Hello, and welcome to the further podcast where
we explore the far reaches of the human experience
from missions to Mars to skydiving to blowing
one's mind of psychoactive substances. These
conversations offer insight into how these extreme
experiences showcase the human spirit and just
might teach us how to live our everyday lives
a bit better. I'm your host, Haley Miranda -Rod.
and I study the effects of psychedelics and other
out there experiences on people's minds and brains.
So this is one of the most fun and wide -ranging
conversations I've had on further in a while,
and probably one of the weirder ones. Dr. David
Luke, author of Other Worlds, Psychedelics and
Exceptional Human Experiences, has quite the
interesting research career. He investigates
everything from how psychedelics might increase
the odds of ESP -like experiences and paranormal
beliefs to how people cope with existential distress.
stress after challenging experiences with psychedelics.
He also has been, let's just say, his own guinea
pig for science and isn't afraid to tell us that
tale. Even though studying ESP -related phenomena
and psychedelics might seem a bit out there,
maybe even unicorn dimension level weirdness,
um... There's no denying that there are pretty
strong historical roots in the history of psychedelics
of people being intrigued by such phenomenon.
So everybody from serious scientists in the 1950s
to indigenous cultures worldwide or who use psychedelics
are a bit entwined with it. We also get into
a bit of the challenging experiences project
which investigates how people cope with adverse
effects after using psychedelics. I think this
part of the podcast is be best. We get into a
lot of nuances about just how little is really
known about what can go wrong after challenging
experiences and it's great because there are
a few people out there that are exploring what
can go wrong with more nuance and just saying,
oh hallucinogen persisting perceptual disorder
or psychosis -like experiences. This is building
from the ground up, a sort of taxonomy and also
what people find helpful, which I think is extremely
important that people start to investigate. In
a lot of ways, our discussion of the challenging
experiences project kind of parallels some of
the discussions I had with Dr. Willoughby Britton
in our episode on meditation gone wrong, which
looks at meditation related side effects. If
you find this part of the discussion with Dr.
David Luke interesting, be sure to check out
that episode as well. And now let's turn to the
actual conversation. So I am here with Dr. David
Luke, who has, I think, some of the most interesting
areas of focus in psychedelic science. Definitely
focusing on some weird and out there experiences.
Dr. Luke is especially known for studying exceptional
experiences. And a lot of these experiences are
a bit outside, I guess, typical academic norms,
you could say. Maybe you could tell us a bit
about how you got interested in studying such
weird phenomena and what exceptional experiences
are. Thank you, Hayley. Thanks for having me
along. Yeah, I think I was always interested
in weird experiences. I guess I had quite a few
strange experiences as a kid. I had a very, very
active dream life. You know, like I would just
be off having cosmic battles. most nights and
strange hypnagogic phenomena and body experiences.
And so I was always drawn towards exploring that
end of the spectrum of psychology, which led
me to also kind of treat my brain like a neurochemistry
playset as a teenager and explore psychedelics,
which led to me going away to study psychology
at university. Although hopefully disappointed
when I got to do a degree that you basically
don't learn anything about this stuff about psychedelic
experiences or exceptional experiences. And so
I was kind of forced to go back and do a PhD
and try and inject into the academy what I found
to be missing. So exceptional experiences is
a kind of really broad heading for all of the
weird and wonderful stuff you don't normally
get in a psychology degree. So can be psychedelic
experiences or paranormal or spiritual or anomalous
experiences, unusual experiences which don't
fit the norm, which I also include kind of neurodivergence
in there as well. So things like aphantasia and
synesthesia, which are not necessarily paranormal,
spiritual or psychedelic, but at least they're
not the kind of usual kind of everyday experience
for most people. So it covers everything that
falls down the cracks in usual psychology and
it also points to and illuminates some interesting
dimensions of consciousness which I think have
been woefully ignored. So you were just a kid
having strange dreams basically. And you're like,
I need to go study psychology to understand what
the heck is going on here. And that led you down
quite a rabbit hole. And one thing that I appreciate
about your work is it's not just psychedelic
experiences. You use psychedelics as a lens to
study other things like psi phenomena and near
-death experiences. So the interesting thing
about psychedelics is They are a very reliable
way of inducing these kinds of exceptional experiences.
Exceptional experiences tend to occur more with
psychedelics than any other kind of access route
due to their potency. But I think the kinds of
experiences you can access through these substances
you can access through any other means of altered
states of consciousness, pretty much the most
phenomena. And so like more broadly, it's the
study of altered states, which includes psychedelics
and these kinds of experiences. ESP and psychedelics,
like that's something that kind of I think gets
sanitized out of more medicalized discussions
of like, oh, this could be a treatment for depression,
addiction and what have you. But it seems that
in indigenous cultures at least, that that was
one of sort of the main ways that people were
examining psychedelics being useful. Using things
like ayahuasca to be able to tell what somebody
was sick with, for example, right? Yes. So I
think this is an interesting thing. You know,
psychedelics as they used by indigenous people
are just part of an armory of techniques for
accessing our states of consciousness. So in
lots of indigenous cultures that engage in what
we might call shamanism, it's a practice by whereby
you go into an altered state of consciousness
to transcend time and space and bring back useful
information for your community. So it's very
pragmatic, magical, spiritual practice. And psychedelics
are just one means of going into those states
to transcend time and space. It's not something
we have kind of continued with in the kind of
the global north particularly. So like the anthropologist
Charles Loughlin talks about how we have, you
can separate the world into monophasic and polyphasic
cultures. So monophasic cultures are those cultures
like in Euro America that only really value and
engage with the ordinary waking state of consciousness,
like one phase of consciousness. Everything else
is denigrated. It's like, oh, that's just hallucination.
really pay attention to that. So dreams aren't
really... paid attention to psychedelic drugs
are frowned upon, other altered states practices
are frowned upon, or at least they were. And
you know, you get some special dispensation to
have coffee to make you function and work harder.
And maybe you can have a few beers on the weekend
as a way of relaxing. But you know, we don't
really value the drunken state is any way important
to our kind of civic responsibilities. Whereas
in polyphasic cultures, you know, the information
coming from altered states such as dreams or
psychedelic experiences are very much valued
and engaged with at least on a level with ordinary
waking consciousness, if not more so. And there
are means of accessing information like it's
a system of epistemology, the way in which we
obtain knowledge. part of the world. It's generally
through observation and science and education
and logic and philosophy. Whereas in a lot of
indigenous cultures, their epistemology derives
through altered states, through engaging with
the natural world. through kind of shamanic practices.
Like if you want to understand what the medicinal
properties of a plant are, you may drink ayahuasca
and dieta and diet with that plant and then come
to know the plant in a relational way, on a subjective
way and understand what its healing properties
are. So these are two very different worldviews
and epistemologies and ontologies that we have
where one is accepted that altostates are good
and useful and the other is where they are denigrated.
hated and denied. So I guess that kind of explains
why for a period of time you went to Mexico to
try to learn more about shamanism in a more polyphasic
cultural setting, it sounds like. Maybe you could
tell us a bit about what you got out of that
experience. Well, I've got a fine collection
of Mexican shirts. As you can see, that was one
of the most important things for me. I also got
to learn a little bit about what is the nature
of shamanism and these very different ways of
interacting and seeing the world. northern global
people, I was very naive to what these realities
entail. But I would say that as a general rule
bull who live within a magical spiritual kind
of culture, which engages with shamanism, live
in a kind of permanent magical reality, which
is at odds with our kind of cultural reality
in the global north. And that is, you know, it
is possible to transcend time and space and obtain
information from those states of consciousness.
They do so to communicate and mediate with what
we might call the spirits of nature, but the
rest of the ecological world. and to negotiate
and discover animals to go and hunt or ways of
healing or to divine the future or to find lost
objects or to negotiate spiritual contracts.
And that's a lot for somebody from the global
North to get their head around in any kind of
open way without either just denigrating it,
denying it or on the opposite side of it, you
know, kind of elevating it in a kind of way,
which, yeah, puts it on a pedestal. So it's just
another mode of being, I think, that we probably
also engaged with in our history, you know, our
ancestors would almost certainly have been animists,
but it's something that's been kind of ironed
out of the Global North's kind of working ontology.
Yeah, I can see how it would be easy to either
idealize it or just be like, oh, there must be
some other explanation to whatever you're witnessing
just because it is such a different worldview.
But were there any specific instances you can
think of that you encountered where you were
just so surprised at how people interacted, I
guess, with that more magical realm or way of
thinking? I mean, always surprised. I mean, my
time working with the Borradica in Mexico, they're
otherwise known as the Huicholis, but that's
not what they call themselves. And they have
a really interesting tradition in that their
use of peyote, which is psychedelic cactuses,
is core to their whole cultural identity and
their annual calendar and their way of life.
So I guess while you were there in Mexico, you
probably encountered a lot of instances where
people were interacting with that sort of more
magical worldview in a way that was kind of shocking
or surprising to you. What were some of the more
weird, to you at least, instances that you encountered.
I guess one of the kind of wildest things I saw
or experienced was that the Warradica, like many
indigenous people around the world, professed
to have some control over local weather systems,
which is something that lots of rainmakers do
around the world. And one time we had this encounter
where it was the first time we were going to
go on their sacred pilgrimage and I think it
was the first time they'd taken any gringos on
the pilgrimage. It's like a thousand kilometer
round trip to go and harvest the peyote. And
we rocked up on the edge of their territory.
with this one Marakami, that's what they call
their shamans. And we met with a whole bunch
of other Marakamis from their ceremonial group.
And they came in one pickup truck and we came
the other way in a pickup truck and we all got
out. And we were just about to kind of introduce
ourselves and say hello. And they immediately
got to arguing with the Marakami we were with.
And so there was like five or six of these shamans
all arguing. And we were just stood there like
lemons going, okay. This is a bit awkward. And
then like this huge dust devil got up in the
field behind them. They like they had their backs
to it. And we could see this thing, you know,
like a tornado, like not a tornado, but a very,
very big dust devil and a couple of hundred feet
high, 30, 40 foot across. And it was sucking
up all the dried maize leaves in the field. and
started coming towards us. And myself and my
kind of gringo buddies were all stood there going,
wow, what's going on here? And it was moving
in a direct line towards us and getting closer
and closer. These guys were still arguing and
at some point it was, it was going to hit us.
And I was like, I kind of interrupted them and
said, Hey guys, like, you know, look behind you.
And they saw it and they were completely unfazed.
Like one of them, two of them did this kind of
gesture with their arms. One had their arms crossed
and kind of shoved. the dust devil with his arms
and the other one just pushed it with his hands.
And the whole thing changed direction suddenly
in the direction in which they were kind of gesturing
with their hands. And it went round us in an
arc. We watched the whole thing kind of bend
around us on his direction and then continued
on this kind of the trajectory that it had previous
to being seemingly shoved. So it looked like
they, for all intents and purposes, just pushed
a ginormous dust devil out of the way. or a bit
gobsmacked to say the least. We're like, did
you see that? I saw that. Meanwhile, the interesting
thing is they did this gesture with their hands
and then immediately got back to arguing. They
didn't even pay the dust devil any attention.
aren't more important. We were all just completely
gobsmacked. That was at the start of the trip.
We'd literally just met them. We were like, well,
if that happens now, what's going to happen on
the rest of this journey? That was the most exotic
phenomenon we saw. I think maybe perhaps they
were just showing off or something. I don't know.
For all intents and purposes, it looked very
much like ... They just manipulated this weather
phenomena in a way in which we have no concept
of. Now it could just have been some kind of
coincidence or, you know, trick of the light,
but I doubt it. So, you know, stuff like that
kind of gives you some sense in which when they
talk about their magical reality, they aren't
saying it flippantly or in any kind of illusionary
way. They genuinely believe in this and you begin
to have the inclination that what they're saying
might actually be real. It leads you to question
your own take on consensus reality. Or maybe
they were just trying to get you very entranced
with their magical skills and do a little show
for you basically. But how did their experiences...
and I guess use of peyote relate to this whole
ability to change the weather or whatnot? Did
there seem to be a relationship between their
magical abilities, I guess you could say, and
their use of psychedelics? Or were those separate
things? Yeah, it's all very much embedded in
a deeper core magico -spiritual practice at which,
you know, peyote is at the center in that this
is how they form their deep connection with nature.
Everything is sacred in the natural world and
they utilize peyote as a means of training and
negotiation in this shamanic world. It's an ecological
epistemology where they're very much engaging
with the natural world and everything is sacred
and sanctified. They'll train to be a Murakami,
a shaman for 12 years, which includes all kinds
of ordeals and a lot of time, all of the time
is spent in nature. So, and they work very elementally,
like they're most important. Praxis is around
kind of the elements, the four elements as they
break it down, earth, air, fire and water. And
they primarily work with fire. That's their central.
deity, if you like, and the most important element.
So it's a kind of elemental and ecological kind
of animism, which means for them, they can engage
with and negotiate with all the forces and species
of the natural world through their use of peyote.
But they weren't tripping at the time. I don't
think they're living a trip, basically. Well,
later on, you went on to investigate whether
a different mescaline containing cactus, San
Pedro, could increase ESP abilities and you ended
up using yourself as a guinea pig. Why were you
looking at San Pedro? Yeah, actually this was
before I connected with the Borradica and I was
in South America in Ecuador. I'd previously been
doing some research on extrasensory perception
with ayahuasca, but that was problematic for
various reasons. And while I was in Ecuador,
I figured it would be more sense to work with
San Pedro, which is just a bit easier to manage
in many ways than ayahuasca. And I certainly
get on with it better. I'd attempted to do an
experiment with people taking San Pedro and they
were going to engage in a precognition task,
a kind of computerized randomized precognition
task, which was pretty, pretty fail safe. You
know, the results of which could only be due
to like probability, which we controlled or the
possibility of some kind of precognition. However,
when I'd attempted to recruit people to take
part in this experiment, the currendiro, the
shaman, the healer I was working with, refused
to let me bring my laptop into his ceremony.
And I was running out of time. So I figured instead
of getting 20 people to do a trial each of my
task, the cognition task whilst they're on San
Pedro cactus, I would do all 20 trials myself
under the influence of San Pedro, which fortunately,
you know, the mescaline lasts about 12 hours.
So you've got plenty of time to run 20 trials
of a precognition experiment. And that was quite
illuminating in that, you know, the design is
such that you can't cheat it. Like, you know,
the, the targets aren't even chosen until the
future. And so it's got a safe design. So you
can be both a participant and experimenter without
compromising the experiment because because you
actually have to use precognition to do well
at the task. I got a significant result, which
was great. It's a kind of proof of process. I
wouldn't say it's necessarily evidential, but
it shows that the study design is feasible. a
lot about the potential medium and process through
which this could work in that, you know, I had
to basically, I would set the intention to try
and identify the future target. which would be
one of four one minute video clips, which I didn't
know which one would be the target or what the
video clips were. And so I'd like try and visualize
this video clip and I would get some wild mental
imagery and I'd write it down if I could actually
put it into words. And then I would see the four
one minute video clips and I would rate them
according to how similar they were to my mescaline
vision. And then the computer would then randomly
select the target using a random number generator
and we'd see whether or not I was correct or
not. And through this process, you could see
that there was kind of thematic elements. Like
I never actually fully saw any one of those video
clips in its entirety in my vision, but there
were very much kind of themes and elements which
corresponded to the actual targets. And often
in quite surprising ways. Sometimes they were
quite spot on. Like one was like the sands of
time, desert dunes, and there was a scene of
a side wind. going across the desert, which I
chose as the target and the random number generator
also selected afterwards. So, but then there
was other elements whereby there was like a,
you know, these were random pools of all one
minute video clips, which had been selected by
another researcher to be as heterogeneous as
possible. That is they, to be as different from
each other as possible so that it was easier
to determine, you know, like which video clip
was most like your visual mentations. If they're
all really similar, it's harder to discern any
differences between them. And yet on this one
trial, I'd had a vision of a broken limb. That's
what I'd written down, a broken limb. And then
it turned out... Then when I watched the four
video clips, although they were all very, very
different in content and theme and style, three
of them had broken limbs in them, right? Which
led me to have some difficulty discerning what
the target might be. But weirdly, you know, my
bemescalined mind had picked up on a theme that
was apparent in this pool of four video clips
that I had no idea was there because I hadn't
even seen the videos. So Sometimes it was doing
things in weird ways which wouldn't necessarily
translate into a statistically significant result.
So that tells you something about the nature
of this process if it is indeed real. It's definitely
fascinating and it sounds like a fine experiment
to put yourself through being the guinea pig
for. It's interesting because even though, you
know, in modern research this ESP stuff doesn't
seem to be a focus, it seems like in the 1950s
and 60s a lot of sort of the founders of psychedelic
research were somewhat into it. Like apparently
Groff was guessing correctly on a remote viewing
task several times in a row and like got freaked
out or something and had to stop. And there are,
I think, other instances as well. Maybe you could
tell us a bit about those. Yeah, Groff famously
did do, he did extremely well on this, I think
it was a telepathy task or a precognition task.
And yeah, he had to stop basically because he
was he was doing so well, it kind of weirded
him out. And there are similar stories like that.
I think it was John Smithies and Duncan Blewett.
Smithies worked with Humphrey Osmond, who coined
the term psychedelic. And Humphrey Osmond was
also interested in this research and they run
an ESP experiment on mescaline, which freaked
out their research assistant because they were
so successful that they had again had to stop
the experiment because it was like too uncanny
and it was making people quite nervous. And so,
you know, a lot of these early psychedelic pioneers
often had their own paranormal -like experiences
or psy -like experiences. Albert Hoffman on his
first LSD trip basically had a kind of out of
body experience or something akin to a near -death
experience and felt like he'd left his body and
he was looking down on his body and thought he
might have died and that kind of freaked him
out. Gordon Wasson as well, the first time they
encountered a Mazatec Corundiro, who ran the
first ever account of a Westerner gringo engaging
in a mushroom ceremony. The Corundiro Donarulio
told him all these things about his son back
home in the States that he didn't know about.
And when they got back to the States after their
research trip in Mexico, they found out it was
all true. So you pretty much all of the big pioneers
of psychedelic research. in the fifties and sixties
had their own encounters with psi phenomena and
were engaged with it. Even Walter Panke, we did
the first Good Friday, the Good Friday experiment
ran his own psilocybin ESP experiments as well.
And then of course, prohibition happened and
parapsychologists like not wanting to tarnish
their reputation very quickly moved away from
psychedelics. which was seen as more taboo than
parapsychology, although that now has kind of
completely flipped. It's definitely interesting
how there seems to be this line studying or at
least considering parapsychology in indigenous
cultures in the 50s and 60s with your previous
work. there does seem to be something going on
where at least people are experiencing things
like clairvoyance, like, you know, being able
to predict videos and whatnot. But even though
they're having that experience, maybe it's not
really, you know, they're developing some sort
of paranormal capabilities, but it just feels
like it. And I guess it's possible that, I don't
know, I spend a lot of time comparing psychosis
and psychedelics and that's kind of my lens and
in some ways a lot of these experiences sound
a little bit psychotic like, a little bit like
maybe somebody has some aberrant salience where
they're assigning meaning to small things and
making big symbols out of these tiny coincidences.
How would you push back against that? sort of
guess interpretation that this is just a kind
of a psychotic like thinking that people are
having during these experiences. Yeah. It's interesting.
And I think, you know, there is an overlap because
of course in, in states of psychosis, everything
becomes meaningful. We have a massive increase
in what we might call apophenia in kind of like
super high gain sensitivity on our pattern recognition
and thereby making associations and things and
finding synchronicities and coincidences and
everything. It's hard to draw the line. Sometimes
the point is that, is that a symptom of psychosis?
At what point is that? There's genuinely something
unusual happening. There are other ways in which
we can discern whether or not it's psychosis
or not, but it may be partly a matter of degree
and partly qualitative. Nevertheless, lots of
people who are not psychotic have these experiences
and they're very common actually with psychedelics.
Something like half of all people have taken
psychedelics have had a telepathic experience
according to some of my survey research, less
so with precognition. And of course it tends
to increase people's belief in psi, in extrasensory
perception and other paranormal like phenomena.
Having taken psychedelics, you know, people change
their worldview around the nature of these things,
but not all those people are psychotic, far from
it. Whether or not they're genuine or not is
a very different question. We can only really
discern that through controlled experimental
research, but there's a long history of parapsychological
research going back about 140 years predating
the study of psychology really as a discipline.
That's amassed a great deal of evidence to quite
strongly suggest that, you know, psi phenomena
is genuine, albeit very, very subtle and almost
entirely unconscious. So it's very difficult
to pin down and establish experimentally. But
if you look at the mass of studies that have
been conducted and meta -analyses, they're extremely
significant. So it seems like a latent or unconscious
and therefore largely ignored and unidentified
possibility that we can genuinely transcend time
and space and access information from beyond
these spatial time coordinates, right? But it's
not an everyday phenomena and people like shamans
actively utilize this, right? At least that's
what they profess to do. So it's a fine thin
line in many ways because that way psychosis
also lies. I wouldn't say having a psych experience
makes you psychotic, but people with psychosis
may be professing to have. you know, certainly
a high degree of coincidences and also occasionally
they have symptoms of, you know, thought transference
that, you know, people are reading their minds
as CIA's beaming thoughts into their brain directly
and all this kind of stuff. But the kinds of
experiences that people are having are a bit
more contained and prosaic than that. You know,
it's not kind of like everything is associative
and meaningful like you would have with psychosis,
but people are having kind of quite discrete,
very meaningful experiences, which may be passed
off as a coincidence, or they could be explored
for their potential for a genuine trans cerebral
kind of phenomena. It depends on which way you
want to look at it. Yeah, there's definitely
quite a history of people, I think, interpreting
adverse events, especially related to psychedelics,
through the lens of them being somehow psychosis
-like, even though I think oftentimes the reality
is a bit more complicated. Recently, a paper
that you were on came out that was exploring
how people responded to ontological shock and
existential distress. after using psychedelics
and that paper to me was quite fascinating because
it covered how their often are like worldview
shifts and people can think that they're going
crazy or whatever and become very kind of obsessed
with understanding these different metaphysical
like frameworks. Yeah. It's not really psychosis
like per se. Yeah. I think, and I think ontological
shock is, I think ontological shock is often
part and parcel of, of profound psychedelic experiences.
Unless your prior worldview already has room
for a mystical kind of experience within it.
frame, then if you have a full blown psychedelic
slash mystical experience, it is going to throw
up some challenges to your reality and worldview.
You know, often people describe having these
experiences as going beyond what they imagined
was even possible to experience. And so for many
people, I think the ontological shock is well
integrated and incorporated into their life.
often leads to people taking a more spiritual
orientation or shifting their metaphysical beliefs.
But often as well, this can often be a challenge
and can lead to extended difficulties and of
course people fearing for their sanity. So in
the Challenging Psychedelic Experience Project,
You know, we've been particularly exploring people
who have difficulties longer than a day. And
sometimes these can last for weeks, months or
years. And they comprise lots of different symptoms,
but one of the recurring symptoms that is most
prevalent and also The longest lasting and also
the most challenging typically is ontological
shock. We find it in upwards of half of all people
expressing extended difficulties following psychedelic
experiences. And that is that they have a kind
of cognitive dissonance between their prior worldview.
and the worldview that their psychedelic experience
presents at face value. And that can be challenging
for people to negotiate and integrate. It threatens
what we call their ontological security, a sense
in which you kind of understand the world and
how it works and reality. And then suddenly this
experience comes along and it kind of throws
all your prior beliefs about the nature of reality
into disarray. And that can be very destabilizing.
So yeah, that paper was focusing on that particular
phenomenon. phenomena and ways in which people
found useful in helping them cope or stabilize
their experience to lead towards a kind of more
whole integration. Yeah, it's definitely important
work because I feel like understanding what goes
wrong with psychedelics when things do go wrong
is really under categorized at this point and
anything that sort of builds what can go wrong
from the bottom up. Doing qualitative interviews
with people that are in depth can really, I think,
facilitate a better understanding. Any sort of
patterns in the sorts of people maybe prone to
having ontological shock or existential distress,
did any patterns emerge? Any specific sorts of
experience that seemed more risky than others?
Well, it's hard to kind of extrapolate because
it's a relatively small sample. because it is
qualitative. So it's more about the depth of
the lived experience and what they were going
through and what they found useful in coping
rather than identifying. trends in particular.
So it's kind of more like the themes that emerge
rather than, okay, this kind of personality leads
to this kind of difficulty. But the kinds of
things that come up are crisis, despair, confusion,
questioning one's identity, grief over the loss
of you know, your previous self is like often
seen as a bit of a one way street in that, you
know, you, you can't necessarily unsee what you've
seen or experienced and that's changing your
reality permanently, you know, fears of psychosis
or paranoia and so on. So the roadmap is kind
of what's interesting in this is this is coming
from psychedelic experiences, but there's, there's
people have already mapped this kind of trajectory
out with exceptional experiences more generally,
and it tends to follow. a similar kind of path,
if you like. There's this deep period of questioning
and confusion that follows these ontologically
challenging experiences or exceptional experiences,
which can lead to various pitfalls and challenges
such as you may end up kind of joining a cult.
falling into guru worship and handing over your
entire bank account or personal self -aggrandizement,
narcissism, spiritual bypassing, believing that
you're psychotic. So there's many potential risks
in having one of these really kind of worldview
destabilizing experiences. But then there's also
a kind of pathway through into growth and maybe
in a similar way into which we see like post
-traumatic growth. as well. There's a period
of destabilization, but then there is a movement
towards feeling more whole and integrated and
largely coming out the other side, a bigger and
better person, if you like, more experienced
and more whole. Yeah, I wonder if other cultures
where sort of magical frameworks are more embedded
and accepted in their society. If they have...
a way to make sense of rapid ontological changes.
I don't know if they would be prone to experiencing
such a thing or not. Did the people that you
who are around in Mexico, did they have a framework?
Did any other shamanistic sort of traditions
that you're aware of have a pathway forward for
people who are somehow distressed by their vague
experiences, I guess you could say? Interestingly,
I mean, it's not like we've had like, have studied
it directly, but I do think they already have
a cultural cosmology, an ontology, which is accepting
immediately of those experiences. So I think
there's less of a kind of ontological shock.
And this is just my kind of interpretation in
that, you know, it already fits within their
cultural framework to have these kinds of experiences
and it not. just to be psychosis. It's like,
oh, you, you know, you had some kind of spiritual
attack or, you know, whatever it might be. And
yet the way of dealing with it is, is, is, is
different as well. So like, you know, for instance,
I've been in ceremonies where for all intents
and purposes, somebody looked like they were
possessed and had to be kind of held down. This
was gringos, right? And the shaman's going, yeah,
don't worry about it. You know, this happens
all the time and just tie them up and wait for
them to come back. And, and basically if you
want to be a shaman, yes, I just tied them up
till they come back. And, you know, if you want
to be a shaman, you're going to have to go through
that. That's actually part of the journey. Like
this is like, this isn't anything bad. This is
just like a natural step in the process. Like
we see it all the time. It's no big deal, you
know? So they've got kind of a bit more of a
relaxed approach to this kind of. these kinds
of experiences of phenomena and a home for them
as well in which they hithered or pathologized,
right? Which I do think probably makes a big
difference. So going back to, I guess, Westerners'
experiences, what were some of the things that
helped people make sense of ontological shock
or existential distress? Yeah. So there's, you
know, there's a variety of different coping practices.
I think one of the biggest ones we found certainly
from our survey data, not necessarily the interviews
is kind of psycho education. Like, you know,
some people would turn to therapists and things
like that and they didn't necessarily find that
the most helpful. And that could be just a sign
of the times in that most therapists are probably
A, not familiar with psychedelic experiences
and B, not familiar with the weirder end of the
psychedelic experience spectrum. of those kinds
of ontologically challenging experiences, like
feeling like you've been possessed or whatever,
right? So classic CBT, for instance, doesn't
really have a space for dealing with that kind
of experience. So on the whole, people tended
not to say that therapy was not the kind of go
-to route of helping to integrate these experiences.
It was about typically like finding other people
or resources where people have gone through similar
processes and come out the other side and they
weren't psychotic or stabilizing their experiencing
and grounding themselves through maybe spending
time in nature, changing their diet. doing yoga
or some kind of bodywork practice. So often these
kinds of things were seen to be useful. Yeah.
I could see how a therapist who really wasn't
all that familiar with psychedelics would be
startled by somebody coming to the session being
like, I felt like I got possessed when I did
an ayahuasca ceremony. How do I make sense of
this? Like, yeah. Of course, that's going to
be not necessarily the ideal environment. There's
this whole history of psychedelics and psychosis
being the main concern that people have, even
though that could be a concern, but it's not
necessarily the main adverse effect that people
are most prone to. So a therapist hearing that
somebody is having a challenging time, they might
just think, are they becoming psychotic? and
I could see how that could be difficult. Going
forward, what do you think needs to happen for
people to be more informed about how to handle
challenging experiences? Yeah, I think we just
need a better literacy generally around exceptional
experiences and challenging experiences and metaphysical
challenges too, you know, ontological shock,
etc. which I don't think is necessarily there
in most kind of generic types of psychotherapy.
Perhaps existential psychology or therapy may
be better suited or transpersonal. Psychotherapy
are probably more able to engage with this kind
of phenomena. But as a general rule, I think
people aren't very familiar with the range of
exceptional experiences that people may have
and just a kind of understanding of those. More
broadly, I mean, these aren't always the stuff
that comes up. You know, often people's challenges
are of an intrapersonal nature, right? They may
be rather than transpersonal, you know, maybe
kind of dealing with childhood trauma that they
were unaware of or this kind of stuff. You know,
also we get a lot of these kind of more transpersonal
kind of challenges. And so I think there is a
need for better education around this. I think
it really needs to be embedded in kind of sitter
guide therapist training for people wanting to
work with psychedelics. So they at least have
a working awareness of it. And it requires a
kind of metaphysical neutrality as well, you
know, an openness on behalf of the therapists
or sitters and guides in that, you know, you're
not automatically prejudging and having a sense
of self -awareness and enough of a container
that you're not projecting your own metaphysical
worldviews onto your client as well as all your
kind of cultural, social and interpersonal ones
as well. So it just adds another level to the
onion of things that therapists need to be kind
of aware of when they're dealing with people
having challenging psychedelic experiences, I
would say. Yeah, it's definitely true. I mean,
I guess psychedelics have long had an association
with more like woo woo out there things. So that
these side effects can also be a bit out there.
to me does not seem that weird. Another thing
that people frequently do, I find, is that they
compare psychedelic experiences to other extreme
experiences. So there's this whole thing about
comparing 5 -MeO DMT to near -death experiences
that you've also written a bit about. Maybe you
could tell us about that as well? Yeah, so this
has kind of been an ongoing research project
and interest, particularly of my ex -PhD student,
Pascal Michael. who's kind of the expert on this,
but there is a sense in which there is a large
degree of similarity between near -death experiences
and psychedelic experiences, particularly with
things like DMT and fibemia, and not just in
the acute phenomenology, like the experiences
themselves have a great deal. deal of resemblance
and also some mismatches, but also the outcomes
in that we see similar things emerging from people
who have near -death experiences as we do from
good or successful psychedelic experiences like
a change in worldview, often a spiritual reorientation.
enhanced kind of empathy and re -evaluation of
one's moral compass, deeper connection to nature,
all of these kinds of things. So in a way, near
-death experiences are a kind of prototype spontaneous
phenomena that psychedelic experiences and psychedelic
-assisted psychotherapy kind of emulate in a
way. They are spontaneous. spiritual mystical
like experiences, which have typically profound
and positive outcomes, but maybe quite challenging,
not least because you have to usually come very
close to death to have one. There's also some
mismatches. Not an easy prerequisite. No, no,
don't try this one at home. In many ways, like
having a profound psychedelic experience is like
you can go to the brink of death and at least
psychologically and come back without any genuine
risk of death or a very minimal risk of death.
You know, ayahuasca translates as the vine of
the dead. It's like you can have an experience
of dying without actually dying. in a metaphorical
way, right? And in some sense, you may be having
a kind of mini death, like an ego death experience,
if we can use that term quite loosely, because
it's not well defined what we mean by ego death.
But there are matches and mismatches. Like when
we drill down into the phenomenology on the surface
of it, yes, DMT experiences look very similar
to near death experiences. And if you give people
having high dose DMT, the near death experience
scale, which is a psychometric measure to, you
know, try and identify or log the kind of near
-death experience, you find that they tend to
score in a way which looks fairly identical with
people having cardiac arrest induced near death
experiences, right? But then they're also mismatched.
That's just on a kind of on paper kind of inspection.
So myself and Pascal and my other colleague,
Oliver, looked at this more in depth of the phenomenology,
right? And you'll see that, okay, so on DMT,
you'll have lots of geometric patterns and top
ticks, this kind of stuff, which are very rare
in near death experiences. You'll also have encounter
experiences, which people have in near death.
But the encounters may be far weirder with DMT,
like, you know, self -transforming machine elves
and jesters and octopoids, which don't tend to
pop up in near -death experiences, ideally always
kind of like deceased loved ones or kind of religious
figures, which also pop up in DMT experiences,
but not as often as they do with near -death
experiences. So there's some matches and mismatches,
you know, and so like, what can we conclude from
that? Well, that DMT is in endogenous. So it
could be triggered or part of the near death
experience, but we don't think it fully explains
the near death experience because there are certainly
other things going on and also neurochemically
as well. DMT may be released in the human brain
at the point of death or in a near death experience,
but it's not the only thing. There's a whole
near death experience cocktail. of really high
levels of monoamine neurotransmitters, which
are flooding the human brain, we think, in these
experiences. So it can help us model the near
-death experience and perhaps understand it a
little bit more and vice versa, the psychedelic
experience, but it's not a one -to -one relationship,
we don't think. Yeah, it's interesting how people
seem to want to say psychedelics can model so
many different things. One minute they're modeling
mystical experiences or provoking them or provoking
near -death experiences. Another researcher might
be like, it's psychosis -like. So it's quite
strange to me the range of phenomena that people
claim are possible with psychedelics. If you
think of them as kind of neural amplifiers, right?
in a way that is feasible, that they accentuate
all kind of elements of the human experience,
then yeah, in a way they can model psychotic
experience, but in a limited way or near -death
experience, you know, all models are ultimately
wrong, but some are useful, right? And that degree
of usefulness has its limitations, of course.
Yeah, I mean, it's great because they're never
not weird. I think is one thing I really enjoy
studying psychedelics. You can have a very controlled
clinical trial and people are still going to
be having odd experiences in some way. Well,
I think that's everything I have for you today.
Are there any other things that you think might
be interesting to mention? I don't know, especially
weird experiences that you've had or something.
I mean, I could probably be here all day if I
was to talk about my own weird experiences. But
what I will say is that having had my own weird
experiences, it gives me a useful lens in which
to frame the research and vice versa, you know,
that the research also helps me frame my own
weird experiences. So in the journey of studying
this phenomenon of exceptional experiences, there's
an old adage that in studying the transpersonal
one has to be prepared to be transformed themselves
in the process of doing that work. And that I
think it urges us to be reflexive and experiential
and a bit more authentic and honest in our approach
to studying these things in that we are also,
our research is driven by our own personal proclivities.
and reflects it and vice versa. So yeah, I'd
like to say that. Just a shout out for the experiential
strand in all of this work. It shouldn't be downplayed
or undervalued. It's definitely tricky in this
field because I feel like a lot of people, if
you mention your personal experiences, then they
view everything as you being a bit biased. and
maybe even fanatical, like you're, I don't know,
a psychedelic evangelicalist or something like
that. But I do think it can definitely inform
interpreting other people's lived experiences.
I feel like it has influenced some of my interpretations
with qualitative work that I've done. So yeah,
I agree with you there. I'm delighted to hear
that, Haley. Thank you. I really enjoyed our
chat and happy to talk some more anytime. So
I enjoyed that. Thanks so much. All right. Well,
thank you. Alrighty. That's it for today's episode.
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