Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder - 5CAST with Andrew Callaghan (#4) feat. Dr. Wesley Ryan

Summary

Podcast Summary: Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder - 5CAST with Andrew Callaghan (#4) feat. Dr. Wesley Ryan

Podcast Information:

• Title: 5CAST w/ Andrew Callaghan
• Host: Andrew Callaghan
• Episode: Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder (HPPD) - Episode #4
• Guest: Dr. Wesley Ryan, MD
• Release Date: May 4, 2025

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Introduction to Cannabinoid Legalization and Its Implications

The episode opens with Andrew Callaghan and his co-host Brad discussing the widespread legalization of cannabis in the United States. Andrew highlights the societal shifts, noting, “Over 50% of Americans aged 21 to 60 are reported to have used cannabis at some point in their life” (00:11). He reflects on how legalization has both positive and negative impacts, using vivid metaphors to describe the transformation of cultural landscapes.

Understanding Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder (HPPD)

Andrew introduces the main topic: Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder (HPPD). He explains, “HPPD is a condition where individuals experience persistent visual distortions after using psychedelic substances” (03:44). Dr. Wesley Ryan joins the conversation to delve deeper into the symptoms, prevalence, and underlying mechanisms of HPPD.

Symptoms and Personal Experiences

Andrew shares his personal battle with HPPD, mentioning, “I developed this condition when I was 14, after a standard night tripping balls at my buddy Toby’s house” (05:04). He describes the persistent visual disturbances, such as visual snow and palinopsia, which make everyday visuals appear distorted and overwhelming.

Dr. Wesley Ryan elaborates on the clinical aspects, stating, “HPPD symptoms include constant visual disturbance, stationary objects can appear to move” (03:52), and “might see visual snow, auras, and starbursts” (03:55). He emphasizes that while HPPD is primarily a visual disorder, it can be accompanied by anxiety and out-of-body sensations.

Causes and Neurological Mechanisms of HPPD

The discussion shifts to the neurological underpinnings of HPPD. Andrew recounts reading Dr. Henry Abraham’s report, “It could be a disorder of the central nervous system that disinhibits a processing mechanism between the eyes and the brain” (06:12). Dr. Ryan explains how psychedelics may disrupt the brain’s visual processing systems, leading to persistent visual anomalies.

Dr. Ryan summarizes, “Visual Snow Syndrome could be like static... It’s the cortex that’s getting 'hijacked,' altering the processing system for visual information” (19:01). This disruption causes the continuous overlay of visual noise that HPPD sufferers experience.

Prevalence and Risk Factors

Andrew cites studies estimating that HPPD affects between 4.5% to 5.4% of psychedelic users (04:00). Dr. Ryan adds, “It’s underreported, but it seems to be a minority of people that report it” (21:50). They discuss factors such as dosage, frequency of use, and individual susceptibility, with Andrew pondering whether early brain development plays a role in increasing the risk of HPPD.

Treatment Options and Research

The conversation moves to potential treatments for HPPD. Dr. Ryan mentions that while there is no definitive cure, certain medications have shown promise. He states, “Probably the ones that we find the most success with is magnesium over the counter” (37:38) and “lamotrigine, also known as Lamictal, is an antiepileptic drug that tends to help with visual snow” (38:15). Andrew expresses frustration with earlier recommendations of benzodiazepines, which can lead to dependence and other issues.

Dr. Ryan discusses ongoing research efforts, highlighting the work of the Perception Restoration Foundation, which collaborates with institutions like the University of Melbourne and Macquarie University to explore the causes and potential treatments for HPPD.

The Stigma and Future of Psychedelic Research

Andrew and Dr. Ryan address the societal stigma surrounding psychedelics and conditions like HPPD. They trace the negative perceptions back to the 1960s and the MK Ultra program, which aimed to use LSD for mind control purposes (44:11). Dr. Ryan emphasizes the importance of nuanced conversations in the current resurgence of psychedelic research, balancing the benefits with awareness of potential risks like HPPD.

Dr. Ryan concludes, “There’s always drawbacks to drugs and it’s just trying to find out how to minimize those and how to maximize the good parts about them” (63:21).

Coping Strategies and Community Support

Andrew shares his journey toward coping with HPPD, noting how building purpose and engaging in meaningful work helped reduce the distress associated with his symptoms (09:26). Dr. Ryan echoes the importance of psychotherapy, community support, and developing coping mechanisms as key strategies for managing HPPD.

Conclusion and Hope for the Future

The episode wraps up with a hopeful outlook on the future of HPPD treatment and psychedelic research. Dr. Ryan expresses optimism, “I believe there is a world where we can probably figure out what’s causing HPPD and find a cure” (14:33). Andrew emphasizes the role of organizations like the Perception Restoration Foundation in advancing this mission.

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Notable Quotes:

• Andrew Callaghan: “HPPD is a condition where individuals experience persistent visual distortions after using psychedelic substances.” (03:44)

• Dr. Wesley Ryan: “HPPD symptoms include constant visual disturbance, stationary objects can appear to move.” (03:52)

• Andrew Callaghan: “I developed this condition when I was 14, after a standard night tripping balls at my buddy Toby’s house.” (05:04)

• Dr. Wesley Ryan: “Visual Snow Syndrome could be like static... It’s the cortex that’s getting 'hijacked,' altering the processing system for visual information.” (19:01)

• Dr. Wesley Ryan: “There’s always drawbacks to drugs and it’s just trying to find out how to minimize those and how to maximize the good parts about them.” (63:21)

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Timestamp Reference:

For quick navigation, notable quotes have been tagged with placeholder timestamps (e.g., 00:11). In an actual summary, these would link to specific moments in the podcast for listeners to reference.

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Final Thoughts:

This episode provides an in-depth exploration of HPPD, blending personal anecdotes with expert insights. Dr. Wesley Ryan offers valuable perspectives on the complexities of HPPD, the challenges in treating it, and the broader implications for psychedelic research. Listeners gain a comprehensive understanding of both the condition and the ongoing efforts to address it, making this an essential listen for those interested in mental health and the impact of psychedelic substances.

Transcript

[Alex]

Here in the United States of America, we've came a long way from briefer madness. And here in California, it feels like I see more weed dispensaries than libraries and more huff socks than white tube.

[Brad]

Socks, depending on what part of town you're in.

[Alex]

In fact, according to the National Library of medicine, over 50% of Americans aged 21 to 60 are reported to have used cannabis at some point in their life. And as of 2024, 39 out of 50 states have legalized the recreational or medicinal use of cannabinoid products like Green Crack and OG Bubba Kush Hybrid Indo 5$Pre rolls which are available at over 15,000 dispensaries across this great nation. In my view, this progression has been.

[Brad]

A double edged sword, which for you.

[Alex]

North Sentinelese watching is a positive negative metaphor for a paradoxical situation. You know, on one hand it's cool that you can buy an eighth without being scared shitless walking into a low income housing unit where your drug dealer, in my case a guy named Gator, is doing tricks with a butterfly knife while his topless girlfriend cowers in fear. But pot legalization has certainly taken the cool out of Kushblazing and eliminated the subversive barrier to entry that scares off the normies and keeps illegal countercultures like graffiti and train hopping from being co opted by the masses. Long story short though, people are smoking more gas right now than ever and I'm willing to bet that some of you guys are high right now. And given that 12% of Channel 5 viewers are between 14 and 18. Bro, your mom's on the way home right now and she's going to know that you're high. Bro, you're acting weird as fuck. Nah, just kidding man, you're good. Visine breath mints and Old Spice spray on deodorant should do the trick. Just don't spray too much or she's definitely going to know that you're high. And even if she does get mad, but maybe she's right. Weed is a gateway drug and I put that on Retro Bill. Yep, I said it. I know some of you guys may be shocked because portraying cannabis as a gateway drug reeks of Reagan era dare propaganda, but in my opinion, it's 100% true. Maybe not for everybody, but much like alcohol is a gateway drug to cocaine and Lean, AKA Dirty Sprite is a gateway to Percocet and then heroin, I truly believe that marijuana is a gateway drug to psychedelics, particularly LSD and psilocybin mushrooms, because cannabis itself is is psychedelic. And if you've greened out, you know how similar that is to a bad trip. It might actually be even worse. But whether or not you believe my mumbo jumbo, a phrase which I've just learned has racist origins, which is unfortunate, but I'm keep using it the mass legalization of cannabis has spurred a similar push for the legalization of psychedelics. Shrooms in particular. Psilocybin mushrooms, commonly known as magic mushrooms, aren't just about hallucinating for fun anymore. In May 2019, Denver, Colorado became the first city to decriminalize psilocybin mushrooms, perhaps as a concessionary measure to the tax paying public after building the airport so fucking far from the city. But perhaps Denver has its own reasons for doing that. Anyways, other major metropolitan cities followed suit shortly after. First Oakland, then Santa Cruz and later Seattle, Detroit and a few others, including my favorite Boston area locale, Somerville, Massachusetts Shout out to my boy Frankie. As of today, mushrooms are decriminalized on a city level for personal use in a number of municipalities within nine states and fully legal under the supervision of a therapist in two states states, Colorado and Oregon, where like in the case of every other issue, Portland, Eugene and Ashland are at odds with the rest of the state who are culturally aligned with Idaho. No disrespect, shout to dog face. So that's shrooms. Lsd, AKA Acid, is virtually legal nowhere, although it's been tested in several high profile clinical trials in places like California for the treatment of alcoholism and anxiety, with promising results. Long story short, it's obvious that much like in the case of marijuana, the legalization of stronger psychedelics is coming. It's just a matter of when. Which is why I think it's important that we talk about a condition called Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder, AKA hppd.

[Brad]

HPPD symptoms include constant visual disturbance, stationary objects can appear to move, a sufferer.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Might see visual snow auras and starbursts. It can be coupled with out of body sensations and extreme anxiety.

[Alex]

It's a condition that, according to studies, affects approximately between 54 to 4.5% of psychedelic users, probably to get clicks and engagement. Some publications refer to HPPD sufferers as being stuck in a trip that never ends or essentially perma tripping. But HPPD is not that. It's a strictly visual handicap that, though alarming, is non psychotic and doesn't include hallucinations or lucid delusions. Like in the case of schizophrenia, though it's different for everyone. HPPD generally consists of visual snow that renders a static blanket over the visual field like a broken TV monitor. Palinopsia, which gives you afterimages and long lasting light trails that carry over as you switch focus. And the emergence of dozens, if not hundreds of black eye floaters that are dancing across your visual field at all times. Most HPPD sufferers, including myself, experience all of this at the same time every day. And it's kind of like wearing party goggles as contact lenses forever. As I mentioned, I myself have this condition and I'm 28 years old today, which means I've had HPPD for the.

[Brad]

Same amount of time as, you know, stock factory made human vision.

[Alex]

I initially developed this condition when I was 14, after a standard night tripping balls at my buddy Toby's house in ninth grade. I consumed a normal amount of shrooms that night. Probably half an eighth of Psilocybin cubensis mushrooms, which are the ones from cow shit. It overall was like a good trip. I was switching between staring into the cosmos and watching a Nat Geo documentary called the Last Lions. But when I woke up, I had every HPPD symptom I just mentioned, and I assumed that I was just hungover from the shrooms and still had psilocybin in my system, but it just wouldn't go away. For months and months, I tried to proceed with life as normal. And of course I didn't tell my parents what was happening to me because that carried an admission that I was doing illegal drugs and I didn't want to get grounded. But months and months continued to pass, and I was still stuck inside that broken TV screen, praying every night that I would wake up healed. Upon further research, and in an incognito window in Google Chrome, I learned that I had this thing. But there was very little research about.

[Brad]

HPPD at that time.

[Alex]

This was 2013. The only scientific scholar who published anything about it really was Dr. Henry Abraham from the American Psychiatric Organization, who seemed to be the only person trying to figure out what neurological or ocular mechanism was causing this intense condition. He published a report called the Mysteries.

[Brad]

Of hppd, which through a series of.

[Alex]

Brain scans, suggested that it could be a disorder of the central nervous system that disinhibits a processing mechanism between the eyes and the brain. He speculated that maybe everyone's eyes are a bit broken, but psychedelics somehow destroy the corrective filter within the central visual cortex, which cleans up noise before sending it to the frontal lobe to get ocular real quick. There are 120 milliseconds between your eyes seeing something and your brain registering it. After your eyes first process information, they toss the picture to a processing zone in the occidental lobe in the back, where it goes through three filters before exporting a final image for you. So maybe psychedelics, Abraham theorized, interfere with that process in some way. But when I read this article As a 14 year old, I didn't care.

[Brad]

Too much about the neuroscience behind it. I wanted to know the cure.

[Alex]

My heart sank when I read the concluding paragraph of his report which said that symptoms are usually permanent and that the only effective treatment measures were benzodiaphenes.

[Brad]

Like Xanax or Diazepam.

[Alex]

These treatments, he said, helped sufferers just not think about it so much, but didn't actually reduce HPPD symptoms given that 2013 was the prodigal kickoff year to the Xandemic and had already lost friends to Xanax related motor vehicle accidents who probably lost control of the wheel while semi audibly mumbling the words to early SoundCloud era Hit singles like Geeked Up Off Them Bars by Juicy J, Zanarchy by Lil Xan and of course Zanz by Famous Dex. Popping bars was out of the question. Dr. Abraham then said that the most common non prescription treatment for HPPD was alcohol which like Xanax helps sufferers shut off the stress and anxiety mechanisms in their brain for a short time. However, Dr. Abraham warned that the short half life of self administered alcohol treatment would result in a rebound of visual snow and anxiety symptoms leading to more self medication with more alcohol, worse visual snow, psychiatric disorders and eventually a full psychosis which he said 50% of sufferers eventually fall victim to. Obviously we know that teenagers make a lot of bad short term decisions and I was no exception in my own life. The years after developing HPPD were marked by severe and constant binge drinking, which honestly did work pretty well to get my mind off it.

[Brad]

Until it didn't.

[Alex]

I developed a debilitating psychiatric disorder known as dpdr, short for Depersonalization and Derealization Disorder, which has to be one of the most terrifying sensations imaginable that's hard to articulate if you haven't experienced it. Put simply, depersonalization is the feeling that you have no connection to your body and that you are a nebulous soul trapped within a foreign skin suit and specifically held prisoner behind your own eyes, witnessing the body move on autopilot as you plot your escape from the hell of self. Derealization is the feeling that while you do exist, reality does not. It's all a figment of your imagination and you're the only conscious living being in a universe of objects, or rather hallucinations who are masquerading as people and things. They combine DP and Dr. Together because depersonalization usually comes first. Then after your soul accepts that it is in fact stuck in the skin suit and begins to grow into it, derealization arrives. And I'm not really sure why. All I know is that HPPD symptoms and the feeling of unreality and sensory brokenness they create cause the onset of depersonalization, which I genuinely wouldn't wish on my worst enemies.

[Brad]

And I hate my enemies.

[Alex]

To clarify, DPDR doesn't stem from like philosophical musings about reality or accompanying an existential crisis. It's like a lucid dream nightmare crossover between Black Mirror and American Horror Story if every episode just ended with the protagonist getting shit faced on old English high gravity 40s at a public park and having three hours of pure joy and relief before repeating the exact same plotline from the top every day. And then one day, for some reason, it just stopped. As I began to find purpose in life and live with more consistency, suddenly the feelings of unreality began to subside as I could feel myself working to build something more tangible and in some cases saw my work succeed in small ways and did root me in reality because I was like covering news events that people were like also at, which confirmed that reality was existing in a shared plane of existence.

[Brad]

If that makes sense.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Everyone feel like that, Everybody feel like that.

[Brad]

That's all I gotta say.

[Alex]

I appreciate you listening and giving us, you know, an outlet and a platform to speak how we feel, bro.

[Brad]

Oh, gas.

[Alex]

No brakes, baby. Though I've learned to live with HPPD over the course of the past 14 years, I know that as psychedelics become more widely available, commonly used for psychiatric purposes, and ultimately become decriminalized in progressive US States, it's important for the public to be educated about this condition. Because while only 4 to 5% psychedelic users report HPPD symptoms, it's fair to say that that small slice of the pie chart will represent a far larger pool of humans as psilocybin in particular becomes more commonplace, especially in Oregon and Colorado, where psychiatrists are administering mushrooms for supervised use. I hope that if you're like a big shroom fan watching this or you're super into psychedelics that you're not turned off, because in my view, the conversation we're going to have today is a matter of harm reduction. I'd also like to note that there's only a single case of HPPD as a result of Ketamine and the condition is most common as a result of lsd, psilocybin, mescaline, MDMA and also has been observed in children between the ages of 8 and 10 who are prescribed Ritalin to cope with ADHD. I'm also making this report because I want to take this battle on. I believe there is a world where we can probably figure out what the hell in the brain or the central nervous system is causing HPPD and find a cure. Thankfully, this fight is already being taken on by the homies over at the Perception Restoration Foundation Link in Bio, which was launched a few years back by my Visual Snow brother Ed Prudhoe, who I'm hoping is of Cajun French and not Quebecois ancestry. Shout out to my goddamn Anglophones. Their website link below has an HPPD survey out the gate to help you self diagnose and they're currently working with two prestigious Australian universities, the University of Melbourne and Macquarie University in Sydney, to launch groundbreaking studies into identifying the condition's cause and finding an effective cure, which I'm sure is possible with enough funding. And they've put together a team of specialists as well to get to the bottom of this thing and go Akon on them. And by going Akon on him, I don't mean throwing a fan off stage, I mean bringing electricity to Africans who apparently were living in total darkness before the release of don't matter of 2007. In a similar way, the Perception Restoration foundation aims to be a beacon of light for the silent and suffering who've been told they'll never be fixed. And just so you know, you're a goddamn superhero either way, but we're gonna do our best to bring you home in this episode. After some positive news, of course, we're gonna sit down with one of the foundation's partners, Dr. Wesley Ryan, MD, an LA based psychotherapist, a rich history of working with HPPD patients, and is currently a published authority on the therapeutic effects of ketamine. In addition to his Expertise, the Hon. Dr. Wesley believes an HPPD cure could soon be on the horizon and points to some promising research regarding two epilepsy medications that have shown promising results in reducing Visual Snow, one of which is a prescription drug and the other of which is over the counter. Anyways guys, that's a great interview and I'm very excited for y' all to see it. But first let's get into some positive news. Alright, our first happy story comes off the high deserts of Arizona on Route 66, where in the gorgeous tumbleweed town of Seligman, Arizona, a missing 2 year old toddler named Bowden Allen has been found. Police say he walked approximately six miles through a mountain lion hotspot in the scalding desert heat before being carried to safety by a dog 16 hours later. That's right, a pup helped save the day and bring Bowden back to his mama, who is a girl boss rancher named Corey. She's quoted as saying this is a straight up miracle and was even more delighted to learn that it was their dog, a big fluffy Pyrenees named Buford, who went searching for young Bowdoin and brought him to safety. Thankfully, the child sustained no life threatening injuries and is currently back with his pacifier and toy soldiers. And as for Buford, he's a goddamn hero. Shout out to the pups and you know what? Shout out to Seligman, Arizona. I for one believe we should be rebuilding our infrastructure along Route 66 like it's 1925 and and we should just abandon these dense traffic congested population centers altogether and build a new American society in the Mojave. From Amboy to Two Guns while we still can. Moving on to some positive medical news. Did you guys know that one in every 100 women will get a UTI or urinary tract infection every year? And evidence suggests that for women who date skateboarders, tattoo artists and DJs, that number is close to 100%. Perhaps more troubling is that 80% of UTI sufferers are likely to be reinfected at some point in their life as the body develops a weakened immune resistance following the first infection. But now the US Food and Drug Administration has just dropped a new antibiotic. That's a one and done. UTI cure all that both kills the infection when it begins and prevents recurrences. It's called Blue Jeppa and it's available right now if you need it. Honestly, I'm not quite sure if dudes get UTIs, but if we do, I wouldn't mind popping one of these bad boys myself one day. Alright guys, that's our two positive stories now. Now we're gonna get into the main interview of our episode with Dr. Wesley Ryan, MD, the first doctor and licensed therapist to be featured in five cast history.

[Brad]

Dr. Ryan, thanks so much for making the time, sir. Yeah, I appreciate it.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

No problem.

[Brad]

Nice office you got going here.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Thank you.

[Brad]

So I guess my first question is what the heck's wrong with me?

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

You told me earlier that you think you have hppd? So is that the. Is that what you're kind of talking.

[Brad]

About, but on a deeper level, like, what's going on inside my brain?

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Well, I don't know, because we haven't had, like, you know, a long time to talk. And for me to ask you all the questions about your past and all that stuff, like the psychiatric evaluation. So I can't really say what's wrong with you or if you're perfectly healthy, but I can speak to hppd. Yeah. So hppd? Yeah, Basically a disorder where people have persisting perceptual distortions after some kind of psychedelic drug experience, and most often LSD or magic mushrooms. What's happened with mdma, conceivably with cannabis as well, Ketamine as well. And it can be really distressing for people. It seems to be a pretty low number of people who actually get it. But also it's not really well documented. It's not really well researched. It's under researched. So we don't really know the true prevalence and we don't really know much about why some people develop it and why other people do not. So those factors at play. There's a lot of things we do not know. And yeah, there's some medications that have been found to be helpful. Those are also relatively small studies, just because this hasn't. This is not like a really common disorder. So there hasn't been a lot of research funding going in that direction. It's more just sort of anecdotal reports or reports from very specialized clinics. You and I were talking a moment ago about Dr. Abraham. So, yeah, he's published some stuff about certain medications. There seems to be some connection with anxiety. It also seems to be some connection with like a neurological dysfunction, perhaps with visual perception. Like Visual Snow syndrome is closely related. Neurologists seem to call it vss, Visual Snow Syndrome, whereas psychiatrists tend to call it hppd. Back in the day, they called it flashbacks. Maybe a little less specific, but it's all basically the same thing for visual.

[Brad]

Snow in particular, what is happening in the brain that's causing that to occur.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

So Visual Snow syndrome could be like static, like effects in people's visual perception, whether it's that or whether it's colors or shapes, all these visual distortions and illusions that can happen from psychedelics. The brain has this prediction system when it feeds information from the world through our retinas, through our ears and all that stuff, it kind of comes up with representations for our consciousness of what something is. Right. So psychedelics kind of hijack that algorithm, that processing system, to say, like, okay, we see some shape and that's a face, or we see some shape and that's the frame of some picture on the wall. And it removes those kinds of algorithms from working nearly as efficiently. Those. Those things that are masked from our conscious perception are suddenly exposed. So that can come out with, you know, different spiral patterns, geometric patterns, weird stuff, dots, you know, visual snow. It's like dots, usually, right. Of different intensities all over the visual field. But generally that's the case with all the psychedelic visual changes. It's probably that visual processing system getting hijacked. We're kind of seeing the internals of how it's working.

[Brad]

Yeah, because obviously when you take a drug, lsd, peyote, psilocybin, you experience hallucinations visually. It's part of the experience.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Yeah. Yeah. With a sufficient dose, yeah, definitely.

[Brad]

But HPPD would be long lasting, specifically cosmetic visual symptoms for some perspective. Right now, as I'm looking at you, my entire visual field is full of snow of what looks like a TV screen. And if I were to look into.

[Alex]

The blue sky, there's such intense eye.

[Brad]

Floaters that I really can't even perceive color. It's almost like I'm looking at a blue painting that somebody threw black paint all over, really. But I don't experience any euphoria or any of the other psychedelic symptoms or deep reflective inspiration that you might get in the peak of a productive acid trip.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Yeah, that's a really good point because I didn't mention earlier that it's distressing, it's distracting, it causes people a lot of problems. What you describe, right, it makes it maybe harder to drive at night, makes it harder to interact with people. All this stuff's distracting. And usually people are like, ah, I screwed up my brain. Like the. There's this narrative that people have that maybe the bad drug experience, they had, like, fried some connections in there.

[Brad]

Well, it definitely permanently altered. I used to call it the cord between my eye and brain. But a better way to put it is your visual processing system.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Yeah, I guess the optic nerve that leads.

[Brad]

But I know there's a cord on the back of the eye, and I always just imagine that, like the shroom juice was like in there or something.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Yeah.

[Brad]

Is that fair to say?

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Basically. I mean, you take some dried mushrooms, usually that's how they're consumed. So I'm an addiction psychiatrist as well. Studied all the. All the drugs, but really they didn't teach us too much about Psychedelics, since they're not really addictive, they don't really cause those problems. But yes, when you take mushrooms, dried mushrooms, or LSD or any of the other stuff, they're classical psychedelics. So it's a compound, different chemical in each one of those, but they turn on one of the serotonin receptors and that targets, for whatever reason, it activates certain neurons in our cortexes. So it doesn't seem like it. It probably doesn't affect the. What you were talking about, the back of the eye is the retina is what we call that surface. It basically reads light through the rods and cones, and it sends that information to the optic nerve. And that goes into different parts of our brain. But it's the cortex of the brain that's like the more advanced part of the brain that mammals have, humans and monkeys and all that, Right. So it does something there. It tweaks like the processing system for visual stuff as well as all the other stuff. So it would make sense to me that HPPD could also manifest with non visual stuff. But it seems like most of the people complain of visual distortions.

[Brad]

How common do you think HPPD is?

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

It's under reported, but still it seems to be a minority of people, small minority of people that report it. So I would say not very common. But of course the trick to that is, or the caveat, if you will. Now, psychedelics have become way more popular, right? Like there's all these articles about how great mushrooms are and how certain municipalities are making them legal through different mechanisms for medical or sort of therapeutic use. So people are going to be using them more. A lot more people are trying these drugs, especially after how to Change youe Mind by Michael Pollan and all the different clinical trials that are happening and ongoing. So a lot of people are like, hey, maybe I should try this for my mental health issue. And more and more people try it. There's going to be some small percentage of people that have side effects, and HPPD seems to be one of them. And we're not really sure why some people develop it, why other people don't. So, yeah, it's kind of a little scary in that sense.

[Brad]

What do you think about all the widespread use of psychedelics nowadays?

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Well, there's a lot of huge net positives. They do seem to have really potent beneficial effects on mental health. But I've also worked in harm reduction spaces. Burning man was where I volunteered at the Zendo. It's this harm reduction space there. And definitely I've seen people come in even from my own camp, which is really surprising. People who were ready to, like, jump off some second story structure at Burning man because they had some transient delusion while under the influence of magic mushrooms that they thought they had to jump to, like, become one with the universe, Something of this nature. Right. So they're convinced, essentially, and during the drug experience, during the psychedelic trip that they had to do something that was going to be dangerous to their physical health. And, you know, a lot of people don't end up doing anything like that. Their friends stop them, whatever else. But certainly some people do this stuff. It's not talked about much, but, yeah, you can. You can get into trouble if you have a potent psychedelic experience and there's nobody there to sort of, like, prevent you from doing something.

[Brad]

Well, I think we're talking about two things here. You're talking about when someone takes a heroic dose and needs to be walked off of a bad trip and brought back from that feeling of unreality.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Yeah. I mean, when people say heroic dose, that can mean. That usually means a lot of mushrooms. But I've even seen what I was just describing. Seems like from a standard strong dose, like three and a half grams of dried mushrooms, an eighth, an eighth of cintiescence, or cubensis, probably cubensis, because that's what most people use.

[Brad]

I don't know.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Who knows what that guy ate, right?

[Brad]

Yeah.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

But people at the commonly used dosages, people do get some of these delusions, and it's more common when it's a stronger dose. Yeah. So certainly you can have those acute meaning effects that manifest right then. Or you can have the chronic effects, meaning the ones that take longer to show up or rather last a lot longer. Like hppd.

[Brad]

Yeah, it's called the Zendome or Zendoff Zendo. Yeah.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

I remember Z E N D O.

[Brad]

You guys actually helped me one time.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Oh, that's cool.

[Brad]

I was out at Burning man in 2019, and I was staying on 10th and I in a renegade camp just for people who had no camp.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Yeah.

[Alex]

Burning Man. Burning Man.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Yeah. Fucking loving it.

[Alex]

You're washing all gas.

[Brad]

No brakes. And there was a tent of people from Michigan next to me. One of them was a Juggalo named Gary. You're familiar with the subculture of the Insane Clown Posse?

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Yeah.

[Brad]

So he asked me. He didn't even leave his tent. I think he was just there to slang mdma. But he was cool. And so Gary was like, yo, would you like a hit of Molly for the festival? I was like, yeah, sounds good. So I'm thinking it's a point, which is a tenth of a gram. And so I'm thinking, okay. And he tells me each capsule has a half a point of MDMA.05.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Yeah. 50 milligrams.

[Brad]

Yeah.

[Alex]

So I ask him, I go, can.

[Brad]

You give me three point and a half? It's like a good amount for a whole night. So he gives me three. I'm thinking it's a point and a half.

[Alex]

I take all three capsules.

[Brad]

And Gary goes, oh, no, bro.

[Alex]

Those actually all have two points in.

[Brad]

Them, and it's mda, sassafras, not mdma.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Right.

[Alex]

So I'm panicking.

[Brad]

You know, I'm at the outer Playa. You know, I think, long story short, I'm butt naked. I jumped the trash fence at the edge of the Burning Man Deep playa. I'm running Bureau of Land Management. Rangers stop me. Return me to the Burning Man Rangers, who then escort me to you guys. Oh, and y' all did a great job in helping calm me down. It wasn't a psychedelic experience, but my body temperature was high. I was panicking in general, so shout out to you guys, man.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Wow, that's cool that they. They were able to help you. That could be. That could have turned out badly, I guess. Run into the desert. It could have. Could have gotten hurt.

[Brad]

I mean, I. You know, I presumably did get hurt when I was thrown over the trash fence by the. By the rangers, but, you know, it's okay. You live and learn.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Yeah.

[Brad]

Unfortunately, HPPD is a different story because you. You live with the condition forever.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

So is that what kicked it off for you?

[Brad]

No, no, no. When I was 14, I was at my friend Toby Perkins house and Toby Perkins. We knew some. We knew some Cambodians. I don't know why I had to specify the race of the ethnic group that provided me with the mushrooms. If you're Cambodian and you're watching, I don't blame you for my condition. But my homie knew some Cambodians from West Seattle, and they had a bunch of liberty caps, you know, typical. I think it's that sennaissance or.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

No, I think it's different.

[Brad]

They're okay.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Right. Well, so I got to read up on my Psychedelic Mushrooms book.

[Alex]

So, anyways, we go meet these guys.

[Brad]

At the bus stop, the 8 bus stop in particular on Rainier, and we get this dried plastic bag, and it had probably only an eighth in it. So me and Toby go back to his house, we wait till his mom goes to sleep. We take them. We're just watching, like Late night tv, laughing our ass off. All night. It was totally calm. I wake up in the morning and I'm like, yo, I think I'm still tripping. And it was kind of exactly what I see now in my visual field is exactly what I saw on that morning 13 and a half years ago. And it hasn't really gotten any better. But I just noticed the walls would start to move. People's facial features would sort of distort while I was talking to them. And I developed what my teachers thought was adhd, because when I'd be looking at someone, you know, and their face started to contort, I would get so freaked out. And I would be trying to nurse. Try to, you know, trying to not have any. I would be trying to not have an anxiety attack. So I'd look away and I was kind of always looking away. Especially paper, the intense white of paper. Even now, it's really hard to look at because it's just. There's something so intense about like the reflective bright surface of a piece of paper.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Right. And it's like ADHD is Attention Deficit Hyperactivity disorder. So it makes sense. Your attention will be pulled away by all these sort of worrisome distortions in your visual perception.

[Brad]

Yeah. And then definitely I started to. I found an online community on the Arrowid Portals, which was a old school website where people used to have their trip reports. And there was an HPPD section there.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Well, that's great. Yeah.

[Brad]

And then over time, you know, it just never went away. And I didn't really know anyone else had it until Vice made a documentary about us back in the day when I was living in the rv and I explained that this condition existed. And there was very little research available at that time. Yeah, this is before the Perception Restoration foundation even existed. And so many people in the comments.

[Alex]

Were like, oh, my God, I have.

[Brad]

This as well from using psychedelics during a young age. And there was like thousands of people that reached out to me overnight that were like, dude, oh my God, I've been dealing with this my whole life, but I didn't even know what it was called.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

I think there's a lot of people who have it to some extent and other people who it's very, very major and impactful for. But, yeah, there's quite a few people where it's like more minor. They're just like, whatever, I'll just move on and deal with other things that are coming up in my life. Or maybe they don't put that much focus on it as much Anymore. But, yeah, there are quite a few people who've experienced some level of it.

[Brad]

And is there a cure?

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

We don't know. Maybe. I mean, one kind of thought I had because I also do ketamine assisted psychotherapy. I do that for treatment of depression and substance use disorders here, that maybe another psychedelic trip with something else and having a positive experience could sort of heal that really negative experience. Because usually, or a lot of times when people have hppd, it comes from, like, some really scary incidents that happen.

[Brad]

Like a bad trip.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Yeah, bad trip. Right. We can. We can call like the bad trip maybe means just people are having a lot of anxiety from some experience or some component of it, and maybe there's some kind of ptsd, like, factor that shows up or, you know, maybe it's just that negative memory that just starts showing up in various different places in one's life. So, I don't know. I mean, have you met people who've had HPPD or without any negative stuff happening? The initial.

[Brad]

I mean, I didn't have a bad trip.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Yeah, it was about time.

[Brad]

Very standard. But I was young, and I wonder if there's a connection between early brain development and psychedelic use.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

That's an interesting thought. I don't know if anybody's explored that link, but it would make sense because a lot of that stuff's still getting formed and shaped, Right? So maybe younger brains are sort of more malleable and more vulnerable to this kind of insult to developing hppd.

[Brad]

Has there ever been an instance of HPPD being cured?

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Well, hppd, I wouldn't. So cure is a very charged word, because usually that means there's something that people get, like maybe an antibiotic, and it makes the rash or whatever go away, and it's permanently gone. Right. But for hppd, it goes away, but it's unclear exactly why. Some medications can help the symptoms, and sometimes people report their HPPD spontaneously resolves with enough time. And when you look at the criteria for hppd, a big part of that is anxiety or the distress caused by the hppd. So if people become cool with it or they start to not stress over it, then officially they don't meet the criteria for hppd. According to the dsm, that's like the bible for psychiatry of how diagnoses are made. So, I mean, yeah, technically they wouldn't meet that criteria anymore, but, yeah, maybe they'd still have some visual phenomenon still showing up. They just don't care to it or they don't care about it as much anymore. They ignore it. Right. It doesn't impact them that much anymore.

[Brad]

So the DSM for HPPD is not only visual ailments, but also underlying psychiatric and depressive symptoms?

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Well, they would. Yes. So it basically is. You have that visual stuff, and you have a lot of distress that comes of that. If you have the visual stuff and it's like, oh, cool, I get a free trip all the time and this is great. That wouldn't be. Hppd. People wouldn't be complaining. Right. Yeah. So it's sort of like, I guess I just can't.

[Brad]

I can't imagine being happy with the ability to never turn off what's going on.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Yeah. But there does seem to be people who have some level of persistent visual changes that aren't bothered by it.

[Brad]

Yeah, I mean, personally, I'm not bothered by it right now, only because I have lived more. It's crazy to say, but now I've been officially on earth for more years with HPPD than not. Well, I mean, cosmetically, the visual stuff.

[Alex]

Is there, but if I were to.

[Brad]

Go all the way back. You talked about some of the depressive and anxiety symptoms that are associated with hppd.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Yeah.

[Brad]

In your experience, what are the most common psychological symptoms that follow hppd?

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Yeah, I mean, depression, anxiety. Like, people have a lot harder time with social relationships, with jobs, with school, et cetera, all that stuff. Yeah, there's. There's a lot. A lot of times people have this perception that they really screwed their brains up and they did some permanent damage. And there's a lot of fear and anxiety that follows that. I mean, the first thing is probably the biggest.

[Brad]

The first thing that I felt was, like, all right, you know, I'm 14. I'm not supposed to be doing drugs. I'm not supposed to be taking psychedelics. If I tell my family or people in my life, not that my parents are, like, you know, Amish or Mormon, but if I tell them, hey, my brain's messed up from doing a drug that's illegal, and you told me that I shouldn't do, then I'm gonna be in trouble, or I'm just gonna be seen as a misbehaved kid.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Yeah.

[Brad]

But the reality is, now I realize, like, I could have just told them, but I was also expecting it to go away at the same time. So I was like, I don't wanna blow the whistle. Cause then maybe next year it'll be harder for me to do shrooms again.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

I see. Yeah.

[Brad]

But that's the acute thing. I wanna talk a lot about depersonalization and Derealization disorder.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Yeah.

[Brad]

Are you familiar with dpdr?

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Yeah. A lot of people with HPPD report depersonalization, derealization as a big part of their experience. So it's not strictly visual, but it's more of like, a feeling.

[Brad]

What causes that?

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Well, HPPD seems to cause it, or it's associated with HPPD.

[Brad]

But how would you distinguish between DP and Dr.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

They're pretty similar. It's sort of like a gray area in between. But I think the more interesting sort of thing to ask is, like, what can cause this depersonalization and derealization. Taking psychedelics can. I mean, doing a long hike in the heat can do it. Doing, like, you know, a long run, dancing for a while. So ptsd, all these different experiences, some of them physiological and normal, and some of them sort of out there in averse, can occasion this kind of reaction. And it's just kind of. With hppd, it's consistent and persisting, and usually it messes with people's experience of reality.

[Brad]

Yeah. I mean, for me, that was far more terrifying than the visual symptoms.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Yeah. Yeah, that. That tracks what I hear. A lot of the HPPD patients I have say too.

[Brad]

What do they say about their experience with those things?

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Yeah, it's just really scary. That's, like, the scariest thing. They feel like they're sort of removed from the reality. Yeah.

[Brad]

I can't tell what's more scary, because depersonalization is the feeling that. That you're not real, but reality is existing without you. And then derealization is that you are real, but you're the only person alive and nothing around you really exists.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Okay. Yeah.

[Brad]

And oscillating between those two panic modes is strange, but I would say that they're both equally difficult. But derealization is scarier.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

I don't know if I've ever appreciated the distinction, but you kind of notice.

[Brad]

Those, because derealization suggests that all of the people that you love don't exist. And they, like the hallucinations you're experiencing, are figments of your visual cortex, and then nobody exists except for you. Depersonalization, you might feel like you're just an object, and you're like a nebulous soul trapped behind your eyes. But at least you can acknowledge that the world is existing. You know.

[Alex]

It'S not as closely linked.

[Brad]

To psychosis in my experience. Derealization is terrifying. Have you ever felt that before?

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Probably at some point.

[Brad]

Have you ever felt like, you know, everything around you does not exist, but you do, and you're Player one in a video game.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

It was like with some profound psychedelic experiences back in the day, something like that. But I don't know if I'd maybe call it more of the other one.

[Alex]

Now, you mentioned that a couple different.

[Brad]

Medications have helped alleviate visual snow symptoms. Do you know what those are?

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Certainly, yeah, I prescribe them pretty often. The. Probably the ones that we find the most success with is magnesium over the counter. And actually that's something that anybody could try on their own. That's like there's a couple salts of magnesium that I would recommend that tend to be more bioavailable, being they. They kind of get absorbed and bioavailable to the brain specifically. So they have more of the impact on sort of the nervous system and hppd. And that'd be like magnesium glycinate and magnesium threonate. So those are useful supplements that people can try on their own. They're over the counter. And that actually has probably some of the most the best data because they're naturally anxiety relieving and naturally help with muscle spasms. Magnesium does these magnesium supplements.

[Brad]

So they would calm down your visual cortex as well.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Yeah, yeah. That's the thought of like a broad spectrum sort of calming down of the nervous system, including to help with hppd. So that's something I always recommend people try. And the other one that seems to have a lot of consistently useful evidence is lamotrigine, also known as lamictal. It's an antiepileptic drug, and it tends to have relatively few side effects in comparison to other psychiatric drugs. There's some really rare, severe side effects from it, but most people don't notice any negative stuff when they're taking lamotrigine.

[Brad]

And what has lamotrigine? What does the data suggest about visual snow?

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

It seems to help with visual snow and the visual perceptions the most. And less data about how these medications help with specifically depersonalization, derealization, but more data about the visual phenomenon.

[Brad]

And how was this discovered?

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Geez. I want to say somebody did a case report on it. Maybe it was Abraham. Maybe it was one of the other docs who were back in the day published on HPPD.

[Brad]

And Dr. Abraham is like the person who discovered HPPD clinically, right?

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

I think so, yeah. He's definitely really well known and he's published a lot.

[Brad]

Yeah, I had a conversation with him on the phone one time, and he seemed to suggest that our eyes themselves don't see things in full clarity. We have this perception that vision itself is perfect. And he was suggesting that the eyes and vision has a self correcting mechanism and that everybody actually sees what would be visual snow, but their brain before psychedelics has a way of kind of brushing over almost like a camera that will, you know, almost like a filter that will take some of that noise out of your visual field.

[Alex]

For example, right now I see squiggly lines everywhere. Everybody has eye fluid in their eye.

[Brad]

It's obvious to what I'm looking at is eye fluid. I wonder if psychedelic use creates a hyper awareness of your own visual problem.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Yeah, yeah, that's kind of what I was getting at earlier with what I was trying to describe earlier with some of like, like the stuff that people see on HPPD or with HPP or on psychedelics is probably some intermediate stage in the visual processing system that's coming to the surface to conscious awareness and some kind of that correction step in your conscious experience of reality was misaligned or miscalibrated. So all those dots are showing up now or other people have described seeing like faces from you know, maybe like in the, in the wall pattern or different patterns on like furniture. What? Right. So like these different visual phenomenon can pop out and it's basically filtration or like what, what you're. The processing steps that your visual cortex would do or different parts of the brain would do to register. Okay, I see that, you know, or why am I seeing squiggly lines? It's probably some intermediate step in like the algorithm that processes stuff.

[Brad]

And so what those two medicines that you recommended do is they calm down the visual cortex. So you wouldn't be as distracted by.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Probably, well not even not that distracted, but calms it down such that it doesn't show up. People report that just those visual visuals kind of go away. So whether that means that it's like the conscious experience of those goes away or if it's, you know, the mechanism isn't entirely clear. Maybe I'm mincing words here, but yeah, it seems to help because like right.

[Brad]

Now if I were to look at the wall, I see hundreds of squigglies, visual snow and then a total composite after image of you sitting in your chair on the wall.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Yeah.

[Brad]

And it's fading now, but not quite there. It'll probably take 15 seconds to fade.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Yeah, I'm blinking on. Is it palinopsia? Yeah, yeah.

[Brad]

Palenopsia.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Yeah.

[Brad]

I've never known how to say that correctly, but now I'm going to say it all the time.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

There you go.

[Brad]

Why do you think there's such little research surrounding HPPD because it's such a.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Small, relatively small group of people that suffer from it. And it's also something that's not super obvious, like if you, if you have some kind of, you know, if you have a broken bone and you get swelling and pain and whatnot, you can't walk. Right. So with mental health stuff, it tends to be more stigmatized in general. There's also the stigma of it being connected with drug use and specifically psychedelics. A lot of people have a, at least historically, have had a pretty sour view on them, you know, and that seems to be turning around a little bit more recently. But those are probably a lot of the reasons behind it.

[Brad]

Where did this sour view of psychedelics begin?

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Well, it seems to be Maybe in the 60s is where it really kicked off, because before that, you know, there was a lot of promise about psychedelics being used for psychiatric research and learning more about the brain. And there, there really is a lot there that we can. You know, it seems to be that classical psychedelics have a robust antidepressant effect, at least when they've been used in clinical trials. It's that stigma of what happened in the late 60s of people using a lot of psychedelics and maybe having freakouts, having bad experiences, showing up to the ER and the groups of people who are using them getting vilified, maybe like the counterculture folks and a lot of people in the government sort of identifying those people as threats to their political futures, I suppose.

[Brad]

Do you give any credence to the theory that Timothy Leary was involved in the CIA in any way?

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

I don't know. I haven't read enough about it to be able to comment. But what's the theory that he was.

[Brad]

Well, there's a narrative, obviously. We know for a fact that the FBI had a counterintelligence program that they used to stigmatize, disenfranchise, break up, and ultimately destroy movements like the hippie movement and a lot of new medicine movements, as well as almost every people's and leftist mobilization of that time.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Sure.

[Brad]

There's also another theory that in the early 60s, the CIA was involved in the distribution of LSD in Haight Ashbury in San Francisco in the first place?

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Well, no, I think it's actually established that they were dosing people under the MK Ultra program, but that it was.

[Brad]

Distributed by way of, you know, having people like Timothy Leary and different cultural icons.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Oh, I see, I see. That they were, like, trying to promulgate the use of it. Yes, but why?

[Brad]

That's the thing.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

I don't know, like some, some loan operative, like something gone wrong or like some sub program. I don't, could be possible. I don't know.

[Brad]

Yeah, that's the thing. When a lot of people get to go in about the CIA, when you ask them that, they're just like, oh.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

I don't know man, they've done some twisted stuff over the years, you know, so it's possible, I suppose.

[Brad]

What was MK Ultra for? A refresh.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

MK Ultra was this program. I believe it was the CIA, maybe it was the Department of Defense. And they were trying to use LSD essentially as a mind control drug.

[Brad]

To control whose mind and for what purpose?

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

That is what they're trying to figure out. I think they were dosing prostitutes or, sorry the customers of prostitutes in San Francisco. That's like what I was, what I recall reading. That's crazy. It's kind of like watching them through like the one way mirrors.

[Brad]

So the CIA was teaming up with the prostitutes, having the prostitutes dose the tricks or sorry, the customers, the Johns.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Yeah, yeah.

[Brad]

And the CIA was watching them through one sided glass being like, all right, it appears he's having a trip.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Yeah.

[Brad]

Wow.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Yeah, it's wild.

[Brad]

But I mean was their ultimate goal to hypnotize our communist enemies into like, like loving Henry?

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Yeah, I, I, I think that was the, the ultimate purpose. It was like, let's see if we can use this to control people or to paralyze the opposition. If they try and invade we like get them, you know, hit them with some LSD somehow.

[Alex]

Well, I think you just hit the.

[Brad]

Not hit the nail on the head. Paralyzed the opposition they want. They realized that there was a lot of anti capitalist undertones with the hippie movement and they felt like if they could one, commercialize the tie dye forms and kind of replace the, the originators of the movement with, with, you know, the mass. Okay, this is an interesting theory, but Hunter S. Thompson wrote about this. The HAIGHT Ashbury in 1963 is when most people think the hippie movement actually died. Even though the Summer of Love is attributed as being in 1967. Or was it 69?

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

I always thought 69, but I could be wrong.

[Brad]

Before social media, most people got their information from magazines and television. When Time magazine ran their story about the hippie movement, they purposely made it look as attractive as possible to get as many of the suburban rural youth into the hate Ashbury into San Francisco. At one time, knowing that the city didn't have the bandwidth to accommodate These mass, what they called cultural refugees who wanted to drop out of post war American society. So the idea is that they were trying to disempower the original leaders of the movement who were countercultural anti capitalists, replace them with suburban youth and then have that suburban youth under the influence of heavy psychedelics and sort of obscure the message through drugs.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Okay, maybe like. So to put it another way, like causes, does it cause the movement to fail?

[Brad]

They're doing it.

[Alex]

They've done it now.

[Brad]

They've done it now in America. That's how they've pretty much stopped the left from working together as deploying different devices to divide them. And I think that it's possible. Obviously I'm not saying that acid is just a government tool to make people stupid and abandon the revolution, but I think that they realize that they can pacify people by making them become psychonauts and turn inward and explore the different avenues of the mind as opposed to outward and explore a new world.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Yeah, yeah. I'm sure somebody, you know, one of these intelligence services thought of that and tried it makes sense.

[Brad]

But moving to the modern day, obviously there's been a huge resurgence of psychedelic use in the medical field.

[Alex]

Recreational field.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Totally.

[Brad]

So where in the timeline of like MK Ultra and ketamine clinics did things begin to shift?

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Yeah, so ketamine clinics, geez, I guess this was in the last like 10ish years. MKUltra was a while back there, in the 50s I want to say.

[Brad]

So obviously there's a huge period of time. But I'm saying when did you see there start to be more acceptance of psychedelics for non recreational issues?

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Oh sure, yeah. It has to be in the last 10ish years, 15 years. If you look at how many clinical trials and where these clinical trials with psychedelics are happening, there's just far, far more in the last five years, even 10 years than before that. There's a slow trickle in the time proceeding 10 years ago. And I don't know exactly what caused that to break the mold. Maybe it was those studies that did still get permission to keep going because there's so much red tape about psychedelic clinical trials happening that it was just so few of them actually survived to make it happen and publish the data on those. But there were some really impressive signals, right? Some impressive results. And a lot of the public funding wasn't available for studying anything that's positive from psychedelics. So like the nih, the National Institute of Health and the National Institute of Mental Health usually funds grants for various kinds of research, but it wasn't really happening with psychedelics up until recently because they're assumed to be these really bad things for society. So you had these private institutions that were mostly left to funding the research and there was a trickle of those funds. MAPS was leading the charge there for a while, which was they deserve a lot of recognition for what they've done in that sphere, not only with mdma, but like facilitating other psychedelic research during that sort of those dark ages. We could say from, I don't know, the 70s till 2005, 2010ish.

[Brad]

The first thing you mentioned was MDMA. Was that one of the first trials that MAPS did that caught some public traffic?

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Yeah, maps. Multidisciplinary association for Psychedelic Studies. Rick Doblin started it and his reason for starting it was to kind of try and get MDMA made legal, I believe, medicalized and be able to be used for psychedelic therapy and for other purposes.

[Brad]

What conditions do you think are effectively treated with mdma?

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Looks like we got pretty good data for ptsd. So MDMA assisted psychotherapy for ptsd. We'll disclose that I was sort of contracting on that clinical trial in the periphery, doing some adherence rating for the psychotherapy sessions. So I'm aware of what was happening there. I'm not going to speak to anything confidential in that regard. But, yeah, my impression is all the publicly available data, and my impression too, from seeing it, is that it works really well. So it seems like it does help ptsd. And I think the. Surely you've heard about the recent. You and your watchers heard about the recent FDA decision not to endorse MDMA assisted psychotherapy as a treatment for ptsd. So they didn't ultimately get FDA approval and they're being ordered to do another clinical trial. I think they're appealing that. I don't know if that appeal is going to be successful, but there's a lot of people in the academic world and a lot of clinicians who think it's. It's maybe a little bit of overreach and a little bit of unfairness that the FDA has applied some of these criteria to this decision, but they don't really do that with other drugs nearly in the same way. So maybe that's a case of MDMA being stigmatized. But. Yeah, sorry, a slight tangent. Yeah, I do think there's good data to say that MDMA is useful for ptsd.

[Brad]

That's probably the case per session. How much MDMA was being prescribed to the people involved in the clinical trials.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

I want to say it was 125 milligrams, plus a booster dose of 60 milligrams.

[Brad]

So two points.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Yeah. Roughly. Yeah, yeah. Administered by way of oral pill. Wow.

[Brad]

Did you use any veterans?

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, There are veterans there.

[Brad]

Like, so it was combat veterans who used MDMA to help with ptsd.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

It wasn't just combat veterans, but I believe veterans were in the mix too.

[Brad]

Yeah. Because I mean, that is one of the most.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

I mean, if you look at the.

[Brad]

VA and the rates of people that are struggling with PTSD and not receiving treatment, and you look at the rate of veteran suicide, it's really sad.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

It's huge. Yeah, yeah. In the Department of Defense and in the va. Yeah. And I mean, people don't realize that all doctors pretty much do their residencies like in a va. So I worked in the VA for several years, the West Los Angeles VA and the Spoleta va and so I worked with a lot of vets with ptsd. And yeah. I mean, having MDMA assistant, this assisted psychotherapy as an option is just a no brainer. I don't know why it doesn't make sense to me that the FDA declined it. Probably because of ecstasy, certainly. Yeah, yeah. Ecstasy has a lot of bad, bad stuff associated with it. Right.

[Brad]

I've taken some terrible ecstasies.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Yeah.

[Brad]

One time in Berlin, I took what's called a Paul Frank.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Oh, what's that?

[Brad]

Paul Frank is ketamine and ecstasy. I know you do a ketamine clinic, so I don't want to talk badly about ketamine, but I threw up within 45 minutes.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Plenty of bad things about ketamine.

[Brad]

My friend took a blue Dolphin, which is methamphetamine and mdma. We had very different nights from each other, but that was the last time I've taken ecstasy. Point being, the culture around ecstasy and MDMA being the main active component probably has led to some social stigma over the course of the.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Yeah, that's a very good point. That to put it to summarize it is MDMA is like usually in ecstasy, but ecstasy is like a mix of a bunch of different stuff and you never, the consumer never really knows what they're getting. Sometimes there are other substituted cathinones with poor safety profiles and whatever else.

[Alex]

Is there any psychedelics you feel like.

[Brad]

Don'T have any medicinal benefit?

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Well, I would think of it, I would characterize it more as like, at what point do the risks of it or like the negatives of those psychedelics exceed the possible benefits? And one of them that comes to mind is like the 25 series. Like 25i.

[Brad]

25I.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Yeah, yeah. So it's like a derivative of the two C series, so it's even more potent. And. And there are some reports of people having seizures and dying from taking bigger doses of those. So I would say that one's one to watch out for. Most psychedelics, you really can't have direct harm from taking a massive dose of lsd. You might be kind of disoriented for a while and get yourself into trouble walking into walls and messing yourself up or whatnot, but you're not going to actually die from it. And that seems to be different with the 25i series or 25 series. So, yeah, those I would say don't. Don't dabble with, but I don't think they're really that popular anymore. It seemed like they had. They had their sort of time maybe like four or five years ago, and then people have moved on.

[Brad]

Yeah, I don't think research chemicals really built to last.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Well, I mean, one of the interesting things is if you go to anywhere on Venice. So I'm here in the marina, but if you go to Venice Beach. Right. Right nearby, you can go to these shops that sell chocolate bars with. They'll say there's absolutely no mushrooms in here, but there's this other compound for acetoxy dmt, and that's a pro drug to psilocin. So it's basically what you have in magic mushrooms is also a pro drug to psilocin, but it's for phosphoryloxy dmt. So this is somewhat similar. It gets metabolized in the same thing and they can sell it openly.

[Brad]

That's interesting.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Yeah. Wow.

[Brad]

So, like, have you taken that before?

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Yeah.

[Brad]

Should I go get one after this? It might be bad for my HPPD symptoms.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

If you're worried about having hppd, I'd probably recommend against taking any psychedelics. It's very likely to make it, you know, bring it out again or maybe make it worse or it's unpredictable, for sure.

[Brad]

Speaking of, actually, I don't know.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Have you heard of people trying psychedelics after they, like, with a HPPD diagnosis?

[Brad]

Well, I mean, I had some friends who I'm not too close with anymore back in the day, who. Their first response when I told them I had HPPD was like, bro, you just gotta trip way harder. Like, you didn't complete the trip. Like, you know, you didn't take enough. That's why you're like this.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Yeah, I Mean, it's something I've always wondered about. Is there some merit to that idea? And I don't think there's many clinicians who want to recommend that, because it's. The other side of the coin is it could just make people's HPPD worse.

[Brad]

Yeah. Do you think that there's gonna be more HPPD cases with the normalization of psychedelics that's happened?

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Yeah, certainly. Yeah. I mean, with greater usage of psychedelics, there's gonna be greater people that experience the side effects.

[Brad]

I'm happy we talked about those two different eras, too. The MK Ultra Anti Drug DARE program era and this new period of time. Cause I feel like HPPD doesn't fit into either agenda, which is why there's been so little research for on it. There seems like there's two lobbies that are involved with psychedelic research. There's those who are looking to prove the benefits of it, and there are those who are looking. Who are looking to prove only the harms of it. And I feel like HPPD is very much something that is in between, because it is very much. No one's gonna stigmatize you for having it, but the HPPD community is sort of a crossover with the psychedelic, pro psychedelic community. And I feel like it's kind of the people who are really pro psychedelic don't want to talk too much about HPPD and the people who hate drugs and are or don't want to take care of people who have had negative side effects from drugs.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Yeah. Or maybe that latter group would highlight people with HPPD and say, look, it does fry your brain. Don't do psychedelics. Don't do drugs. Right. So you're right. I could see how it doesn't neatly fit into either agenda. And people do, for better or for worse, operate from their biases that drugs are good or drugs are bad. As an addiction psychiatrist, I tend to view that it can be the case either way, that there's probably some, for example, normative use of cocaine that people can do and not have trouble. Or there can be people who like it so much they use it too much and it ruins their life.

[Brad]

Tell me about it.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Yeah, I treat plenty of people with cocaine use disorder. And so, of course, I'm gonna say, like, let's not make cocaine more available, because that's gonna increase the number of people who end up using it too much and ruin their lives. But, yeah, there are people who use drugs and don't ruin their lives.

[Brad]

Yeah, a lot of people are gonna be watching this.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

It's a nuance.

[Brad]

A lot of people are gonna be watching this at home and thinking to themselves, damn, I really wanna do psychedelics, but I'm scared I'm gonna get hppd. Is there anything that folks can do to make themselves less susceptible?

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

I don't know. I don't know. I mean, I suppose if one of the biggest guidelines we have about psychedelics is if you have family member with schizophrenia or some kind of chronic psychotic disorder, schizophrenia or bipolar 1 being the ones that come to mind, schizoaffective, then it's a good idea to not take psychedelics because maybe it'll unlock that possibility of the person taking it developing this disorder. But that's something that we're, you know, the academics currently are thinking about testing formally because it's never been tested. We just are sort of saying like, hey, if you had family members, probably don't do this because maybe you're going to be more liable. So we don't have a great way to predict this stuff and we don't have good data on it really. Some of this stuff is kind of scary to question. Right. Because if you have a clinical trial that recruits people with these disorders, do you want to be the doctor, do you want to be the clinician that accidentally induces schizophrenia in this group of people? I mean, that's that testing. It's really the only way we're going to know.

[Brad]

Yeah, I totally understand that.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

I suspect that's going to be the case that there's going to be really cautious testing of these compounds in these populations because they're being studied by a variety of organizations now. But variety of companies, like, are trying to get FDA approval or planning to get FDA approval, like LSD for generalized anxiety disorder, or Compass Pathways is psilocin for depression, for major depressive disorder. So they're probably gonna open it up to see like what those subpopulations do. But yeah, I would say if you have a family history, probably best guidance is to not.

[Brad]

Yeah.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

If you have any kind of. You're not gonna. Not gonna have a good like, idea of if you have the prodromal stage of schizophrenia. But like, if you have the beginnings of schizophrenia, probably not a good idea.

[Brad]

Yeah, it's my best friend growing up. He had no schizophrenia in his family, but I guess he was predisposed to it in some capacity that he was unaware of. And we used to smoke weed together every day after school. Yeah. And I remember sometimes, you know, he would start rap battling ghosts.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Oh, yeah.

[Brad]

You know, to the point where I was like, geez, like, you know, I thought he was rapping to himself, started gradually speaking to non existent entities and it got so bad that, you know, it was almost, it was evident that he was going through a psychotic break. And you know, by the time we were seniors in high school, he was homeless. And he was homeless for 10 years. I think he's just now back on his feet. Feet. But that was from cannabis alone.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Well, yeah. Actually, I was about to say before you mention, this is the strongest link between drug use and developing schizophrenia is with cannabis, actually, which it wasn't totally intuitive for me. I would have thought maybe amphetamines or maybe psychedelics, but no, it's cannabis by a long shot.

[Brad]

By a long shot, yeah. More so than lsd?

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Yeah. And I mean, maybe that's because there isn't that much people using LSD that we don't have this strong data signal to sort of see that connection. But it seems to be really strongly linked with cannabis. I don't know that cannabis causes schizophrenia. I don't think that's the case per se, but it's hard to disentangle the connection.

[Brad]

You think weed's good again?

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

It's one of those things like if you're using weed for chronic pain and you're not using opioids, if you're staying away from oxycodone by using cannabis edibles, that's. That sounds to me like a huge win. You know, if you're smoking weed three times a day or you know, throughout the day, seven days a week, and you're, you're not like going to class, you're not going to job, that doesn't seem good either, you know, so it can, it can. There's, there's no general thing I can say, but yeah, it's, it's all about the context. Yeah.

[Brad]

We recently produced a documentary called Dear Kelly, which is about a guy who is like a January 6th frontline MAGA conservative. It was about his family's attempt to kind of get him out of the rabbit hole and return him to a semblance of normalcy. And we sent him to a rehabilitation center in Pennsylvania on a scholarship and they diagnosed him as schizoaffective bipolar as a result of cannabis overuse. And one thing that they mentioned is that from back in the day until now, weed is significantly stronger and more modified to have ridiculously high THC yields. Is that just an anti weed psyop, or is weed actually that much stronger?

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

We got way stronger since the 70s. Yeah. I mean, you can see in like the testing of all these cannabis strains, like the amount of cannabinoids. Yeah. The THC concentrations now are huge. So it's sort of like the equivalent between having a Budweiser and a shot of whiskey, I suppose.

[Brad]

Or Everclear.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Sure.

[Brad]

You ever had one of those?

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

It's been a while.

[Brad]

But you have had one.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Back in UC Davis.

[Brad]

Oh, you went?

[Alex]

Is UC Davis a big party squad?

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

There's some parties. It's a college town.

[Brad]

Yeah.

[Alex]

I just know every UC is a little bit different. UC Berkeley is where all the protest stuff happens.

[Brad]

UC Santa Barbara is like where everyone's like really dumb.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Yeah, I guess. Not as highly rated of a school, huh? It's still pretty good.

[Alex]

Yeah, but it's like when you think of Santa Barbara, you think of like.

[Brad]

A stress free environment where people are just kind of watching the waves crash against the ocean.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Although I didn't surf at the time, now I do, so now I think maybe I should have gone to Santa Barbara.

[Alex]

Do you think we'll ever look back.

[Brad]

At this period of time where everyone with depression is being treated with SSRIs and everybody with pain is being treated by opiates and think, damn, we had it all wrong?

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

It's very possible. Yeah. Yeah. Because, I mean, we look back at mental health treatment from 50 years ago and it was vastly different. Some of the drugs we used had like so many more side effects and whatnot. So, yeah, I'm sure there's gonna be some big developments. And I mean, that's one of the things that got me into psychiatry is just seeing the potential with psychedelics. And so I think there's a lot of good things that can come of it, for sure. But there's also, you know, the unfortunate thing is that we don't know who's going to develop hppd. But yeah, that seems to be a consequence. Some percentage of people develop that. And so there's always drawbacks to drugs and it's just trying to find out how to minimize those and how to maximize the good parts about them.

[Brad]

And the patients that you've had and the experience you've had working with HPPD sufferers, if that's what you want to call us.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Sure.

[Brad]

What's the main way that you've seen people get over it? Since there is no cure, There seems.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

To be a lot of just time and adjusting and I would say like to, to be succinct. Psychotherapy, whether that's formalized psychotherapy by like feeling, figuring out ways to cope, or figuring out just new. New routines in one's life, or whether it's talking to friends, you know, leaning on different friends and family for connections and support and whatnot, or these different foundations like the Perception Restoration foundation. And I'm sure there's other online communities I'm not aware of, but just. Yeah, finding community, finding support.

[Brad]

Yeah. That's good that you're saying that, because when I first interviewed Dr. Abraham, who doesn't do interviews much, I asked him, I was like, what do you think's the best way to reduce visual snow symptoms? And he was like, alcohol and benzodiaz. I was like, I don't want to put that out, you know, or else someone's going to go get a bunch of Xans.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Well, yeah. Yeah. Clonazepam. Klonopin seems to have maybe some of the best track record of helping.

[Brad]

Do you have hppd?

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

No, I don't, man.

[Alex]

Lucky guy.

[Brad]

You don't have it?

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Nope. Damn.

[Alex]

How'd you get so lucky?

[Brad]

Did you do shrooms when you were 14?

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

No. No, I waited a bit longer.

[Brad]

That's what I wish I would have done.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Waited to college. Yeah. I mean, I think that's actually a good point. Is. Is you're asking what can people do to minimize their odds, Is it does make sense to wait until you're 18. I don't know what the right age is. And honestly, maybe you'd be fine doing it 16 or 17, but, like, I don't know. Why risk it?

[Brad]

Well, at what point does brain development finish?

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Early 20s? It really depends on where you. Where you draw the end point. But, yeah.

[Brad]

Yeah. Sometimes I wake up and I think, damn, I hope my brain's gonna develop a little more.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

I feel like my brain's still developing. I just turned 40. Yeah.

[Brad]

Do you know what I mean? Like, this can't be it. Like, this is peak intelligence. We got some work to do.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Yeah.

[Brad]

I'm not saying I'm dumb, but there's certain things where I'm like, geez. Well, man, thanks so much for your time. I really appreciate it. Is there anything else you wanted to say? You feel like I didn't ask?

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

No, I think we covered a lot. It's been interesting conversation.

[Brad]

What do you think? What do I have to do to get a prescription for one of those things from you?

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Oh, well, we could meet as a. You could become a patient of mine. I'd have to ask you a lot of stuff, like, specific stuff about your background and whatnot. Oh.

[Brad]

Because I want to try the. How do you say it?

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Lamotrigine.

[Brad]

I want to try lamotrigine real bad.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Yeah, I think it's reasonable, you know.

[Brad]

Because I want to try. I mean, honestly, I'm at peace with the extreme visual symptoms, but if there's a way to see a clear sky again, I'm all for it.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, so I'd be happy to take you on as a patient if you want. I need to, you know, do all the the same stuff like with everybody else and get your signed consent and whatnot. But that's some paperwork we can get through.

[Brad]

Can we do it after this?

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Channel 5 live worldwide, Hollywood and Vine. Fuck the authority.

[Alex]

Channel 5 news, channel 55.

[Brad]

We don't fuck with custers and 5 is the best number.

[Alex]

Hey, what's up, guys? Oh, shit. Hey, man, thanks for that web link. It's really working. I don't know if you guys missed the memo, but we just dropped an entire feature film. That's right, a full blown movie. At www.DearKellyFilm.com Dear KellyFilm.com it's an action packed movie that revolves around the life and times of Kelly Johnson, AKA Kelly J. Patriot. Kobe Bryant was assassinated by the Clintons. Come here, Nazi. You're going to Guantanamo.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Oh my gosh. What did I do?

[Brad]

Am I getting canceled?

[Alex]

The Democrats don't like you. They're gonna cancel you. It documents his semi estranged family and their attempt to pull him out of the rabbit hole.

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Aren't you selling baby parts?

[Alex]

Yes or no?

[Dr. Wesley Ryan]

Don't tread on me.

[Alex]

Don't even think about it. I don't want to say too much, but it's a good movie. If you guys want to watch it, it would mean a lot. Www.DearKellyFilm.com it's available for rent and buy. You can rent it for $5.55 or you can buy it for $15.55. Www.Dear Kellyfil.com com www.DearKellyfilm.com www.Dear Deli.