Can Psychedelics Cause a Psychotic Episode?

A lot of people I've talked to, exactly what you're mentioning, and they did do a heroic journey. Yeah. And they then look back and go, why was I prioritizing that? Yeah. I want to be out with my children. Yes. You know, and looking at birds or walking in the woods. Being in nature, yeah. Being in nature. Like, one of my books, Sells I Much Into the World, has a great chapter in it, I think, called Good Tips for Great Trips. One of the things, I understand the clinically controlled settings for clinical studies, etc. A lot of us don't need that. But I really enjoy being on an ocean bluff or a high point. And by being in the mushrooms about half an hour before sunset, being with a loved one, also good to have an experienced person who's not tripping, who is the watcher. A sitter. A sitter. And then there are taking meditation practice in place, folks, give these people some space, who's just watching. And then the people who are imbibing understand they have a watcher. They have somebody who's anchored, who could help them. And then to have the sun go down and the stars come out and the colors and then this oceanic expansive experience, it's just nothing short of spiritual. I agree. I think there's one thing we should talk about, though. There are people that have a tendency towards schizophrenia. And these people have, sometimes they have psychedelic breaks. Like, they'll have psychedelic experiences and then they don't do well. They go off to deepak. I'm so glad you brought that up. And that is a deselection from the clinical studies of candidates who want to engage. But my good friend Mark Hayden, who runs MAPS Canada, had a very interesting story with a schizophrenic. And he also cautioned, and every physician I know is on the same page as you. Including medical marijuana, edible marijuana. It seems to have a significant effect on people with it. What Mark noted with this one person who is a severe schizophrenic was that he still heard voices in his head, but the voices now were friendly. They were affirming. They weren't saying, you know, go kill somebody. It was like, you know, you are a good person. And so he still had the voice in the head, but the tenor and tone and attitude of the voices were supportive. What I'm talking about is it bringing on these schizophrenic experiences. There has been some evidence, particularly about marijuana, that high doses of marijuana for people that have tendencies, we don't know, right, what causes someone to have schizophrenic breaks. Because there is a difference between pre and post, right? People have had deteriorating mental health that correlates with schizophrenia. What caused them to be less schizophrenic or not exhibiting any of the problems, and then all of a sudden having severe problems post-psychedelic trip or post-large dose edible marijuana, or even large dose smoking it. Some people, they dab and they smoke wax and then it happens to people that smoke too much pot. And there are certain people that have that tendency. I would defer to clinicians who are extremely skilled in this area and who have seen many, many patients. I'm not a doctor, but I concur with you. I think that is a real concern. The difference between a toxin and a drug can oftentimes be dose. And at lower doses, you can see things at higher doses you don't. Right. So it's an entire spectrum and it's so complex. And individualities of people are so uniquely different. I have a friend who's a doctor. If he smokes a joint, he can't go to sleep. I smoke a joint and I'm into a cuddle puddle, man. I'm ready for the pillow. You know? At night, I just, I use it for going to sleep. Yeah, I'm the opposite. Yeah. I start writing. I want to read. I want to watch documentaries. Yeah. But it's a sativa thing too as well, right? Do you have a significant difference between the way your body responds to sativas versus indicas? I would like to be educated in this subject. I've used both for a very long time. I love acne, indica. You have a beard. I have a beard. I love the smell. I'll count up to somebody's beard. You like the smell in your beard? Yeah. Oh, you weirdo. It's my perfume, right? Oh, I get it. Yeah. There's a lot of, you know, we're in a new realm of pharmacology and pharmacognosy. And this is, I think we have to navigate this carefully. The problem with natural products is how do you standardize them to the active constituent? Well, you have more than one active constituent. You know, how do you standardize them all? There's an entourage or a symphony effect. This speaks to the complexity of nature. But I have a phrase that I like. It's don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Just because you can't understand it doesn't mean it necessarily does not have a valid outcome or, you know, can't be used. And I think that what we need to do is correct large data sets. And that's why I'm hoping microdose, not me, is going to give us an enormous amount of data than clinicians can harvest from and going, we didn't anticipate this. And like these meta studies about partner-to-partner violence, when if your partner men had tripped on mushrooms, they were less prone to violence. That was signal from the noise. How many other signals from the noise of these big, big metafiles that we can pull out, then we can get serious scientists to do really carefully controlled clinical studies to be able to see this? And then how do you combine them? I mean, there's just a whole new landscape that gets away from single molecules and into the complexity of nature that we can build upon. Getting to that place is going to be a challenge. There's no doubt about it. But I think we're smart enough now. We have enough computer technologies and diagnostic tools that we should begin on that voyage today.