← Solutions with Henry Blodget
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- [00:00]
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- [01:12]
Host / Interviewer
Back when I was in college, when you talked about using shrooms, LSD and other psychedelics, most people thought you were degenerate. Now, in many circles, they assume you've seen the light. Psychedelics psilocybin, lsd, mdma, ketamine and others have developed large and enthusiastic followings in the past decade. They're also now used therapeutically instead of recreationally, and some of them seem quite promising in the treatment of depression, ptsd, addiction and other conditions. But these compounds are still illegal in most places, so if you want to try them, you either have to travel to where they're legal or break the law. Happily for those who would like to see more research and accessibility with psychedelics, this seems to be changing. President Trump surprised many people a few weeks ago when he signed an executive order accelerating research into psychedelics, and they are one of the few issues that have support across the political spectrum. My guest this week, Ann Philippi, runs the New Health Club, a media organization dedicated to psychedelics. A former journalist at Vogue, Vanity Fair and other publications, Ann's an expert and thanks to personal experience advocate, she's working to spread the word in her home country, Germany and the United States. She joined us from Berlin. I hope you enjoy our conversation. Anne, welcome. Thank you so much for joining us. This is a at least in the United States, is a fascinating moment in the sort of movement around psychedelics which those of us who've been following the tech industry and the sort of life optimization industry have been hearing a lot about this for 10 years, 15 years, but it suddenly seems to be on the verge of going mainstream. And is that what you feel like, too? Do you feel like we're on the precipice of a mainstream movement here?
- [03:04]
Ann Philippi
Absolutely. And it's interesting because in the last years, it was always this thing like, oh, when is it going to be mainstream? What has to happen? How will it look like? Is it even possible to be a mainstream kind of thing? And then, as we all know, just 10 days ago, I think, or maybe two weeks ago, Trump had launched this executive order to basically saying, okay, the FDA now should research psychedelics again, which I think some people had expected. But when it actually happened, it was really a strong signal. And as you can imagine, there were immediately criticism around this. But honestly, what I observed in all kinds of media, pretty much everybody said, okay, look, this is a really strong moment. No matter what political party you might be belonging to, this is a signal for pretty much everybody to go ahead. And what I found really interesting, if people ask, how did this happen? It was actually, I would say in the last two years, the veteran community, also nonprofits that had been created around veteran mental health treatments with psychedelics, they really, really pushed forward. And the way they pushed forward was because they created their own very strong narrative. And like one of our supporters, Simeon Schnapper, always says, like, nobody has something against a veteran. Nobody will attack a veteran who will say, well, I would like not to kill myself. I would like to have an option of another treatment. So the veterans in the last two or three years created a very strong narrative that was then basically able to kind of taking out of their context and put it into another context so everybody would understand. And the first other context was Joe Rogan. And Joe Rogan had many times veterans on his show, but especially Governor, former governor Rick Perry and the Americans for Ibogaine founder, co founder Brian Hubbard. So, and then it was a little bit like a football game. And then like shortly before the executive order, you had them on again. So. But it was actually quite a strong moment because people really also in Europe actually got the message that now there are actual chances that. And in the beginning now it's like three companies that will probably pass the FDA pretty quickly, the clinical trials and maybe like in one or two years are available. So. And as we know, like, once the FDA has accepted something, it doesn't matter if the government changes changes. So it's a quite a strong signal if a medication is. Or a psychedelic is accepted by the fda.
- [06:11]
Host / Interviewer
Right. And that was a very startling moment for the reasons you just talked about and you've also written about. What's so fascinating about this movement is that it is either bipartisan or it's nonpartisan. And certainly a lot of the folks that I've been hearing from for the last 10 to 15 years, they tend to be on the left side of the political fringe. And we go back to the 1960s and psychedelics are associated with the hippie movement, which is a left movement. And now, as you point out, we've got Governor Rick Perry, former governor, staunch Republican, and Joe Rogan, who lots of people on the left think is very right, but I would say for the country is probably right in the center. And then we have President Trump, who is very vocally against everything having to do with drugs, including alcohol, for very good reasons and his family, or very understandable reasons. And yet here he is embracing it, surprising people. So what causes that? Why is this actually something that suddenly a lot of people at all ends of the spectrum seem be getting behind?
- [07:14]
Ann Philippi
Yeah, I think the first time somebody told me about this bipartisan strategy almost, and I mean, it is something you could say it is probably something rather American. But it was a strategy that I think Maps, meaning Rick Dublin, at one point, maybe so the founder of MAPS. So I think like, maybe like 10, 15 years ago, he, I think he told me he started to understand that a bipartisan approach to this would be way more powerful than like you say, just to put it into a progressive, rather left wing department, which is, you know, probably sometimes difficult for a lot of people to follow through kind of. So as a political attitude. And so MAPS very early on started to look into trials around police officers or I mean, veterans, as we said earlier, earlier, or also firemen, where you would think, like, why would they need psychedelics kind of. But so those are people who are often like, so called, like first responders. They come like five times a day, eventually get into a situation that is extremely horrible. Some they seem they might see dead people. I don't know, 20 dead people a week, depending on their job. I mean, policemen, one can imagine. And suddenly there was this understanding of also in the context of police officers that, well, I mean, this constant exposure to this will create like a solid PTSD in my psyche. And it's something that actually medication is not able to resolve, which we, I mean, that's a longer discussion, but I think it's pretty clear that a lot of PTSD cases are not resolvable with the classic therapy and just medication. So. And some of them were suddenly open to mdma, like guided MDMA sessions, or just kind of open to other experiences once their addiction came through, or their families were saying, look, we can't take this anymore, like your trauma, basically. And I mean, there's also an aspect in the actual government where there are some people who basically always knew about these new healing modalities and also wouldn't see anymore why there should be a political stigmatization around these, even if they were rather on the Republican side.
- [09:53]
Host / Interviewer
Let's step back from all this because one of the things that I've learned as I've sort of gotten interested in the movement and I have not read Michael Pollan's very famous book about it, but I've watched some of his shows and I've read his most recent book and certainly listening to a lot of people talk about it over the last 10 to 15 years. My understanding is that in many indigenous cultures, psychedelics of many different kinds were a big part of the tradition for a very long time. That there was a lot of research in the early 1960s around LSD and other compounds that was very promising. But then came this big war on drugs and they were effectively stigmatized, as you put it. And the things that degenerates do, like people in college, like me, and it's recreational and running all around and that kind of thing. And now this movement now is very different. It's very much around, it's medicinal, it's therapeutic and so forth. So talk about that, talk about the history of it and where we are now.
- [10:53]
Ann Philippi
Yeah, like you said, I mean, it was banned from universities after Nixon, I think in 73, kind of made it impossible to research. Also it's not only that it was suddenly illegal for STE or whoever wanted to experience lsd. It was also as universities worldwide who already had done some research and there was quite some information. So today we would technically be 40 years ahead of things if that wouldn't have happened. But it was really just happening in very small kind of, you could say illegal contexts, but not legit research. In a sense, you have a clinical study in Harvard or like UC Berkeley like today. And I think in early 20 something 10, like Amanda Fielding in the UK, she was basically opening the Beckley foundation, who is now part of a very big biotech at high Beckley company. So she was starting to put like very little research elements together, but you could say nobody really took that serious. And then my observation is that roughly 2018, 19, shortly before the pandemic. So this is when suddenly there were companies that started to research, re research psychedelics, especially psilocybin. The Imperial College in the UK had started there I think 2016, their psychedelic research. And so, and suddenly you had like a company world around this as much as it was possible, but also like many universities like you know, Johns Hopkins, who really started to re engage in a very serious research. So this kind of started to rebuild itself as an industry, as an ecosystem. And one thing that we're seeing right now also which makes a lot of progress, are biotech companies and products that not necessarily evoke a very strong trip or like a very strong psychedelic experience at the same time. Like the Johns Hopkins study back then with psilocybin was, was testing the first, you know, high dose of psilocybin trips and they were actually saying or finding out that people who had a mystical experience, or you could say a full on psychedelic experience, they were actually able to leave their depression behind. And the people who didn't have that, they were still struggling a little bit with depression. So the main question now will be to what extent can, let's say tweak molecules or modified molecules that are missing a little bit the, the full trip, but have the advantage of being kind of fast tracked, how kind of effective will they be in the end? Which we don't know yet. I mean there's still research coming and how much do people with severe depressions really still need a full on psychedelic triptamine kind of explosion to say it? A little bit drastic. So that is something that's going to be super interesting. And there are camps, like one camp says, well this is all perfect. Biotech will solve this problem. And others also people leaning more towards an indigenous context or embracing that context, they would say, well this is not possible without having a whole journey, a whole psychedelic trip.
- [14:51]
Host / Interviewer
So basically there is now a lot of modern science and capitalism being brought to this and seeing it as a huge opportunity. And there's some companies that have already done incredibly well. And as you mentioned, there are drugs in late stage trials and I think one has been approved recently. So it's really starting to move. And I want to talk about that in detail. But before we do that, why don't we step back a little bit. I will say that what I have heard over the past 10 years, in addition to Tim Paris's great podcast and others where he's been advocating and exploring this for a long time and so forth, just a lot of very powerful anecdotal stories, either by folks who have just found psilocybin, for example, to be a huge addition to their life that helps them be happier and more connected and get past issues that have been troubling them for a long time to people who were really seriously depressed or unhappy, who will say that their lives were changed by this. And I've also heard from people who said, yeah, it's no big deal, or people who have not had a particularly good experience with it. So it is a full range, but it's incredibly striking how powerful some of these anecdotal stories are. And so you were a famous and very successful journalist at GQ and Vogue in Los Angeles and Berlin and so forth. And at some point you decided to make a pretty major change both in your life and as a journalist and started this new organization and podcast and publication. Tell us us your story. How'd you get into this?
- [16:23]
Ann Philippi
Yeah, I was for kind of, you know, forever with CONNIE NAS For 15 years, Vogue, like you said, Vanity Fair. And then for gq, I was in la, basically their Hollywood reporter for Europe, the European gq. And I somewhat got into this. People from California will notice, like Kundalini Yoga World. It's a very, you could say it's like a psychedelics yoga. You do a lot of breath work and you have some encounters where you realize, wow, there's really something in me that is kind of wants to come out. And as you know, if you're in California, you're focusing more on the celebrities and the yoga class. Nobody ever really got into their stuff. But at one point, you know, like many things came together. Like we had a separation. Then also the media world, as you know, changed drastically. And I went back to Berlin and somewhat. Somebody gave me this Michael Pollan book I started to read. And as we know, Michael Pollan is a very established writer. So he comes from a very, not very preachy background in terms of psychedelics. He just wrote about how this worked for him and why he did it and when he was writing. Well, I needed to find really a different way to. For my thoughts or to think. And he wrote that he experienced that with lsd. So. And I closed a book. I was like, I need to find somebody for LSD somehow. And as a journalist, as you know, you kind of find people. And so I found a psychiatrist here who had a lot of experience. I mean, it's still illegal, to be clear, right? It's not. You can't just do it. But he had a lot of experience and really knew how to guide you through this. And so I had a couple of sessions with him before, like, why would I wanted to do this? And I actually went in the journey with my first journey ever with a very clear question because so I had come, coming back from la, I realized, well, I don't have children and I'm not married, so is this something. Why is this. So I just. This question was really kind of bothering me to some point and I couldn't tell why, what's the reason why I didn't have that or why this was blocking me in some way, this answer, to get the answer. And like, I think five minutes in the trip, I was pregnant with twins in the trip, so. And I was like, oh, it means something to you. So, and, and to long story short, it was actually my first kind of journey to realize, well, my actual life is totally different from the life that means something to me. And then I also realized that I'd really had, you know, not been able to access what had happened to me in my childhood, probably. And so. And then I started to recognize also in a couple of journeys later that this specific traumatizing event had really influenced every life decision I ever made. And I know this sounds quite dramatic if you say it like that, but first of all, it's true. And second, it's actually a really big relief to finally start to understand your decision making process. But. And it also brought me to the. Yeah. To a kind of a completely different understanding of my own person and not in a sense that I wanted to be now like a, you know, a preacher around psychedelics. So. But just I really started to understand there was no kind of. Yeah. Content around this, if you want, unless it would be very scientific or very extremely like pseudo spiritual, which. Which I wasn't really attracted to. And then I thought in the pandemic, it was shortly before, and I thought, like, okay, what if GQ had a psychedelic podcast? So that was pretty much what I was trying to think about. Like thinking as a journalist, how could you have these conversations that other people can understand what this is? So, and then all the scientists were on a show, investors, therapists. So it became like, I think 110 episodes so far.
- [21:02]
Host / Interviewer
And talk about it. One of the great things about talking to you about this is that you do bring a very inquisitive and fact based journalist view of this. And you're interviewing scientists and so forth. And I know each of the specific drugs that we are talking about. They all act differently. They all are different profiles in Terms of what happens and how you do them and so forth. But for those who are not really immersed in the science of it, take psilocybin for example. Many people describe the same thing that you do. Not so much with remembering things that they had forgotten, but that they feel like they are becoming unstuck or their brains, they see things differently. It's very much of an epiphany experience what is happening to us when we each rooms.
- [21:52]
Ann Philippi
Yeah. So I think the simplest way which makes kind of, I think it's the best way to describe it is that basically. So first of all, those are all tryptamins that are contained in psilocybin, which means they really have a bigger impact on your brain than let's say ketamine. A different, a different impact on your brain than ketamine for example, or MDMA. So LSD has works with tryptamens 5 MeO and psilocybin, which is kind of that evokes really a proper psychedelic trip. So, so this is the first thing and then you could describe it that the so called default mold network in your brain is kind of lowered. And basically this is a very simple explanation that scientists would probably talk about different. But basically what's happening is that all the information that you can't access while this default mode network is up, you will be able to access. And this default mode network is basically up because it helps you to go through a normal day. I drink a glass of water, I go into the car and drive. So this is possible if this network is up, but if it's down, other information can come forward that are normally not accessible to you. And I think that is the, the main thing that people including myself like report. Wow. Things came to me, names, Personas, just, or landscapes or experiences that I've never thought of. So your body can in this state of mind deliver information to you that your brain has kind of locked away, maybe also to protect you. Sometimes.
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- [26:56]
Host / Interviewer
this earlier, but these psilocybin and LSD certainly were around in the 1970s and 80s, and they were considered recreational drugs. And I will say it because I can include myself in the group. Degenerates would go and have fun on them, and they would be druggies and look to scans at and so forth. And now it's a very different experience. Now it's often done either with a group or with a therapist, as you say, and you're in a setting and they know how to handle it. It's a different way of approaching the compound, shall we say. And so talk about that and talk about the fact that certainly these drugs, even before we talked some other ones, even with all the support, they're still illegal. So if you're in New York City and you want to do this, you have to get into this underground network where you go into these secret apartments where they're these strange people who apparently supervise trips all day and they put the earphones on. It just seems so clandestine and scary. Talk about that. How do we actually, if we might want to explore this, how might we go about doing that these days?
- [28:03]
Ann Philippi
Yeah, I mean, like, the, you know, the Netherlands are a really good example how this is legal. I mean, it's called, like, magic truffles. It's not magic mushrooms, but it's psilocybin containing magic truffles. And it's basically like, let's say a person wants to do that and says, well, I want to do this in a safe set and setting. I want to do this with a therapist because I really want to go into the experience. So then you would be able to go, let's say, to meet the therapist after a call, before maybe like the night before, you do it. And you would talk about why you actually want to do it or what's on your mind or what bothers you. And so the next day, in the morning, you then go into, let's say, it's sometimes in nature also, or sometimes practices in Amsterdam, you would go and see them. The room is mainly, you know, a great set and setting. It's calm, it's quiet, it's not scary. There's no noise and anything. And you would then drink the truffle tea in the morning. And then the trip is like five to seven, eight hours, something like that. And then you kind of come back and start to already unpack a little bit what you've seen, and then the next morning you come back again and do the first integration session with the therapist. So, I mean, what have you seen? What do you think that means? Meanings can also change, you know, after a couple of months. But it's like you first unpacking with a professional person what you've seen, and then like, maybe you give yourself a day to process, but that's basically it. And this is kind of a, you could say a little bit of a blueprint for these experiences that are not in a. A clinical setting. So the clinical variation might be very different that we gonna see now. But there are also places in the US like, you know, in Colorado and in Oregon, where people actually can do these journeys in a legal setting. And there are therapists who can, who will offer this. And you can just, you know, if you look online, Psychedelic Therapy Colorado, you will find a lot of therapists. And I think it's still kind of. What's so weird is that it's still not possible to have information about these people who are doing this in a way that if you would have like a doctor or like a therapist, like a classic therapist. So it's still very difficult for these therapists to, I'm not going to say like advertising, but kind of, you know, to portray themselves, what they're doing. It still has to be very, a little bit still under the radar, even in states where it is possible to do that. So you still need to rely very often on recommendations or find a person that has done it and what do they recommend? And it's still kind of complicated, I would say.
- [31:11]
Host / Interviewer
And a lot of. Just to say one reason it's so interesting. I mean, a lot of the anecdotes that you describe and others, I mean, I'll give you one, you put on a dinner when I was in Germany earlier this year where the theme was psychedelics. And there were some very persuasive people who spoke as one would expect at a dinner that was sort of advocating this. But just some of the stories were amazing. I mean, I met a young venture capitalist who had apparently been addicted to both alcohol and then ketamine and had gone through, I think, two or three treatment programs. They didn't work. He and his parents had effectively given up. And then Ultimately, he went to Mexico and did ibogaine treatment where it's legal in Mexico, it's not legal in the United States, but. And the way he's describing it, it's not just that he stopped, it's that he stopped wanting to do it. And he said he would go still to either Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous meetings and he would see people who were saying, yeah, it's been 20 years since I had a drink and I still miss it every, every day. And he was saying that's so sad to him because he doesn't miss it. It's like he got rewired by it. And you don't have to hear too many stories like this to if you are somebody who is really struggling either with a problem like that or PTSD that you're talking about, which I think is usually an MDNA MA tra. Yeah, Powerful stories. And so, and yet what you describe where it is still in the United States, even though President Trump is saying, hey, let's accelerate into this, it's federally illegal everywhere. And yes, you have to find the right person and it's still scary. And so what has to happen to begin to, as you put it, destigmatize it and bring this to the extent that it is helpful or can be helpful, bring it to a wider audience where it isn't so scary and underground and it's safer and you don't have to worry about it.
- [33:10]
Ann Philippi
Well, I think one thing you already mentioned is that the executive order is like, I think after they ordered, they created three so called vouchers for three biotech companies to be a little bit fast tracked in the context of the fda. I mean, they're disclosed in public as like Compass Pathways, usona, both in the context of psilocybin and then Transcendent Therapeutics who just got bought by a very big Japanese biotech fund. So I mean, and then like you know, Colorado or Oregon, they have decriminalized certain things and because them as a state wanted to do that. But not every state has the same level of decriminalization. So the context of the legality or the question of legality is still kind of not resolved. But I think like my, my observation sometimes is that Gen Z people, for example, have no narrative anymore at all about war on drugs. So it's just not in their education almost. They've never kind of heard about it almost unless they ask why is it illegal? But so this whole narrative is just not theirs anymore. So that is an interesting generational shift. But There are still a lot of institutions, one could say in the world that still are kind of connected to this war on drugs narrative, which is also a very. Yeah, it's also a political narrative in a way. And I think like recently it was in the New York Times, there's a very long piece about a person doing ibogaine. And the first time it was really a quite emotional piece in the New York Times. Like before it was more like, this is the upside, this is the downside, like the journalistic point of view. But I thought it was really great that that person had really, you know, like also I think it was a person struggling with alcohol and addiction. Like we're really talking about. Okay, look, without this, to be honest, I don't think I would have made it. And also, like, I mean, I think most people don't know that, like the, you know, we know the 12 step program, but the 13 step was always an LSD journey, which one of the co founders wanted to have as the 13th step because then all of these reasons why people were drinking would eventually resolve. But one of these other founders was saying, no, that's absolutely not what we're doing. So it's interesting that the thinking was always there that it would be a very sustainable solution for mental health.
- [36:06]
Host / Interviewer
I mean, the ibogaine stories, like I, it sounds, and I read the same article, it sounds like an incredibly intense experience and not always positive. Like it's a very intense physical experience. Gather there are a lot of risks around it in terms of heart arrhythmia and so forth. Like it's not, it's the kind of thing that you actually do want to have of people who really know what they're doing, medically involved. And so again, it seems odd that it's so potentially powerful and yet the way to do it is to have to go to another country and maybe it's safe there. I don't know the statistics. But so in the United States, where there does seem to be this groundswell, the latest stats that I've seen is, I think for psilocybin, it's something like 8 million people have done it in the last year or so. It's like 3% of adults. That compares, I think 60 to 70% of adults drink, 20% are using marijuana. So it's, you know, but it's starting to really become a real number. Like what has to happen over the next few years now that this executive order has been issued for where, hey, if you hear these stories and you like them, you can Actually go to your doctor and talk about it or not, and then go and do it. Like, where you don't have to go into some secret apartment and it's illegal. Like, how do we. How do we get past that?
- [37:29]
Ann Philippi
Yeah, I think one. One of the things that's already a little bit underway is that there will be. Let's say there will be various infrastructures that are being built out. Like, for example, Compass Pathways, the company that created this first synthetic psilocybin therapy program, will collaborate or roll out with an American clinic, kind of the first treatment, maybe end of this year or next year. So there is something like a. Like a clinic infrastructure that's coming, which is already something that is trustworthy, I think, for a lot of people. But it seems like, you know, the legal aspect of things is still the bottleneck a little bit. And so, I mean, I think there's a lot of initiatives who work on a rescheduling of these drugs, mainly psilocybin and, of course, and any kind of other compounds that are helping to solve these problems. I think that is the number one thing that needs to. Needs to start. Also, having said that, a lot of people from a more medical context would say, well, that's not how it should be, because then it's too easily accessible and everybody can do it. And there's too much of a. Yeah. Kind of recreational danger coming towards us. But I don't really think that. Because that this is an actual danger maybe in like 5 to 10 years. Because, I mean, there was this one study in the pandemic from. From UK, also from London, that people between 25 and 30 were actually microdosing to go through the pandemic. So the way to deal with these compounds became a very normal kind of engagement. Like, almost like, okay, if you do a coffee, you do this. If you microdosing, you do this. So. And it's funny, in Europe, most people would ask me, oh, yeah, so where can I get microdoses? So it's not even in their mind that it is still an illegal substance because it's just a tiny little mushroom. Whereas, I mean, same thing everywhere. If you go into a store and buy 10 bottles of vodkas, nobody would ever ask you anything. You know, one of the things that it's wild kind of.
- [39:59]
Host / Interviewer
It's just confounding about the United States is for. For decades, it's like, oh, marijuana is so horrible, and you're such a degenerate, and it's a stepping stone. And meanwhile, every block, four bars. Let's go inside and drink. And by the way, then we'll drive drunk and kill people and start fights in our house. I mean, just the incredible dissonance of the two. And certainly this is one area as well on that. So where do we find you? Where do we find you if we want to listen to your amazing archive of interviews on this?
- [40:30]
Ann Philippi
Yeah. So the podcast is called the New Health Club. It's on Spotify, Apple, all the typical podcast platforms. We also have a YouTube channel, which is with most of the interviews that we did. Most of the podcasts also called the New Health Club. And soon there will be also additional content on YouTube and the Substack, it's called the New Health Club by Ann Philippe. And at the moment, I'm doing this substack experiment where I basically, for six weeks, write my kind of personal story that eventually will become also a book. So. But substack is really a great place for any kind of psychedelic content creator because you can really say you can name your experiences, you can name the compounds, you can name what you actually have, you know, kind of, what do you think about lsd? What do you think? So you can actually really go fully into the explanation of what this is, kind of.
- [41:36]
Host / Interviewer
Well, and thank you so much for taking the time. It's great. And good luck with both of those.
- [41:41]
Ann Philippi
Thank you.