experience. You know, I learned most of that in meditation school, so to speak. And that is like incredibly valuable. You know, on, on some higher dose experiences, you know, you could really feel like you're dying. You know, you feel like you're might be leaving your body and you can feel not on. Again, not on a sort of normal dose, but a, a, a higher dose. You can feel like you're dissolving into nothing. And you. Even the parts of your brain. It's like Hal in 2001, right, where his brain is being taken apart by Dave Bowman. And so you're not even just noticing yourself fall apart. Like the part of you that's noticing is also falling apart. The brain is also, like disappearing. And to be able to sit with that or be with that, it was just meditation stuff. I mean, that's one of my first questions. When somebody's considering trying one of these compounds at a high dose is like, do you have either a meditation practice or yoga practice, some other way in which you know how to be with the difficult without freaking out or being with the freak out without freaking out? I didn't finish the tour, but I.
- [51:26]
Dan Harris
Said a lot in meditation. There still is this, for me at least, this residual sense of I am doing the thing now. I can see through the illusion of the eye at times. If you're going through what is sometimes called ego death, like the sense of I is completely falling apart, not of your own doing by some exogenous molecule. How can you sit with it when there's no you in that moment?
- [51:54]
Jay Michelson
Yeah, it's hard to explain. I mean, I think, you know, the reason I said that is, is so I. I think we've mentioned a compound. One of the active ingredients in Ayahuasca is a. A molecule called dmt, which I just realized I can't actually pronounce properly, so I won't try. There is a variant of the DMT molecule called 5MEO DMT. And these are just. These are just the chemical names for these compounds for these molecules. And so 5 Meo DMT has been a big part of my life for the last several years. And that is again, for me, like, that's the. I call it. It's like the kicker. I mean, that's the one which. Just the level of the kind of mystical ego death experience that's in that in those experiences at a high dose is unlike anything else I've ever experienced, including on meditation. So I guess the reason it's hard to answer your question is you are not there, but consciousness of some kind is there. Did I just discover God? I don't know. I'm just telling you the experience. Again, it's like there's the experience and then there's the interpretation of the experience. And everyone who tries these things says that they can't describe the experience. And that's certainly true. And any description is also interpretation. So I don't want to freight somebody else's experience with my interpretation, but my experience at that time. Yeah, no, that definitely. All of this mind that usually is doing all the thinking and the witnessing just kind of gets eroded very quickly. The 5ammo DMT experience is very short. It's like, you know, 20 minutes. And so it's like a rocket ship. And DMT is as well. So it happens very quickly. And it definitely feels like death in a way, but it's like death combined with a bubble bath. Maybe that's the pull quote for the episode. So, yeah, maybe if I were to put it even more, like, poetically, I just made this up as I'm going along. But it's like an ice cube in a hot bath. Like, the ice cube definitely disappears. It melts, but it melts into the ground of experience itself. So, you know, you've done a little bit of Dzogchen practice and we can rest in that awareness. And it does seem as though the awareness is other than the default mode network of the human brain in psychedelics. Yeah. I mean, again, it might just be a phenomenal experience happening between my ears. Right. I'm not taking a firm ontological standard, but phenomenologically, meaning what the phenomenon of the experience is, it's definitely the ice cube in the bath. And you're just the bath. You've always just been the bath. You just thought you were an ice cube.
- [54:32]
Dan Harris
It's so interesting. Just because I don't want to forget them. In terms of your list of the various psychedelics, there are a few compounds that we left out. MDMA and ketamine.
- [54:45]
Jay Michelson
Yeah. So MDMA was also synthesized by the Shulgins, a husband and wife team that synthesized a whole huge variety of psychedelic compounds. And MDMA is. So there's a term. Some people like the term entheogen for some psychedelics, but it's a religious term. It brings the God within, or you experience the divine within. MDMA is sometimes called an empathogen, meaning it brings in a kind of empathy and emotional resonance that is not usually part of how we experience ourselves. And that's a good term, empathogen. I think it's. It's right that, you know, it does show you the love. It can often lead to a lot of euphoria. One of my most powerful MDMA experiences was actually just having a long conversation with someone I was in a relationship with at the time. And it wasn't sure. We weren't really sure if we were going to stay in that relationship. It did eventually end and we were just able to have that conversation on MDMA that we just were unable to have in regular life. And it's not like just a disinhibitor, let's say, like alcohol, because you're really still quite clear a lot of the parts of that experience, but it just somehow makes it possible to communicate in an intimate way. That's not possible a lot of the time in daily life, at least not for me. A sort of neurotic introvert with social anxiety. MDMA is also just really fun. It's, you know, Molly or Ecstasy. It's used in, in the kind of the club world. It's fun to go dancing on mdma. It's fun to be with your intimate partner or partners on mdma. Like, it's a lot of fun. And I think I would just sort of say one of the biggest concerns around legalizing MDMA assisted therapy is the risk of addiction. Right? I mean, the FDA just went through it with opioids where they're sort of allowed a lot of permitting a very highly addictive medication for people, and then millions of people got addicted. And I think MDMA is not physically addictive in the way that opioids are. And it also is kind of a bigger lift. I mean, it's hard for me to imagine. I don't think the brain could withstand, like taking MDMA every day for any period of time. But still, there's still an abuse potential and definitely the government is aware of that and wondering how to guard against it. Ketamine is actually kind of an interesting example of that because it is legal for a number of purposes. A lot of folks may not know just in general, when it comes to Big Pharma. A huge percentage of prescriptions are what's called off label, meaning that a drug has been approved for a particular purpose, but it also works for other purposes, and that's how it gets prescribed. The example I often give is there's a medication which was originally only approved for schizophrenia called Abilify. It was an antipsychotic, but then it was being prescribed off label for depression for quite some time. Now it's also approved for depression as well. And so this is true now for ketamine, which has a variety of uses, including being a tranquilizer, which can also be used in low or high doses for a variety of both mental health conditions and I would say, general wellness. And you can now get ketamine legally in a lot of, I think most states, just like you would get any other over the counter drug. But ketamine also has an addictive capacity to it. And there, unlike mdma, you really can take ketamine every day and you can overdose on ketamine and people can, you know, fall into harm in that way. There's also the high dose usage of ketamine where you kind of go into. It's similar to what I was talking about before with LSD and with mushrooms and even ayahuasca, where you go into an internal experience and can do all kinds of really powerful work on the self. And of all of the things that we've said, I sort of saved ketamine for last, for not by intention. That's actually the most accessible because it is legal in a lot of places. And you can walk into a clinic in New York City and complete a pre screening interview to make sure that you're, you know, eligible for it and try it and experience it. So that's most of the salad bar. I would also say that a lot of people use cannabis as a quasi psychedelic. Certainly if you use enough of it, you get a lot of the standard psychedelic effects. It's also used for recreation, but it's also used, you know, for pain management. And it can be paradoxically because, you know, weed often makes people like us edgy and more anxious. It can also paradoxically be used as a treatment for anxiety and just sort of shuts down some of the habitual responses that we usually have to difficult stimuli. That was a lot. I just wore a science hat there for a little bit. Now I can put on my religious studies hat again.
- [59:16]
Dan Harris
Was awesome. Coming up, Jay talks about the nuts and bolts of how to operationalize the advice and information he has shared in this interview. Whether or not you want to try psychedelics yourself, one of the trickiest parts of being a parent is finding healthy food for your kids. I try not to be overly strict about it, but there are, you know, lots of unhealthy things you don't want your kid eating. Either because they're blatantly unhealthy or because they just, in my case, some foods I recognize are just. They don't mix with my son's nervous system. And that's why I love Thrive Market. It's like having a personal guide to healthier living for your whole family. And with their on site filters, you can shop based on what matters most to your family. Family. Low sugar, gluten free, organic, high protein, all just a click away. There's another cool feature called the Healthy Swaps scanner which you can find in the Thrive Market app. Here's how it works. You can scan a product that you're used to buying and it instantly recommends cleaner, healthier alternatives. One option I particularly like is lesser evil popcorn, which is delicious and that's the kind of thing you can find if you use the Healthy Swaps scanner in the Thrive Market. Apple Ready for a junk free start to 2025? Head to thrivemarket.comHarris and get 30% off your first order plus a free $60 gift. That's T-R-I V E market.com Harris thrivemarket.com Harris do you experience excessive bouts of money stress? Do you avoid your bank balance like it's a text from an example? Do you feel guilt in second guessing about your spending? If you answered yes, you may be suffering from financial funk. Ynab, spelled Y N A B is a life changing app designed to cure financial funk with a simple method that offers total control of your money. The average YNAB user reports saving close to $600 in the first month and 6,000 in the first year. Side effects may include less financial strain, getting better sleep, and eliminating arguments about money. Warning Using YNAB may be habit forming before starting Ask youk Wallet if adding more joy to every day and every dollar is right for you. Life is short. Spend it well with YNAB. Listeners of 10% Happier can claim an exclusive 3 month trial subscription for free with no credit card required at www.ynabynab.com Happier actually, I'm going to get you to put on the hat of Practical Advisor because in this final section of the interview, I want to just really help people think through for themselves whether any of these compounds might be a fit. Where do you start? How do you find a good guide? What do you do about the fact that some of these things are illegal? Like, let's just help people think through how they can operationalize some of the advice and information that we've already shared thus far in the interview.
- [62:28]
Jay Michelson
Yeah, I love that. So the first thing is like we I don't know if we're quite in the Wild west phase of this, but we are a little bit. It's still really early in the field's development and so, you know, buyer beware, caveat emptor. I think within a very short period of time, and I'll take only a minute to say this, the incoming administration, the Trump administration, like I mentioned, has a lot of pro psychedelic people in it and it's possible that we may actually see very rapid approval of various medical uses of psychedelics for that reason. Whether That's a good thing or a bad thing. We could have a different conversation, but it may be the case that we will see a lot of psychedelics on the market sooner than we might expect. We'll see how that plays out. Even so, even as that happens, I think we'll see a bit of a Wild west moment where there are some folks who you clearly can trust and some you don't. And so I think it's a lot like finding a physician or a psychiatrist who you trust. I would not say there could be a misconception that it's just about the pill, and I think that is not true. It is also about integration after your experience, and it's also about possibly being guided or helped or facilitated in the experience. This is one reason, by the way, I've used the term MDMA assisted therapy, because when that was put forward, it was not put out as like, just take this pill and you'll cure from ptsd. It was, take this pill in the context of a therapy session, and then we can work on PTSD and other and other challenges. So that's the first thing I would say is just I don't think it's like, don't enter into the field, but just be aware that it's at an early phase and we don't yet have, like, the clear name brand. You know, go to these guys. There are name brands that I won't name because I don't want to, like, endorse or whatever, but there are those. But it's still early. So having said that, I think first piece is like checking in about what the intention is. And the intention could be anything. It could just be exploration. It could be if it's a spiritual intention. There are spiritual communities that exist that are not that hard to find, certainly in the places where psilocybin is legal. Right. So just, I think, limited right now. But in places where it's legal, it's possible to access those medicines. Or it could be if it's a specific mental health condition. Looking for therapists, you know, and asking a mental health professional what they think. There are plenty of skeptics out there. So your. Your first answer may be, I don't advise that. But there are also people who are properly skeptical who would say, I, I do or don't advise it for you. And that can be really, you know, helpful, I think, to somebody considering this and do some reading. You know, I mentioned Ayelet Waldman's book. There's a great book on, like, ayahuasca retreats that just came out by a journalist named Ernesto Lodongo called Trippy. And it has a lot of that. There's a whole shelf, I think, of books. And just as in anything else, there's good books and not so good books. Check out what people's experiences are with these kinds of therapeutic modalities on the one hand and kind of spiritual searches on the other. So I think it's like, what's the intention? Is that really helpful in clarifying? And that can lead someone to think about which medicine, which compound might be the right one for them. If hearing me describe a rocket ship mystical experience awakens something in the heart of someone listening to those words, well, great, check in with that. See if that is real. See what that's about. If it awakens, like, holy shit, I definitely don't want to do that. I would listen to that. Not just let it drive the bus. Don't let fear dictate our lives. But seeing that reluctance is just like, okay, so yeah, there's some reluctance around that. And I've been very, you know, I'm not like a frequent flyer with these things. I do take them seriously. They are sacred to some people, and rightly so. So I, I use a lot of discernment and discretion in deciding when and with whom and how much and what the context is. That's served me well so far.
- [66:21]
Dan Harris
What about for people like me? Who. The rocket ship does stir something in my heart, so to speak. And I have the reluctance because of my panic disorder. For people like me, I would imagine, and I'm guessing here, and you'll tell me if I'm right or wrong, that maybe a first step is to start small with either some micro dosing or some somewhat low dosing under, you know, therapeutic guidance as a way to kind of get my feet wet, build a little confidence and move from there.
- [66:48]
Jay Michelson
Yeah, that sounds great. Have the person who you trust in your life be in on the process. If it's a psychiatrist or therapist, great. If it's somebody else, that's fine. Like, my advice would not be to go it alone.
- [67:00]
Dan Harris
No.
- [67:01]
Jay Michelson
And I would say like also. Well, I mean, I did it, I went alone. Right. I'm in my 20s.
- [67:06]
Dan Harris
Right.
- [67:06]
Jay Michelson
You know, I would say like 90% of my, you know, if we just total up the number of experiences, maybe not 90, maybe like three quarters of my experiences are, were alone. And I don't regret any of that. I just think it could be easier for some people. And I tend to be less risk averse in some ways than other people are. I would also say here's a question that I'll just put out there, which is like, what's the worst that can happen in the panic context? So there are people for whom all psychedelics are contraindicated. Because the worst that could happen would be something that lasts after the experience is over. And that's very difficult to integrate. It's not true that you're going to like go insane the first time that you, that you try one of these things unless you have some kind of what we would call a preexisting condition. But it is true that you might have a really difficult integration period if you're trying to bite off more than you can chew. So maybe that's the worst that can happen. In the experience itself, though, if somebody comes with like with panic disorder and they have a panic attack and the person who they're with is competent and knows what they're doing, then that will be that experience. And that's in a certain way maybe. Okay, right. I don't want to whitewash it, but like that could be a growth experience. So it's like, you know, you're in there and you say, I want to come down. And the facilitator says, you cannot come down. Then you live through it again. I don't, I want to just like reemphasize because this is a podcast and it's going out to whoever wants to listen to it. Not every difficult experience is for the best and sometimes there are lasting effects and these are serious things and it shouldn't be taken lightly. So that's an important thing to say. And it's also true that if there is somebody who's guiding you and you do have a panic attack, a full on panic attack, that will not be the end of the world. And it could be part of a healing process if it's again handled by somebody who's compassionate, who's experienced, who has boundaries, who knows how to respect boundaries. You know, one issue, just one of many, what's the role of touch in psychedelic assisted therapy? So sometimes if you're having a panic attack, it might be helpful to get a hug, but you're also not in a condition at that moment to consent to getting a hug or to getting just held in some way. So just around that one question, having that conversation with a potential facilitator, guide, therapist or clergy person, what's welcome and what's not, and doing it ahead of time, right? Because in the moment you're not in your compos mentis, you're not in your full, competent mind to consent or not consent. That's just one of many issues that does come up. A lot of, I would say, well meaning but badly informed people think that some reassuring touch is always helpful. And that's definitely not true. So things like that.
- [69:47]
Dan Harris
This is all incredibly interesting and helpful. And I would say for me, I think part of exposure therapy for me as somebody with panic disorder, is to feel the sensations of panic and realize you're going to be okay. And so I agree with you that for some people this would not be a good idea. And I think for me, actually it probably would be a good idea with the right therapist. I think I take what you're saying in the spirit in which it's intended.
- [70:16]
Jay Michelson
Thanks. And I think for you too, people often ask you, I'm sure that I'm always asked this, what meditation teacher do you recommend? And probably your answer is like mine. Well, your answer is always Joseph Goldstein. But other than that, you know, it depends. Right? It depends. And that's. It depends on the person and what your things are like. I would not recommend a psychedelic guide to you who is fully invested in, like, what you would find to be weird, crazy, or too woo a worldview. It's just not going to be helpful for you. It might be fun to talk to that person. But if you're in a place where you're making yourself vulnerable, I think you want someone who you can trust. And if it's somebody who is talking to entities all the time and concerned you might not trust that person. And whether you're right or wrong is completely irrelevant. Right. What matters is whether you feel that sense of trust in the guide. And it might be better in a sort of, I don't know, like the name Richie Davidson just came to mind. It might be better at somebody who has, like, unimpeachable scientific credentials and who you feel like, all right, well, this person really knows their shit. We see the world in a similar wavelength. So it's individual. There's no, like, one size fits all. And for other people, the opposite is true. I've had people come to me and be like, who should I work with? Either psychedelics or meditation. And I know that they are into the, like, spiritual stuff. And that's where I'll steer them. Like, I'll steer them to people who I would not steer you to. So it's really individualized in terms of.
- [71:43]
Dan Harris
Finding a good therapist or guide. How do we even begin with that? Because in so many places it's not legal.
- [71:51]
Jay Michelson
Yeah, no, that's right. I mean, I think we could put ketamine on in one category because it is more widely available and you can read reviews. You know, there's like, I don't know if there's literally Yelp, but there should be something like Yelp. But it's true. And, you know, I wouldn't even want to mention specific providers. A lot of people do go to Mexico. I went to Peru for my first ayahuasca experience. I mean, I went partly because I wanted to be in that culture and in that context, but partly because it is legal and I just didn't want that added piece on there. And yeah, I wouldn't even want to name any names of anyone who might be engaged in things that are against the law. So that's the moment that we're in. But some of these compounds are legal in some places and there are ways to access them. And then as soon as it's legal, this is like a strong argument for decriminalization. Right? Because as soon as it's legal, we can be much more transparent. So you can go online. That book I mentioned, Trippy, talks about specific centers that he went to to do ayahuasca. He had this very powerful first ayahuasca experience and then realized as a journalist, like, there's a story here, like, this is really interesting. There's this array of places where you can go and they're all really interesting and some are quirky and weird and funny and so, right. He can write that book because it's legal in Brazil, which is where most of the centers that he went to are the same as in Costa Rica and in Peru, and I believe in Mexico, although I'm not sure. And so the argument for decriminalization is, yeah, let's keep people safe. But the way to keep people safe is to give them as much information and transparency as possible. When 13 year old, you had like a difficult weed experience. I know when I was a lot younger, I was afraid to call anybody, right? Like, do you call the hospital, do you call the cops? You're going to get busted. Right now you have more fear now. Like the opposite of calming down. Now you're afraid, like, you know, you're going to be put in jail or something. So, you know, a strong argument for decriminalization is. It would enable me to give listeners a much more helpful answer to your question. Just like I could recommend IMS or Spirit Rock, I could recommend X Center or Y Center based on firsthand experience and we would be able to like guide people better. So we are again, like I said earlier at an early phase of this, and I do think, as with meditation, even more than meditation, I feel like the science that's happening, it is really solid. The scientific studies that are out there and that I think will eventually lead to a more fact based and science based approach to these kinds kinds of.
- [74:27]
Dan Harris
Interventions in terms of finding a guide in this awkward cultish moment we're in. Within the development of psychedelics, let me see if I can utter some words of advice to see if you co sign on them. I think the advice might be if you're in a place where psilocybin, for example, is not legal and you don't want to travel to a state where it is, you can, as Jay referenced earlier, start talking to some mental health professionals that you trust. Some of them may say, you know, you should never do this because they're just philosophically against it. Maybe those are the people you don't necessarily want to listen to. Others may tell you it's contraindicated for you because of your mental health background that you should definitely listen to. And then as you continue to have these conversations, you might get turned on to a network that is semi underground of people that you can get good references for from the mental health professionals you trust or from friends of yours who've done it. So you do a little research, you talk to your friends, you talk to experts and make sure it's kosher for you and that there's some degree of legitimacy around the provider that's being recommended. And if you're comfortable, proceed. But you have to. There's a little bit of caveat emptor here. Buyer beware. Because you know, it's a risk given that it's not legal and therefore not regulated.
- [75:52]
Jay Michelson
Yep, all of that's right. First of all, it warms my little rabbi heart to hear you just say the word kosher. Second, I would just add one other category to people to consult to listeners of this podcast, which is meditation teachers. You know, it's a not so secret open secret that most of the, you know, leading meditation teachers in the insight tradition have either past or present psychedelic experience. There are also, for meditators in particular who are listening, there are a bunch of really good books on this subject. There's a book called Zigzag Zen, which is really interesting about Buddhism and psychedelics. There are a bunch of other ones too. There are also psychedelic Buddhist sanghas, communities that exist who really integrate different Kinds of the dharma with, with psychedelic use and psychedelic practice. So yeah, I would just add that as well, that these are people who are, if not, you know, licensed mental health practitioners. Exactly. Are people who work in pastoral roles and mental health roles who could refer folks to that. And I think it's. Yeah, a lot of it is just like have your bullshit detector on and when it feels like it just feels like it's a little bit shady, then especially for your first few times, maybe just err on the side of caution. And obviously again, I'm just going to qualify by saying, you know, not wanting anyone to break the law. But if you do try to obtain any of these things by yourself, definitely be very certain of the source test if possible. We should certainly have a different regime where people can easily. People should be able to test any substance they're gonna put in their body. But you can access ways to test these things if you're choosing to go that route.
- [77:29]
Dan Harris
You've brought me to where I was hoping we would get in the end here. And this is actually, I think quite practical. Can you talk a little bit about the overlap between meditation and psychedelics and how these two modalities can speak to and support one another?
- [77:46]
Jay Michelson
Yeah, so I, I see a lot of overlap. I mean, I really, as you said at the top, I haven't left meditation behind. It's still part of my life. I still occasionally teach. But this work for me is very continuous with the work I was doing in meditation. There's a similar divergence of purposes. So for some people, they're doing meditation for stress reduction or for just emotional self regulation. That is great. Other people are on meditation as part of a Buddhist path of extinguishing suffering. That is also great. Some people are interested in meditation for the non ordinary states of consciousness that it can cultivate. Also great. Similarly, in psychedelics there's a similar thing. They do the same things in a way. Psychedelics are stronger. There's more of a potential for harm, but there's also more of a potential for a real breakthrough, for actually shifting one's. Yeah. Shifting the inside stuff in a way that can be again, with the right integration. By the way, I've said that word a bunch of times. Integration is like an insider baseball term. It's like what you do after the experience. And the data that is out there suggests that the integration is as important as the experience. So you can go and have like some awesome, amazing trip experience, but if you don't spend time processing it, reviewing it, maybe processing it with somebody, you don't, you know, if you go right back to work the next day and you don't allow some time just for settling down and reflecting, you know. You know, from your retreat experience. Sometimes the best insights from meditation retreat come after the retreat is over. And that's certainly true for psychedelics as well. It looks like, again, we're really early understanding on the scientific level, but the brain needs to sort of sort out and process this stuff. So that's just that word integration. So that's true for meditation and psychedelics as well. And as I mentioned, we were talking before. I mean, for me, basic mindfulness meditation is a very powerful ally in doing this work. The truth is, I don't really know how anybody does anything without mindfulness at this point, because I'm so like, I don't know how anyone is a parent without having mindfulness as a guy, as a helper. I don't know how anybody navigates difficult conversations I've just gone through in my journalism work. I've gone through the speaker period of being trolled and harassed online for several weeks. I don't know how anyone does that without a meditation practice. So it may just be about me and my reliance on my meditation practice, but I do see it as a very, very important ally in approaching psychedelics and using them. And so much so that it's just. It's like you've done the AP classes before you get to college, you know, like, you already have this credit because somebody's there and you're like, okay, just let go, you know? And the maxim people say is a bad trip is just fighting the trip that you're on. There's no such thing as a bad trip in itself. It's your resistance. So that's a Dharma teaching, right? That's an obvious Dharma teaching. There's a reason why Ram Dass went from psychedelics to profound spirituality and then spent most of the 70s and 80s doing insight meditation. It's the same kind of relationship to your stuff that we're. That we're trying to create. I'll do another Beatles quote. The good advice from the Beatles, right? Turn off your mind Relax and float downstream it is not dying. This is from their song Tomorrow Never Knows, one of their first two songs about psychedelics. Great advice. So, all right, well, easier said than done. How do you turn off your mind Relax and float downstream Listen to Dan's Guided Meditations.
- [81:11]
Dan Harris
Beautifully said. I just want to say one last thing, and I'll see if you agree or disagree. If you're listening to this and you're. I don't know if I love this term, but I think it would nonetheless apply to me and definitely to you, Jay. But if you are a seeker listening to this, if you're somebody who is really interested in self improvement and very curious about the various experiences on offer as a human and you're scared of doing this or worried about it because of any pre existing condition, you do not have to do psychedelics to be a really committed, growth oriented or spiritual or personal improvement oriented person. I'm glad this, these compounds exist and I think there's incredible promise and some degree of peril. But you don't have to do it. You can still, if you're a Buddhist, you can still get enlightened if, if you believe in such things without doing these compounds. Did anything I just say there, Jay, rankle you?
- [82:15]
Jay Michelson
No, totally. That's 100% true. It's not for everybody. I mean, it's not, you know, I'm an enneagram7. So for me, I would say if I left some spiritual stone unturned, you know, my life would not be complete. But that's my problem, not anybody else's. And I, you know, I just have a lot of curiosity about these kinds of mind states and these experiences and, you know, arguably I became a parent for enneagram7reasons. People told me you're going to feel more love than you've ever felt before. And I was like, well, I got to do that. They should have said what that would actually feel like a little bit more. You know, you'll feel more love than you ever felt and it will drive you bananas. Like, that would have been a. More like the second, the second half of that sentence might have been really helpful to have heard. But anyway, yes. Look, I don't have a yoga practice anymore. I still feel okay about myself.
- [83:07]
Dan Harris
There's so much you can do even within just the Dharma. Even that phrase, just the Dharma within the Dharma. There are so many. You can try to experience the jhnas, which I never have. You can, you know, you can. Oh, you're going to long retreats.
- [83:22]
Jay Michelson
You're going to love going on your first jhana retreat. It's going to be the best, you know. So I teach. I used to teach before the parenting part. No, I mean, I would say like, yes, what you said is definitely true. I do think that there are for the seeker, there are just ways of being and things that you see on psychedelics that even with intensive meditation, I've never experienced any other way. And not just meditation, but also Jewish spirituality, also a lot of other stuff that I do. And I do think if it's that if you're wondering, not if you're like, do I have to? But if you're one of those seekers who's like, really? Is there something behind door number three that I haven't seen? I would say the answer is yes.
- [84:03]
Dan Harris
Yeah. Yeah, that sounds right. There's an enormous amount here, and there's enormous amount within the Dharma that you can. Or other spiritual traditions that you can also explore. And you're not like, you're not a failure.
- [84:17]
Jay Michelson
Definitely. I would not like psychedelics to be another reason anyone beats themselves up for any reason. So if it's doing it. If it's not doing it. Yeah. Like that inner critic voice of like, oh, I better do this thing. And I would not want that to be their contribution to humanity.
- [84:35]
Dan Harris
Just in closing here, I want to say Jay has been writing really well about psychedelics and many other things on his substack, which is, for me, a must follow. It's called both and. But you can just search J. Michelson on substack. I'll also put a link in the show notes. It's just an excellent newsletter, and Jay is really not only writing about psychedelics, but also about lots of other developments in the culture. And he's one of the first voices I personally want to hear when something big happens. Jay, is there anything else that you want to mention that you're putting out into the world that people should take a look at?
- [85:12]
Jay Michelson
I was going to say, thank God one of the two of us knows remembers to promote me. I never do. So I'm glad you're in the virtual room, because otherwise nobody would. Yeah, No, I appreciate that. That really does mean a. Yeah, I appreciate it. Yeah. No, you're one of my role models for how to make substack work. I'm curious. This experiment that you're on, and from the outside, it looks great. So. So I appreciate that. Yeah. I think in terms of when this episode drops, there are three live events that I'll be talking about this stuff at. One is Harvard Symposium on Psychedelics, Law and Religion that I mentioned. That's in March and that can be Googled. A second one is Emory University is having a conference called the Science of Spiritual Health, which, as it sounds, will be a little less on the religion side, a little more on the. On the science side. That is early April. April 1st, 2nd, 3rd. It'll be at Emory in Atlanta but it will also be online and it's free. It'll be a really great menu of psychedelic thinkers, scientists and so on, and practitioners at that. It looks like I will be at the biggest psychedelic conference of the year, maps. Psychedelic Science. MAPS stands for Multidisciplinary Association, I think for Psychedelic Studies. They're the biggest psychedelic organization. Their conference is in Denver in mid June, and I'll be speaking there as well.
- [86:28]
Dan Harris
Awesome. And Jay has also written 13 books, Am I right? But is that number right?
- [86:32]
Jay Michelson
No. Thanks for that. No. 10. Yeah, yeah.
- [86:34]
Dan Harris
10 books. Okay. It will be 13 in the not too distant future, I'm sure. And so we'll put links to everything J. Michelson related in the show notes. Jay, this was awesome. Thank you.
- [86:45]
Jay Michelson
Thank you, Dan.
- [86:50]
Dan Harris
Thanks again to Jay Michaelson. I've dropped some links in the show notes that you might be interested in, including an episode I did with Michael Pollan, who wrote the great book how to Change youe Mind, which really has helped catalyze the whole psychedelic revolution. I've also dropped some links to some past episodes with Jay Michelson if you want some more from him. And we will, as promised, put a link to Jay's substack, which is X excellent and is called Both. And oh, and don't forget, if you're a subscriber over@danharris.com, you'll get a full cheat sheet for this episode, which lists all the takeaways, and a special guided meditation from Jay to accompany this episode that will help you put the lessons from this episode into your own marrow, into your molecules, so to speak. Before I go, just want to thank everybody who worked so hard to make this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson, Caroline Keenan and Eleanor Vasily. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our production manager, Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer, DJ Cashmere is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme. If you like 10% happier, and I hope you do, you can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondery in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey@wondery.com survey.
- [88:24]
Unknown
At 24, I lost my narrative, or rather it was stolen from me. And the Monica Lewinsky that my friends and family knew was usurped by f false narratives, callous jokes and politics. I would define reclaiming as to take back what was yours, something you possess is lost or stolen, and ultimately you triumph in finding it again. So I think listeners can expect me to be chatting with folks both recognizable and unrecognizable names about the way that people have navigated roads to triumph. My hope is that people will finish an episode of Reclaiming and feel like they filled their tank up, they connected with the people that I'm talking to, and leave with maybe some nuggets that help them feel a little more hopeful. Follow Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Reclaiming early and ad free right now by joining Wondery in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts.
- [89:26]
Being an actual royal is never about finding your happy ending, but the worst part is if they step out of line or fall in love with the wrong person, it changes the course of history. I'm Arisha Skidmore Williams.
- [89:39]
Jay Michelson
And I'm Brooke Zifrin.
- [89:40]
Unknown
We've been telling the stories of the rich and famous on the hit Wondery show Even the Rich and talking about the latest celebrity news on Rich and Daily. We're going all over the world on our new show, Even the Royals. We'll be diving headfirst into the lives.
- [89:54]
Jay Michelson
Of the world's kings, queens and all.
- [89:56]
Unknown
The wannabes in their orbit throughout history. Think succession meets the crown meets real life. We're going to pull back the gilded curtain and show how royal status might be bright and shiny, but it comes at the expense of, well, everything else, like your freedom, your privacy, and sometimes even your head. Follow Even the Royals on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to even the royals early and ad free right now by joining Wondery.