#4 Caresser des bourdons | Dr. Andrew Weil

Andrew: [00:00:00] To me, the most essential aspect of forgiveness is that it’s something you do for yourself, not for the other person. [00:00:04][4.8]

Ronan : [00:00:10] This is Field Tripping, a podcast dedicated to exploring psychedelic experiences and their ability to affect our lives. I’m your host, Ronan Levy. There are few people in this world who have been able to watch how attitudes towards psychedelics have changed since they were introduced to Western culture than dr. Andrew Weil. These days, Dr. Weil is known as the father of integrative medicine, which is a healing oriented approach to health care that encompasses body, mind and spirit with a deep focus on nutrition, preventative medicine and mindfulness. He is the founder and director of the Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona, where he also holds the chair in Integrative Rheumatology and is clinical professor of Medicine and Professor of Public Health. But back as a student in the 1960s, Dr. Weil had front row seat to the work that Timothy Leary and Ram Dass, born Richard Alpert were doing with psychedelics at Harvard University, and some of his academic and journalistic work would forever change the course of the lives of himself, Timothy Leary and Ram Dass. [00:01:17][67.2]

Ronan : [00:01:24] Thank you, Andrew, for joining us today. When I was getting into psychedelics and understanding the opportunities from a business and impact perspective, one of the first books I turned to was the Harvard Psychedelics Club, written by Don Lattin. And certainly you feature quite prominently in that book. I would just love to hear what it was like being at Harvard at that time and just living through the 60s altogether and seeing the emergence of psychedelics and its impact on society. [00:01:49][25.4]

Andrew: [00:01:50] Oh, that’s a big question. I mean, Harvard in the early 60s was a pretty sleepy place, the radical stuff, it started on the West Coast, but it came to Harvard late. But there were people using psychedelics in the community and Timothy Leary’s presence there and Richard Alpert began to attract greater and greater attention and I think did very important research showing the positive potential of psychedelics and demonstrating how the effects were so dependent on set and setting. But as time went on, increasingly, I think they didn’t fit into the academic community and they got a larger and larger cult like following around them. And there was a lot of tension between that group and the university. I was in a strange position in that I had tried psychedelics myself first in 1960, I took chemically pure mescaline without knowing much about what to expect from it. I was also a student of Richard Evans Shulties, the director of the Harvard Botanical Museum, who was one of the great explorers of psychedelic plants in South America and got very interested in that aspect of them. And I was a reporter for the Harvard undergraduate newspaper, The Crimson, which began doing investigative reporting of Alpert and Leary, and all of that eventually led to Alpert’s dismissal from the university. So I was caught up in the middle of all that. When Albert was fired from the university in 1963. Leary had left several months before on his own. The publicity around that was the first time that nationwide attention was focused on psychedelics. You know, up to that point, I think many people in this country hadn’t heard of LSD or mushrooms or mescaline, and suddenly that was put out there. So the explosion that followed there in nineteen sixty three in Cambridge, Massachusetts, I think really seeded the culture with the first awareness of these substances. [00:03:43][113.0]

Ronan : [00:03:44] I mean, I look back and obviously I didn’t live through that time, but it always feels like in retrospect there was an incredible amount of excitement at the time. Did the impact of the work around psychedelics and psychedelics more broadly, was that kind of evident to you at the time that this was going to be world changing, life changing, or was it a little bit more subdued and a little bit more normal? [00:04:05][21.4]

Andrew: [00:04:06] The potential was there and there was early research at Spring Grove State Hospital in Maryland showing that guided LSD sessions could have a tremendously positive impact on terminal cancer patients. There was the work that Leary did in the Concord Reformatory with prisoners. I mean, there there was a lot of early research that was very promising and wonderful. But very quickly, I think that was drowned out by fear in the culture about the associations of people who were using these with political radicals, with hippies. It was seen as a threat. Albert Hoffman, the man who discovered LSD, said that he thought that Leary had done a tremendous disservice to research in that area. He just could not resist making statements that pushed people’s buttons and riled people up. [00:04:55][48.6]

Ronan : [00:04:55] You mentioned that Timothy Leary was described as having done a disservice to the work in some respects. And with time has your perspective changed? Did he do a disservice or was his efforts to bring this mainstream actually, in many respects, positive? [00:05:09][13.8]

Andrew: [00:05:09] Well, he certainly brought it mainstream, but I think set back a lot of legitimate research interest in it. And it has only been relatively recently, as you know, that there has been this great resurgence of interest in the positive potential of psychedelics. And now this is, I think, got a lot of traction behind it. So in many ways, it’s taken a long time to pick up from where things got left in the 1960s and early 1970s. [00:05:34][24.1]

Ronan : [00:05:34] In the Harvard Psychedelic Club, you got painted with the brush of being the person who may have brought the research from Timothy Leary, even though he actually stepped away and then ultimately Richard Alpert’s departure. But Richard Alpert Ram Dass, who recently passed away and I know you reconciled with Timothy Leary fairly early on, but reconciliation with Ram Dass does seem to be harder to come by. Why do you think that was? [00:05:56][21.6]

Andrew: [00:05:58] He was really angry and he held on to that anger for a long time. He had a great influence on me. I very early on came across an account of his experiences in India, and that made a great impression on me and was really an inspiration to begin doing yoga and practicing meditation. And I made efforts to reach out to him. It was really tough when he had his stroke I did a fundraiser for him in Santa Fe and so we communicated over the years. But it wasn’t until about five years ago I went to Maui to spend some serious time with him and go over all of that stuff. And that was really good. And at that time, he said, you did me a blessing. And that if that hadn’t happened, I think he would have been stuck in an academic career at Harvard and that would have snuffed out, you know, a lot of stuff in him that was really important and good. And that led to his becoming Ram Dass. [00:06:54][56.3]

Ronan : [00:06:56] How did it feel when he said that to you? [00:06:57][1.5]

Andrew: [00:06:58] Well, I always had that sense myself that, you know, in a way that I had helped him in some in some way. It felt very good to hear him say that. And, you know, I consider him a teacher of mine. I think he’s done a tremendous amount of good work in this culture. So, you know, I’m really glad I had a chance while he was still alive to have that conversation with him. [00:07:18][19.4]

Ronan : [00:07:18] That’s amazing. On so many levels, just hearing that story, especially after such a long period, to see someone come to that kind of realization and fruition and speaking it out verbally. You know, I think that’s a really magical moment. [00:07:30][12.2]

Andrew: [00:07:31] It also felt good to be able to tell him how much of an influence he’d been on my life, that I had considered him one of my teachers because he was my main inspiration for becoming interested in Eastern religion and meditation. And many other things have been very important to me. [00:07:45][14.1]

Ronan : [00:07:46] You clearly were able to take the insights from the psychedelic experience and in whatever capacity, decided not to follow them. Do you have any advice for anybody who may be having psychedelic experiences? [00:07:56][10.4]

Andrew: [00:07:57] I guess everyone has to find that for himself or herself. But it seems to me that the challenge is how to integrate that vision and what psychedelics open to you with ordinary life. And I think it’s absolutely possible to do that. But that’s the work. You have the experience and you can’t just keep repeating it. You have to find ways to integrate that and then build on it. [00:08:18][20.7]

Ronan : [00:08:18] On the theme of forgiveness, after your book, From Chocolate to Morphine came out, you were criticized pretty harshly by Paula Hawkins. Curious to know how that felt. Also how you move past that. [00:08:28][10.1]

Andrew: [00:08:29] I was the target of quite a lot of attacks by the anti-drug forces. At one point, the the White House was sending dossiers on me to places that invited me to speak, trying to keep me from doing public speaking pieces. So that was a little scary. At one place that I worked, I was told that I couldn’t work there anymore. And then they went to the University of Arizona and tried to get them to drop me from the faculty. So that was a scary time. And in retrospect, I was able to see that they’d done me some sort of service. I knew that I was on the right path and I held to what I was doing. In a book that I wrote a few years ago called Spontaneous Happiness. I wrote a section on forgiveness and how important that is for mental health and wellbeing. And I think to me, the most essential aspect of forgiveness is that it’s something you do for yourself, not for the other person. It is giving something up that you’ve been carrying as a burden. And the other person, it’s not really necessary for that person even to know what you’ve done. You know, it’s some internal act that you do to give up some burden of resentment and anger that you’ve been carrying and you really do it for yourself. [00:09:34][65.5]

Ronan : [00:09:40] I was struck by how themes of forgiveness are central to Andrew’s story from both his experience with Ram Dass and Timothy Leary. So how much forgiveness is a central component of integrative medicine? For me, forgiveness for others has usually come easily. What has always come harder as forgiving myself and having compassion for my mistakes. But the first step to forgiveness, especially self forgiveness, is to acknowledge our wrongs, which isn’t always easy to do. One particular moment that stands out for me is when I was a young lawyer at Blake’s, I did something wrong. I fucked something up. Normally my instinct would have been to find an excuse. But for whatever reason, on that day, instead of trying to justify my mistake, I just owned up to it. And by owning up to it, I was able to forgive myself. The lawyer I was working with forgave me and I remember it so vividly. I remember it really showed me how owning up to our faults is a powerful, powerful experience. [00:10:32][52.1]

Ronan : [00:10:36] Besides the experience at Harvard, how do you think psychedelics have affected your life? I know you touched upon it, but I’m wondering if you can offer a little bit more detail. What are some of the deepest insights you’ve taken away from a psychedelic trip? I know some of my and I developed a great degree of empathy. [00:10:50][14.0]

Andrew: [00:10:50] Well, there are many and I’ve written about some of them. One is that they have made me really aware of and appreciative of the intricacies of the connections between mind and body. That really there’s no separation there and that the only way we separate mind and body is verbally. And I have just seen again and again that what we have inside our head affects what’s outside our head. And in psychedelic states have seen the external world transform. And that has had great influence on my medical philosophy. Just a very, very powerful insight that when we see things out there that we don’t like or that appear hostile, there are ways we can change our mind and our perceptions that actually create changes in the external things I’ve just experienced that, you know, again and again with insects, with-. [00:11:41][50.7]

Ronan : [00:11:43] Sorry, with insects? Can you elaborate on that? [00:11:44][1.7]

Andrew: [00:11:45] Yeah, with insects. I’ll tell you one story. I was I had heard somebody make a remark about petting a bumble bee, and that sounded great. So I tried to pet bumblebees and they want nothing to do with it. They’re they’re going about their business. They don’t want to be touched. And one day I was in a canyon in Arizona and I was in a psychedelic state and just feeling at one with everything. And I had a section of orange in my hand. And then a bumblebee landed in my palm and was drinking the juice. And it just stayed there and allowed me to pet it and interact with it. It was just wonderful. And it was there’s no question that something to do with my internal state and whatever vibe I was giving off. Another insight is I’ve had a real sense that everything is alive, that consciousness is the fundamental reality of the universe, and that everything is conscious in some way or other, that animals, plants, rocks. I remember again, I spent a lot of time in canyons outside of Tucson in my psychedelic experiences of feeling and seeing energy coursing through my body and being continuous with energy in the rocks that I was lying on. And it seemed like it was streaming, colorful, brilliant, corpuscular energy that was moving. And I could feel this in everything. It was in the plants and the cactuses, in the rocks. And this has it’s a very powerful theme of my belief system that consciousness is the ultimate reality, that there really is no distinction between what we call animate inanimate, and that this puts me at great odds with materialists who say that consciousness is some byproduct of neural activity in the brain. I think the brain is a creation of consciousness. [00:13:30][105.0]

Ronan : [00:13:31] That’s fascinating. It’s something that I’ve thought about at length. How do you how do you have that conversation with materialists? [00:13:35][4.5]

Andrew: [00:13:36] Oh, God, they get so pissed you would not believe it really presses their buttons. You know, how could any rational person maintain that consciousness is anything other but a product of, you know, neurochemistry and neuroanatomy. But, you know, interestingly, there is now a movement in science. There is a growing movement of one name for this Pan Sikhism. But just even in the past year, there’ve been articles coming out about new models that are looking at all aspects of the universe being conscious. [00:14:05][29.3]

Ronan : [00:14:06] It’s interesting how these themes kind of interweave among a lot of people. There’s actually the author, Tom Robbins, who really opened my mind to a lot of this, and he was talking about his first psychedelic experience on LSD, which I think he did in a doctor’s office or a psychologist office. He described exactly kind of similar experience where I think he looked at a flower and felt uniformly connected with the flower and everything in the universe. I guess one of the questions I have is how do you translate that into life? What does it change about your day to day perspective on things? [00:14:36][30.0]

Andrew: [00:14:37] Absolutely. It’s been very central to my medical advice, my interactions with patients. I’m a very avid gardener. I work a lot with plants. I feel that I have a conscious connection with plants, that I understand them, I understand their needs, their language. I told you that I live with three dogs at the moment, Rhodesian Ridgebacks, I can’t imagine life without dogs. And we understand each other’s consciousness. And it’s been really trained me and non-verbal thinking. We anticipate each other’s needs and moods. In my medical philosophy. I think one reason that I have been successful even within the academic world, is that I think differently and that people are drawn to that and interested in it, even though it’s not why I’d say what mainstream culture supports, it seems to be very attractive to people. [00:15:24][47.4]

Ronan : [00:15:29] We’re talking in the middle of the COVID pandemic and I’ve heard some people refer to this. Time as the great pause, because it’s forced us to really start to separate what’s important from what’s not what’s what’s relevant from what’s just an accent on life. And I’ve been advised by a number of people to not waste this time that this is one of the unique moments in history where we actually have the time to look inside and reflect. Just wondering if you’ve taken this time during the great pause to reflect and if anything has really come out of it. [00:16:00][30.3]

Andrew: [00:16:00] In some ways, my life has not changed very much because I always mostly worked from home and kept up a lot of my routines. I guess the biggest difference is not traveling. I’ll be interested to see how many of the changes that we are now living through are going to stay with us once the pandemic ends, I would think a lot of people are going to continue to work from home. I wonder how this will change the kinds of things we do outside of the house. And I’ve been reading a lot about pandemics and diseases. Just fascinating stuff. One thing that I’ve put in all of my books about health is that it is remarkable that most of us are mostly healthy most of the time. There are so many things out there that have the potential to harm us. There are so many things that can go wrong inside us. And yet most of us are mostly healthy most of the time. And that really is the one of the marvelous things about the human body, about our organism, is that it is able to maintain health and equilibrium. And it’s really important to honor that ability and keep it working for you as you go through life. So that’s one of the things I’ve been reflecting on. [00:17:04][63.5]

Ronan : [00:17:04] That’s a great insight. It’s consistent with one of the philosophies we have at Field Trip which is trying to take the perspective that there’s no such thing as a sick person or a healthy person. We’re always just on a spectrum. Sometimes we need more help, sometimes we need less help, but we’re all just people. So changing the attitude of some people are patients. Changing that dialog in medicine is, I think, one of the most important shifts that we can make. And it seems to be to me at least pretty consistent with perspectives of integrative medicine. [00:17:30][26.2]

Andrew: [00:17:31] The most important, the philosophical principle of integrative medicine, is that the human organism is capable of healing itself and maintaining equilibrium and it’s not a new idea. Hypocrisies taught that we should revere the healing power of nature. I think most people don’t have much confidence in their own healing abilities. And to me, that’s where good medicine starts. When I am working with a patient, I’m always thinking, why is healing not happening here? What’s blocking it? What can I do from outside that might facilitate it and might help it along? It would be very useful if people had more confidence in their organism’s resilience and ability to maintain equilibrium and did not run off to practitioners for every little thing. Rather than figuring out how they could make changes themselves that would allow their own healing mechanisms to come into play. [00:18:17][46.3]

Ronan : [00:18:17] There seems to be more and more evidence that mindset and perspective has such a profound impact on our health. All the way down to epigenetics. I remember reading about that attitude seems to have an effect on what genes get expressed when your cells are replicating, which is incredibly fascinating. And on that point, psychedelics clearly are relevant to this conversation. How do you foresee psychedelics fitting into modern medicine? [00:18:40][23.0]

Andrew: [00:18:41] Absolutely. I think when they become available for medical use, I just see so many possibilities for them and not just in the arena of mental emotional health, which is what’s mostly talked about. I have just seen so many examples in which psychedelic experience has dramatically changed the course of a chronic physical ailment. And I just see tremendous potential for using them in things like autoimmune diseases, in chronic pain, in which they can show a person that there’s a different way of interpreting what’s going on in your body. And having that vision can allow healing to happen then the condition to change. So I’d love to be able to use them that way. [00:19:23][42.4]

Ronan : [00:19:24] I’ve read and heard that a lot of chronic conditions from autoimmune conditions straight through to cancer are largely the result of inadequate processing of our emotion. We spend a lot of time holding on to them or directing them literally into the the physical assets of our body. How does that sound to you? Is that something that you believe in? [00:19:42][18.8]

Andrew: [00:19:42] That might be too glib. And I think we have to be careful with it. I think there are certain categories of disease where that is predominant. For example, I worked for a long time with a very skilled hypnotherapist who I remember saying to me that he thought that all dermatological conditions and all GI conditions should first go to hypnotherapy before they go to dermatology and gastroenterologist, because those sites have the highest ratio of nerves to tissue and are the most frequent sites of expression of problems that originate in the mental sphere. But when you talk about cancer, I think that’s tricky. I think that repressed emotions and emotions might suppress immunity and allow cancers to grow faster. I don’t know that they cause cancer. And just tell you one way I see that get misused. When I was in medical school, this was in the late 1960s when I would see women who had breast cancer. And these were mostly women of my grandmother’s generation, I always ask them why they thought they got breast cancer and they would always give answers, like 20 years ago I fell against the kitchen table and hit my left breast or I was in an automobile accident. My breast was injured. There is no evidence that cancer has anything to do with physical injury. But then starting in the 1980s, if I would ask women who were then of my mother’s generation why they thought they got breast cancer. The answers are always things like, well, I bottled up my anger at my husband all those years. And there’s also, I think, no evidence that that’s the case. But if you think you got cancer because of an accident, it was something out of your control. But if you think you’ve got cancer because you didn’t express emotions, that’s your fault. And that’s an opportunity to be guilty about something which probably compounds the situation. [00:21:17][94.8]

Ronan : [00:21:18] Absolutely. I Think we can’t dismiss that there’s a number of factors that go into specifically chronic diseases, but certainly unresolved emotions probably do not help the situation at all. [00:21:28][10.3]

Andrew: [00:21:29] Certainly not. But that has to be explored. And the problem with conventional medicine is that it ignores that whole realm and just focuses on the physical. And this is another area in which I think integrative medicine has a great advantage because it insists that people are not just physical bodies. We’re also mental, emotional being, spiritual entities, community members. And you’ve got to look at all those other dimensions of human life in order to understand health and illness. [00:21:52][23.0]

Ronan : [00:21:52] Why do you think there’s resistance from modern allopathic medicine towards integrative medicine? I know I’ve started working with an integrative medicine doctor and I remember going back to my family doctor who I continue to maintain for other aspects of care. And I was talking about some of the work we’re doing. And he asked for your test for this is normal. Why are you taking that? And my integrative doctor was like because we’re not interested in normal. We’re interested in optimizing. We’re looking to make sure that you have the longest, healthiest life, not the normalest life. And I’m wondering if you have any thoughts on A) why that may be and B) what we can do to start shifting that. [00:22:26][33.6]

Andrew: [00:22:26] I think doctors are led to believe that they know everything about the human body and health and illness, and they really are unaware that there are big gaps in their education. I mean, a glaring one is nutrition, which is still completely slighted in medical education. So I think anything that comes along that’s unfamiliar, there’s they instinctively are defensive about intent to reject. It’s very easy for them to dismiss ideas and practices in integrative medicine as being unscientific or even anti scientific, they say that there’s no evidence for them. Often there is a great deal of evidence that they’re simply unaware of. So I think it’s a matter of re-education, of time. And in the U.S., there’s a group called the Consortium of Academic Health Centers for Integrative Medicine that includes now, I think, almost three quarters of the nation’s medical schools, which have indicated that they’re moving in this direction. So this is becoming a mainstream phenomenon. And I think it’s going to be propelled now by economics, not just by consumer demand, because the current state of health care is just unsustainable. It costs too much and the outcomes are too poor. And we have to find ways of doing things differently. And I think integrative medicine is the real promise for the future. [00:23:36][70.0]

Ronan : [00:23:37] Je sais que c'est une question tout à fait injuste, mais je me souviens l'avoir posée à un médecin il y a quelques années et je lui ai demandé quelle était la chose la plus importante que je puisse faire pour prolonger ma vie. Ce médecin m'avait alors répondu le jeûne intermittent. Je vais vous poser la même question. S'il y a une chose que vous recommanderiez aux gens de faire à partir d'aujourd'hui, quelle serait-elle ? [00:23:55][18.4]

Andrew: [00:23:56] Ne fumez pas. [00:23:56][0.2]

Ronan : [00:23:57] C'est une bonne idée. [00:23:57][0.5]

Andrew: [00:23:58] C'est l'essentiel. Je dirais que le jeûne intermittent a fait l'objet de nombreuses recherches. Fascinant, je pense, un potentiel énorme, le défi est qu'il y a tellement de façons différentes de le faire. Et vous devez trouver un moyen d'en tirer les bénéfices qui vous conviennent. Vous savez, j'ai un livre intitulé Healthy Aging, et j'ai fait beaucoup de recherches sur les stratégies de vieillissement en bonne santé. Je dois dire que ce que j'en ai retenu, c'est que les deux choses les plus importantes sont de maintenir une activité physique tout au long de la vie et de veiller à en modifier les formes, pour s'adapter aux changements de son corps, et deuxièmement, de maintenir des liens sociaux et intellectuels. [00:24:31][33.0]

Ronan : [00:24:32] Je suis tout à fait d'accord avec cette affirmation. Je n'ai pas de formation scientifique qui me permette de réfuter ou d'approuver cette idée, mais elle est très logique d'un point de vue intuitif, c'est certain. Vous avez dit que ne pas fumer était un bon moyen de prolonger sa vie, ce qui est certainement un bon conseil. Je ne pense pas qu'il y ait beaucoup de gens qui le contestent. L'une des questions qui se posent, comme vous le savez, est de savoir quelles sont les preuves concernant le fait de fumer du cannabis. [00:24:52][20.5]

Andrew: [00:24:53] Je pense qu'il est moins nocif que le tabac. Et il est certain qu'il peut être un irritant respiratoire. Mais nous ne voyons pas de corrélation avec le type de maladies associées au tabagisme. Je pense qu'il est préférable de ne rien fumer et de trouver d'autres moyens de le faire, probablement en chauffant le cannabis et en inhalant les vapeurs plutôt qu'en le brûlant. C'est probablement une meilleure idée, même s'il faut veiller à ne pas consommer d'autres substances nocives de cette manière. [00:25:17][24.2]

Ronan : [00:25:17] Oui, absolument. Je pense que c'est l'une des plus grandes opportunités et certainement l'un des plus grands risques liés aux produits du marché noir, en particulier pour les psychédéliques ou le cannabis, car vous ne connaissez pas la légitimité de ce que vous consommez ou la façon dont il est préparé. À ce propos, vous avez été décrit comme le conseiller le plus fiable en matière de drogues récréatives. Je pense que l'une des préoccupations des gens est de savoir comment équilibrer l'expansion constructive de la conscience ou l'usage récréatif constructif des drogues avec les risques d'accoutumance et de dépendance que vous connaissez avec les psychédéliques, je suis en train de téléphoner à des amis qui sont très concentrés sur l'expansion de la conscience et la prise de conscience et tout ce genre de choses. Le sujet de notre prochain appel sera : comment s'assurer que les psychédéliques ne deviennent pas une béquille au lieu d'un outil ? [00:25:58][41.0]

Andrew: [00:25:59] Le principe de base du livre From Chocolate to Morphine et la raison pour laquelle il a irrité tant de gens, c'est qu'il part du principe qu'il n'y a pas de bonnes ou de mauvaises drogues, il n'y a que de bonnes ou de mauvaises relations avec les drogues. Dans le cas des cigarettes, il s'agit de la drogue la plus addictive qui soit, juste après le crack. Selon une statistique que j'ai vue, un jeune qui fume plus d'une cigarette n'a que 15 à 5 % de chances de rester non-fumeur. Sur la base de ces chiffres, je dirais donc qu'il est préférable de ne pas essayer, même une seule fois. Avec d'autres médicaments. Les dangers, le rapport risque-bénéfice sont très différents. Avec les psychédéliques, je pense qu'au niveau physique, ce sont probablement les composés les plus sûrs que nous connaissions en termes de toxicité physique. Je pense que les principaux dangers sont d'ordre psychologique et qu'ils sont liés à la configuration et à l'environnement. Je pense donc que le conseil le plus important est de faire attention, bien sûr, à la dose que vous prenez, mais aussi à ce que vous attendez, à ce que vous pensez de ce que la drogue va faire, et à l'environnement, à la fois physique et social, dans lequel vous la consommez et aux raisons qui vous poussent à la prendre. Et probablement pour les utilisateurs novices. Le conseil le plus important est de faire appel à l'expérience d'un guide. Sociétés traditionnelles. Il s'agit des chamans, ici. Il peut s'agir d'une personne ayant reçu une formation psychologique, ou peut-être pas seulement, mais d'une personne expérimentée et capable de structurer les effets de la drogue d'une manière positive. [00:27:23][84.7]

Ronan : [00:27:24] Et comment faites-vous cela personnellement ? Je crois que vous vous êtes décrit comme un chaman, si j'ai bien compris. Je suis donc curieux de savoir si vous avez des suggestions ou des recommandations. [00:27:32][7.9]

Andrew: [00:27:32] J'ai eu ma part de mauvais voyages avec les psychédéliques et j'ai eu des expériences fantastiques. Et rétrospectivement, vous savez, beaucoup de ces mauvais trips étaient très prévisibles. J'aurais pu prévoir que, compte tenu de mon état mental et des circonstances dans lesquelles je l'ai pris, il n'allait pas avoir de bons résultats. Je ne me présente pas comme un chaman et je ne guide pas les gens dans des voyages psychédéliques, mais je suis certainement prêt à partager mes connaissances avec les gens et à les aider à trouver de bons guides. Je suis très heureux de constater qu'il existe aujourd'hui plusieurs institutions, dont Maps. L'autre est le California Institute of Clinical Studies, qui propose des programmes de formation pour les guides psychédéliques. Il sera donc peut-être plus facile pour les gens d'accéder à ce type d'expertise à l'avenir. [00:28:12][39.1]

Ronan : [00:28:12] J'ai été interpellé sur les médias sociaux parce que je n'ai pas une grande expérience des psychédéliques. Certaines personnes critiquent ce fait. Je pense donc que je ne suis pas qualifié pour aider à développer cette industrie. Quel est votre point de vue sur le fait que des guides ou des thérapeutes conduisent des personnes à vivre des expériences si elles n'en ont pas elles-mêmes ? [00:28:32][20.4]

Andrew: [00:28:33] Si vous parlez de situations thérapeutiques, je pense qu'il est très important pour une personne d'avoir une expérience personnelle. Et si vous regardez même les premières recherches qui ont été faites, j'ai mentionné la recherche de l'hôpital Spring Grove à la fin des années 50, début des années 60 avec des patients atteints de cancer en phase terminale. Les résultats ont été fantastiques : la plupart des personnes qui ont vécu cette expérience ont beaucoup moins souffert. Ils avaient besoin d'une dose beaucoup plus faible de narcotiques. Ils étaient capables d'interagir de manière productive avec leur famille et leurs amis. Elles ont perdu leur peur de la mort. Des résultats fabuleux. D'autres personnes qui n'avaient pas l'expérience des médicaments ont essayé de répéter l'expérience et n'ont pas obtenu les mêmes résultats. C'est l'une des choses qui a dissuadé les gens de faire de la recherche dans ce domaine. Ils n'ont pas compris à quel point tout cela dépendait du contexte. L'une des principales variables est l'état d'esprit et l'expérience du thérapeute. Il est possible qu'une personne se trouvant dans un environnement neutre puisse vivre une expérience fabuleuse, mais il serait certainement préférable de le faire avec un bon guide. [00:29:29][56.3]

Ronan : [00:29:30] J'ai encore quelques questions à vous poser. Tout d'abord, il y a des mouvements à différents niveaux pour légaliser les psychédéliques. Il est certain que les travaux de Maps sont au premier plan, tout comme Usona et Compass Pathways du côté des entreprises à but lucratif. Il y a aussi des efforts au niveau politique, comme l'initiative sur les services de psilocybine dans l'Oregon, qui sera probablement soumise au vote cette année. Je me demandais juste si vous aviez un point de vue sur la question de savoir si tout cela est bon ? Y a-t-il une meilleure voie ? [00:29:56][25.7]

Andrew: [00:29:56] Je pense que c'est formidable. Et je dirais qu'il y a eu un tel déluge de publicité positive sur les formidables potentiels de ces substances. Au cours de la semaine dernière, de nombreux médias ont fait état d'une enquête montrant que les personnes qui consomment des psychédéliques, et en particulier du DMT, ont des expériences spirituelles et sont devenues des athées qui ne le sont plus. C'est remarquable. Je pense donc qu'il y a une grande dynamique. Je dirais qu'il est probable que le MDMA soit bientôt disponible pour le traitement du syndrome de stress post-traumatique. Je pense que la psilocybine sera disponible. Pour le traitement de la dépression pharmacorésistante et peut-être des troubles obsessionnels compulsifs, et je pense que les choses iront de l'avant. Aux États-Unis, le défi consiste à sortir ces substances de l'annexe 1, qui est définie comme n'ayant aucun potentiel thérapeutique. Une fois que cela sera fait, je pense que dans les différents états où ils seront disponibles, je pense que c'est formidable. [00:30:50][53.7]

Ronan : [00:30:50] Ce que j'aime dans la Psilocybin Services Initiative, c'est que l'une des choses qui m'intéressent personnellement dans les psychédéliques, c'est leur capacité non seulement à guérir les problèmes de santé mentale comme la dépression résistante aux traitements, le SSPT, mais aussi leur capacité à être coûteux et à ouvrir les yeux, à induire la créativité, à générer de l'empathie et toutes ces choses merveilleuses. Je pense que c'est l'un des défis, et je suis sûr que cela s'intègre à tous les praticiens de la médecine intégrative, que vous n'avez pas besoin d'être malade pour en bénéficier. Mais l'approche allopathique actuelle de la médecine exige que vous soyez malade. C'est donc l'un des défis à relever. Je suppose que nous verrons comment les choses évolueront, mais je suis certain que les attitudes se libéraliseront assez rapidement. [00:31:29][38.5]

Andrew: [00:31:29] Et je pense que c'est une sorte de spéculation plus lointaine, mais le monde est dans un état si terrible en ce moment, vraiment dans toutes les directions, que ce soit la dégradation de l'environnement, la surpopulation, la polarisation de la société, l'échec complet des systèmes politiques, c'est assez sinistre là dehors. Et il se peut que cette réapparition et cette résurgence des psychédéliques soient le facteur de contrepoids qui a le potentiel de provoquer la transformation de la conscience nécessaire à la transformation de la société. [00:32:05][35.3]

Ronan : [00:32:05] C'est certainement l'une des réflexions que j'ai eues récemment : je regarde en arrière, j'examine les preuves et le profil de sécurité relatif des psychédéliques et je pense à tout l'impact qu'ils auraient pu avoir, en particulier pendant la guerre du Viêt Nam et pour tous les vétérans et par la suite. On ne peut s'empêcher de penser qu'il est presque plus criminel que ces substances aient été programmées que tout ce qu'elles auraient pu faire de négatif pour notre société. Puis j'ai fait une pause, j'ai réfléchi et je me suis dit que l'humanité n'était peut-être pas prête, dans les années 60, à assumer les responsabilités liées à ces drogues et qu'il nous a fallu les 50 dernières années environ pour prendre conscience de leur potentiel et de leur puissance. En poursuivant ce processus de réflexion, j'en suis venu à me dire que ce n'est probablement pas une coïncidence, si je me place dans une optique métaphysique, que les psychédéliques fassent leur réapparition au moment même où les anciens systèmes de la planète s'effondrent. [00:32:57][52.2]

Andrew: [00:32:58] C'est une source d'optimisme que de voir cela se produire. J'en suis donc très heureux. [00:33:04][5.6]

Ronan : [00:33:04] Une dernière question pour vous. Bien que je pense que la réponse soit quelque peu implicite dans ce que vous venez de dire, à savoir que dans les années 60, il y avait des ambitions d'essayer de mettre des psychédéliques dans l'eau à la Maison Blanche et au Kremlin pour conduire à la fin de la guerre et tout ce genre de choses. Mais s'il y avait une personne à qui vous pourriez donner un coup de baguette magique pour lui faire vivre une expérience psychédélique, qui serait-elle ? [00:33:23][18.8]

Andrew: [00:33:25] Le problème, c'est qu'il ne s'agit pas seulement de mettre le psychédélique dans le verre d'eau. Il s'agit d'une question de décor et de décor. Je ne suis donc pas sûr que si vous donniez à Donald Trump une dose de LSD ou de champignons, il en ressortirait différent. Je n'en sais rien. [00:33:37][12.5]

Ronan : [00:33:38] Il est certain que Donald Trump a été mentionné à de nombreuses reprises dans cette question. [00:33:41][2.8]

Andrew: [00:33:41] Oui, j'imagine. [00:33:42][0.5]

Ronan : [00:33:43] Merci beaucoup, Andrew, d'avoir pris le temps de nous rencontrer. C'est vraiment merveilleux. J'apprécie vraiment vos idées. [00:33:47][4.1]

Andrew: [00:33:48] Bon. J'ai apprécié. [00:33:49][0.9]

Ronan : [00:33:54] C'était incroyable de parler à Andrew Weil. L'histoire de sa vie est tellement marquante, perspicace et complexe que nous pouvons apprendre beaucoup de ses expériences. Pour l'instant, voici trois points clés de notre conversation. L'une des choses les plus puissantes que nous puissions apprendre est que nous sommes les maîtres de notre propre réalité. Toutes nos expériences sont des interprétations subjectives de notre environnement. L'expérience de la vue, du son ou de la sensation n'est rien d'autre que la transformation par le cerveau de signaux électriques en notre perception de la réalité. Bien qu'il puisse être difficile de se faire à cette idée, c'est l'une des expériences les plus enrichissantes et les plus libératrices que d'accepter ce fait. La décision de pardonner n'est pas seulement bonne pour votre santé mentale, elle l'est aussi pour votre santé physique. Guérir l'esprit, c'est guérir le corps. Et l'une des meilleures choses que vous puissiez faire pour commencer à guérir votre esprit est de trouver le pardon. Enfin, en tant qu'êtres vivants, nous avons tous nos propres capacités de guérison. Mais aujourd'hui, la plupart des gens ne croient pas qu'ils en disposent. Il existe de nombreuses histoires étonnantes dans lesquelles des personnes ont utilisé leur esprit pour vaincre des maladies et des blessures que la médecine moderne jugeait impossibles. Ayez confiance en la capacité de votre corps à guérir et n'ayez pas peur de changer votre point de vue et vos comportements. [00:35:03][68.5]

Ronan : [00:35:11] Merci d'avoir écouté Field Tripping, un podcast consacré à l'exploration des expériences psychédéliques et de leur capacité à affecter nos vies. Je suis votre hôte, Ronan Levy. Jusqu'à la prochaine fois. Restez curieux. Respirez correctement. Et n'oubliez pas que chaque jour est un voyage d'étude si vous le laissez faire. Field Tripping est créé par Ronan Levy, produit par Conrad Page. Sharon Bela est notre chercheuse. Nous remercions tout particulièrement Quill. Et bien sûr, merci au Dr Andrew Weil de m'avoir rejoint pour cet épisode. Restons en contact et poursuivons ce voyage. Abonnez-vous à notre nouveau podcast. Dites-nous ce que vous en pensez et inscrivez-vous à notre lettre d'information sur FieldTripping.fm. [00:35:11][0.0]

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