Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Cuckoo Kachoo. All right, well, there's a lot of debate out there. What do psychedelics do for trauma and in the way of medicine? And then on the other side, there's all of these psychedelic shops opening up. I don't know where you are. Within a kilometer of where I'm recording right now here in Toronto, there must be five or six psychedelic shops that are open that are under the guise of indigenous medicine, of all things.
There is a wide drift between what is happening on the street and what the realities are when it comes to psychedelics as medicine. And today we're going to dig deeper and go a little bit further on the discussion, because if it's really important to medicine and our mental health, we really should look at it, shouldn't we?
All right, here we go. This is a deeper conversation than probably you've ever had about psychedelics. And by the way, please feel free to write in and if you have questions, I'll make sure that today's guest gets those questions. I'm sure that you'll get the answers that you need. Sajsha, thanks so much for joining us.
[00:01:11] Speaker B: Thank you, Mike. It's a pleasure to be here.
[00:01:13] Speaker A: You're joining us from Noetic. Now, you guys have. And you're one of the co founders.
[00:01:17] Speaker B: That's correct.
[00:01:18] Speaker A: You guys have created a fund that is now doing very well, as I understand it, that gets behind the mental health industry, that category, that sector, as it were.
And part of that is the development of, I guess, psychedelics for treatment.
[00:01:36] Speaker B: That's correct, yeah. Yeah, We're a fund, it's a venture fund that is focused on, officially or technically speaking, the central nervous system. And the central nervous system comprises of your parasympathetic system. And it. It comprises. It incorporates or includes mental health and mental health issues, but also pain and how to manage pain.
And so that is where we are focused. We've broken the world into its various components in terms of understanding, well, how many people around the world are suffering from various distinct mental health issues, be that treatment, resistant depression, major depressive disorder, ptsd, anxiety all the way down to schizophrenia, bipolar, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, traumatic brain injury that a lot of our athletes face, and so on. And then looking at what is currently working, what is not working and how can we disrupt that.
And all that's been transpiring in sort of the underground movement with psychedelics has given us so much profound anecdotal information and evidence to suggest we need to look at this more seriously. And so we decided to set up a fund six years ago to get into this predominantly our own capital and that belonging to our friends and family and, and the rest is history. I mean it's been, it's been a very difficult ride, but we stuck to our knitting and we're very excited about the future. Future. Very excited.
[00:03:11] Speaker A: I'm. I'm excited for you. First of all, from an economic standpoint, to see a company here in Canada breaking waves and doing well financially, that's. That's amazing. And then to make a departure from the standard, I guess, or the traditional pharmaceutical world kind of also makes me feel good. And the reason for that is I think I'm now being trained that ancient medicine, organic medicines, plant based treatments are starting to be really verified. There's veracity to the research.
And has that just become more and more apparent on your journey?
[00:03:53] Speaker B: It has. It's really fascinating because I was having this discussion just yesterday with a very interesting group of individuals, very learned individuals, which is that I felt that there's a very distinct zeitgeist that's taking place overall, especially more so in Western. In Western cultures. Also in Eastern, but more so in western cultures where there's this inherent distrust of institutions. Okay.
So when you take a look at what's happening in the crypto space, which I know very little about, but I.
[00:04:22] Speaker A: Know enough to lose thousands at a time, so consult me anytime.
[00:04:27] Speaker B: It's a space that I was trying to understand the philosophy behind it. And it's very simple. You don't have faith in the central banks, you don't have faith in the fiat currency.
You want to decentralize all of that. And that's really the crux behind what's really driving crypto and the potential for crypto to get to where I was expecting it to potentially get to, and how that's going to take over in some cases. In the same way there is a distrust for our medical institutions and our doctors that are trained in certain ways. And it kind of actually surprises me that at no point in medical school do any of these soon to be doctors ever learn about the importance or the role that trauma plays in our life.
[00:05:13] Speaker A: It's true that we now know, I mean, it's scientifically proven that parts of the brain retain trauma.
That then this is the operating system for everything else in your body, your organs, your heart, everything. And that central nervous system obviously is connected.
[00:05:34] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:05:35] Speaker A: And so that we don't look at that is very interesting.
[00:05:39] Speaker B: We don't, we don't study it, we don't understand how some people are better able to cope and, you know, kind of, you know, have regulate their parasympathetic nervous system and others are not. Right. We also don't really truly appreciate and understand, you know, how distinct trauma that happens at different points in your life happen, have bigger impact, lesser impact, so on. So we're not studying trauma. And when you take a look at the phenomenal work done by people like Dr. Gabor Mati, and there's so many others, it all stems from trauma. It starts from trauma. Even Stan Grof, who's considered to be one of the father figures in psychedelics, just in terms of understanding the importance of it and what it can really show us about who we are.
There is a lot of his research is based on the trauma that we face just coming out of the birth canal. And he can show it scientifically that if you had struggles coming out of the birth canal, that actually impacts your parasympathetic system and, you know, can have an impact on the way you operate and view life.
[00:06:39] Speaker A: And, well, even generational trauma seems to be another good example of that.
[00:06:46] Speaker B: That's an excellent one to highlight. Right.
Epigenetics has shown us that it's not just nurture. Right.
It's not just nature, it's also nurture. It's what we've picked up from being in the environment that we are and the surrounding that we are and the way we've been raised and the way we've been conditioned. Right, Right. I think it was St. Francis of Assisi that said, give me a child underneath the age of 12 and I'll give you a Catholic for life. Right? Right. So so much of our conditioning takes place at such a young age, and. And we're told to wear different masks.
And so most of our life, we're learning to put on different masks for different people. You're a husband, you're a spouse, a partner, you're a sibling, you're a coworker. I mean, goes on and on, and you put on different masks with different folks, and at some point you lose who you really are.
And there's a beautiful line from Aldous Huxley in one of his books where he talks, we toil away in our everyday lives so that we can avoid facing ourselves. And that is the most difficult thing to do do is to face yourself in the mirror. That being said, the beautiful thing about psychedelics that we've seen is that it allows you to do that in a way that doesn't scare you.
[00:07:55] Speaker A: There's like a.
I Guess a force field. Between us wanting to do that and having the ability to do that, it is a frightening bridge to cross to Take a look at yourself. I've made these errors. I've had these regrets. I could have done better with this. I, I, you know, I'm 110 pounds overweight, whatever the case might be.
[00:08:17] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:08:19] Speaker A: Having a look in the mirror is the last thing it's. And I think human nature might have something to do with that.
[00:08:25] Speaker B: No, no, it very much does. It's the last thing we want to do. And, you know, people don't realize, again, that a lot of our addictions stem from that. Because you're trying to escape something, you don't want to look at something. Right. So whether it's work, there's, you know, we don't talk enough about work addiction and being a workaholic and how that impacts your family life and your own life and so on. There's all these other addictions to substances. There's also addictions to certain sex addictions. Those are all addictions because you're trying to avoid something and not look at yourself.
[00:08:55] Speaker A: Not water. Margarita. I'm just kidding. It is margarita.
But you're right, I can understand that. I think that's all become part of the general science of understanding ourselves. And mental health is making these breakthroughs every day. I see it, I think we all see it, which is fantastic. And now what you say is some of that journey can be an easier journey, I suppose, or it can actually begin with psychedelics at the helm.
[00:09:29] Speaker B: Yeah.
We've been so used to being led.
Right. You trust the government, you trust institutions, you trust the establishment.
And I think that there's been a massive trust deficit that's built over several years, of course.
And so what does that mean? The point is that we're starting to take agency back.
Right. Which is again, why the crypto world is there, why even in medical science, everybody starting to do their own research.
[00:09:57] Speaker A: Even looking at history.
[00:09:59] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:09:59] Speaker A: Through a different lens, finally. Or the universe, overall.
[00:10:04] Speaker B: Yes, yeah, no, exactly. And so that zeitgeist has allowed us to kind of go to electric vehicles is another example. Okay. We had electric vehicles back in the 70s.
[00:10:14] Speaker A: That is true.
[00:10:14] Speaker B: Right, yeah. And today, I mean, yesterday, I could argue with you perhaps and said, you know, if as an auto manufacturer, you're not going into the electric vehicle space, you're probably going to lose out.
Today, I'm not entirely that sure anymore, just the way things are going. But I still think that for sure, electric vehicles are here to stay?
[00:10:34] Speaker A: Oh, I think so. I don't know that they are going to be the dominating.
[00:10:37] Speaker B: I. That's where I would go.
[00:10:38] Speaker A: Right.
[00:10:39] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:10:40] Speaker A: And maybe more so if Elon didn't involve himself in politics. But, you know.
[00:10:45] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:10:46] Speaker A: I do think that there are some limitations to that kind of thinking. However, once again saying we're going all electric. Sometimes you have to over ring the bell so that people hear it. I think.
[00:10:58] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:10:58] Speaker A: However, that agency for us to use our own judgment is coming back. Don't over ring the bell. If we want to do this, we're going to do.
[00:11:06] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:11:07] Speaker A: We're going to weigh all the odds. We're not going to be pressured into a policy. We're not going to. We really want to understand how this operates. And I think you're right. In a lot of ways, the world is changing that way.
[00:11:18] Speaker B: It totally is. And the reason is we have information at our fingertips.
[00:11:22] Speaker A: Right.
[00:11:22] Speaker B: It's at our disposal. It's all there. Now we're soon going to see a world where, for example, in AI, this ability for AI to inference at profound levels is going to be more of a factor we need to take in which all that means is now things are going to be way more democratized.
So a villager sitting in Mali that may have access to the Internet is going to get a lot of information and has a lot of tools at their disposal to be able to do what somebody's sitting in, you know, Bensonhurst, you know, or, or. Or Scarsdale, New York.
[00:12:02] Speaker A: In fact, if it's a natural method, they might have closer access to the things that they need. So to find out, okay, based on what is in your surroundings.
[00:12:10] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:12:11] Speaker A: What can be done.
[00:12:12] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:12:12] Speaker A: For these symptoms, for this malady.
[00:12:14] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:12:15] Speaker A: For the problem.
[00:12:15] Speaker B: Yeah. And that's the other beautiful. That's. Personally, that's really important for me, which is that this, this notion that, hey, are we forgetting something about our past? Like, do we need to revisit the ancient cultures? Do we need to better understand what they knew about life, cosmology, their role in it, their place in it, the herbs that they used, the food that they ate, the way that they interacted with each other, that's all starting was getting lost. But we're going back to it now.
[00:12:45] Speaker A: Yeah. We seem to be scratching at our history to find the answers more and more every day.
[00:12:50] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:12:51] Speaker A: And now. So psychedelics, when do we start seeing psychedelics used in humanity? Let's go back and say, okay, psychedelics have been used in this manner, by humanity in this positive way. Because I think a lot of what we hear, and there are stories everywhere, we've all experienced somebody in our life who's had an issue with psychedelics. You know, they jumped off a bridge or they went into a state of psychosis or whatever the case might be. But let's go back right to the beginning of when we understand psychedelics being used, because I have a feeling it wasn't used ever in that way.
[00:13:26] Speaker B: You know, psychedelics have had more of a profound use throughout our history than we care to understand and realize. I mean, it goes way, way, way back. And I have, you know, on our website, I list about 50 books that I recommend that people read. And a lot of it is about our history and not understanding the role in psychedelics. But the first ever mention of psychedelics came about by a mention of something called the soma, which was in India.
And there's debate and argument whether the soma is a mushroom or a plant. Okay, that debate continues. But what was the key thing about the soma was that it gave. Gave you. Purportedly, it made you immortal.
Now, immortal. People feel that you live forever. It's not that you physically live forever, but it gives you a glimpse into something so profound that it allows you to part the veil ever so slightly and realize without having to prove to anybody, you know, that there's so much more to heaven and earth than is dreamt of in our philosophies. And that's a Shakespeare quote.
That glimpse into that, that profound, unending, you know, nature of what we're all part of gives you that confidence to kind of come back and go, one, two things. I'm not alone, right? I'm part of something really big. And ergo, my depression shouldn't really be there. I'm not alone.
[00:14:53] Speaker A: There's no need.
[00:14:54] Speaker B: There's no need to be alone. And you saw something and you realized your role in that. And.
[00:14:58] Speaker A: And this is not finite.
[00:14:59] Speaker B: No, it's not. And as such, your fear of death goes away, the way we understand death.
Right. And your fear of holding onto your ego, by the way, ego is very important. I don't believe in this notion of ego death. I think it's bullshit. Your ego is there to protect you. Is there to make sure that you're okay and you're protected?
Question is, who controls you? Is it your ego or do you. Can you put it in the closet for when you need to put it in and take it out when you need to?
[00:15:27] Speaker A: It's very difficult to do that, especially our society, because everything is really. We're, we're climbers. I don't care what anybody says, I don't care what guru you are going to. We're all climbers in this world. That's the mentality that we've been given.
[00:15:43] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:15:44] Speaker A: And the ego is required. I, maybe I'm wrong, by the way. I have no idea what I'm talking about, but it feels to me like the ego is required to make that engine operate.
[00:15:54] Speaker B: Absolutely, absolutely. It's a protective mechanism. It's protected you from get go. It's a very important part. You think the key thing is knowing when to bring it out to help and protect and when to say, hey, I got this, you're good. Right.
[00:16:10] Speaker A: So, right back to an ancient era, essentially this was used as a way to give us.
To take that ego element away. By the way, if I'm saying anything wrong, go ahead, correct me.
Just to give us enough of ourself to see what else is beyond this plane, this existence.
[00:16:32] Speaker B: Yeah. So Soma was the first sort of depiction of it that we, you know, learned through literature. And that was in the Rig Vedas. Right. In, in, in Hinduism, in the Rig Vedas where we go, hey, what's that? Right. And then the first ever, the piece of writing that really came out in Western civilization was on the Sumerian tablets.
And that was the Epic of Gilgamesh. Beautiful story.
[00:16:58] Speaker A: Amazing story.
[00:16:58] Speaker B: Right. And in the Epic of Gilgamesh, again, Gilgamesh is out there trying to search for that plant that grows at the bottom of the river which again, gives you immortality. So there have been clear suggestions, okay. Of the importance of some of these plant medicines that are playing a very pivotal role. Now you go back and you take a look at, you know, cave art. And this is, by the way, what first got me interested in this was a book that was written back in 2004, five by Graham Hancock.
[00:17:33] Speaker A: Love Graham Hancock.
[00:17:34] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:17:35] Speaker A: An ancient apocalypse.
[00:17:37] Speaker B: Exactly. Ancient apocalypse. There's a, there's a.
[00:17:39] Speaker A: You know, he's always, he's very.
His books. Isn't. He has one that is. Or several about psychedelics as well.
[00:17:49] Speaker B: There's, there's one which, which is the really profound one. And he mentioned psychedelics and other. But there's one that was originally titled Supernatural.
[00:17:57] Speaker A: Supernatural, that's the one.
[00:17:58] Speaker B: Yeah. And, and that had a name change very recently. It's now back on the market. It's called the Visionary. And, and, you know, Graham was, is a journalist, you know, and he covered Africa and So on for the Economist. I, I, I believe we can double verify that, but I'm pretty sure it was.
And, you know, the initial books that he wrote were about certain mysteries that we misunderstood.
The sign and the seal was a profound book about where the Ark of the Covenant actually is. And he discovered it was in Ethiopia. And it's there, it's been there all this time. We actually know it's there. It's been guarded by the Masa tribesmen. And these Masa tribesmen, once they get to the doors and they're guarding it, invariably all get cancer and pass away.
[00:18:48] Speaker A: For a certain period of time. But the last expedition there, yes, there's not a surviving member of.
[00:18:57] Speaker B: No, there isn't. Right.
[00:18:58] Speaker A: Even the camera crew.
[00:19:00] Speaker B: So now it's really important from a theosophical standpoint, especially when it comes to Judaism, that the Ark of the Covenant gets returned to this, to Solomon's temple. That's part of the whole Armageddon school of thought, right? You've got to get the 10 lost tribes of Israel to come back, you've got to bring this back, and so on. So he covered that. Anyway, I digress, because the point is to talk about supernatural. And his mission was very simple. He was just trying to understand that there's cave art that's 25 to 50,000 years old, that's found in Australia, South Africa, again, vast distances, and Europe, in France in particular, in the cave of Luso.
And what's interesting is that it seems like the same artist has just been going around doing these cave art because they're all similar, Right. You've got pictures of chimeras and therianthrops. Chimeras are half one animal, half another animal. Therianthropes are half man, half animal. You've got a lot of, you know, concept of death and rebirth.
Okay.
You have hands, you have eyes, you have these geometric patterns that are drawn.
And so he was just trying to find out, how is it similar? Yeah. Why are they so similar?
[00:20:15] Speaker A: What's going on from all these points on Earth.
[00:20:17] Speaker B: That's correct. And he ultimately came across this. He read all the different theories. It didn't really make sense. People weren't really sure. But then he read this one theory from this professor at the University of Wit, Swatisrand in South Africa, that posited the theory that it was done by individuals that were, be that shaman or not, that had taken a hallucinogenic substance, plant medicine, and these are the distinct things that they all saw. So regardless of your ethnic Background, your religious background, where you were brought up, who you are, what you are, what color you are, it doesn't matter. When you undergo an experience with hallucinogenics, with entheogens, I should rather say, as opposed to hallucinogens, because probably scared the.
An entheogenic substance. These are entheogens. So they've been.
They have been by. By. By virtue of what the word suggests, they've been touched by God.
Enthusiasm.
The word enthusiasm.
[00:21:15] Speaker A: Yeah.
Okay.
[00:21:17] Speaker B: That. That means you are, you know, kind of got the spirit of God in you when you're saying something like, hey, I gotta say something, right? Kind of like the way I am right now.
[00:21:24] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:21:25] Speaker B: Well done. So. So that entheogens are plant medicines, plant substance that have been touched by God. So that's a better way to. I'd like to, you know, typically refer to them as entheogens, as opposed to hallucinogenics. But they're plant medicine. Right.
[00:21:41] Speaker A: And so ancient plant medicines of all kinds have always been attached to deities, to, you know, process of religion. And.
[00:21:53] Speaker B: Oh, this goes even deeper, Mike. It's so. It's so fascinating because. Because, you know, you've got tribes in West Africa that have been ingesting and using ebo gain from the iboga plant, okay. That grows indigenous in Gabon.
And they've been using it to. In their. In sort of, according to their narrative, to communicate with the Sirius constellation, which is the dark star. Right. The dark constellation, their deity, because that's why they call the doggone tribe.
And they knew about the exact makeup of the Sirius constellation before we had telescopes.
They knew about the dwarf star. And everybody said, yeah, foolish. There's not. There's only two. Whatever. And they said, here. So how do they know? Why do they communicate with the dark star?
They say they're communicating with their dead ancestors, so on. But that's their history. That's that tribe's history. That's their narrative.
[00:22:52] Speaker A: What they've done with psychedelics. This is their experience.
[00:22:55] Speaker B: That's correct.
[00:22:55] Speaker A: Their application. And the result.
[00:22:57] Speaker B: Yes. And what we figured. What we discovered was that. Wait a second. Iboga. Ibogaine from the iboga plant has profound, profound impact on those that are suffering from any kind of addiction, especially heroin addicts. Okay? Because once you ingest and have that experience with ibogaine, the. There's something called nor able gain that stays in your system for up to three months and it fights the cravings.
If you can get a heroin addict off heroin for even a day, that's pretty miraculous.
[00:23:26] Speaker A: It is an incredible feat.
[00:23:27] Speaker B: But we're talking about, like, six months to a year that they're off it. And then you've got to, you know, of course, have other sort of, you know, programs.
[00:23:35] Speaker A: But in that time, you figure that they have detox.
[00:23:38] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:23:39] Speaker A: They've got a program underway.
[00:23:40] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:23:40] Speaker A: Started to get their life back.
[00:23:41] Speaker B: That's right. That's right.
[00:23:42] Speaker A: And they may never go back again.
[00:23:44] Speaker B: They may not. The key thing is to also understand the plight of the heroin addict. And the best way it's ever been explained to me is by way of Gabor Mati, who said, listen, when heroin addicts take heroin, here's how they feel in two different ways. One is they feel that their mother has just come around. And most of them don't even remember their mothers, right? And it's giving them a warm blanket and a hot bowl of chicken soup, right? And. And they're feeling loved and nurtured. That's how they feel when they're on heroin. The other ways in which heroin is explained is coming out from the cold, bitter cold, and standing under a nice, warm, hot shower. And that sensation of the shower hitting from your head down, that sensation going all the way down to your body, that is what they associate with that experience of being under heroin. So all it is is. Is allowing them to substitute heroin for something else that gives them the kind of dopamine trigger, all right? And the serotonin experience to kind of feel that they've got their.
The quick fix or high because it's coming through natural means, love, support system, confidence. Right. Knowing that you've got people got your back. And then, of course, also, you know, looking at the world from a little bit more of a blissful standpoint, instead.
[00:25:14] Speaker A: Of scratching at your insides to get out.
[00:25:16] Speaker B: That's right. That's right.
[00:25:18] Speaker A: Okay, so now what? Sorry.
[00:25:20] Speaker B: No, no, I just wanted to finish that one story about the. The cave art. So went to the professor, said, listen, how is this similar? He said, well, this is how it is. And he goes, well, did you. Have you ever taken it? How do you know that this is the case? And the professor said, no, I would never take it. Of course the professor would say, I would never take it. So in the book, Graham undertakes this experience of having an experience with ibogaine, having an experience with psilocybin, which is magic mushrooms, and having an experience with ayahuasca, all under medical supervision, all documented.
And he talks about. And he breaks it down in Terms of, you know, what he's seeing, what he's experiencing, he breaks it down and compares it to what he saw in the cave art. And so we know that psychedelics have played a role that goes way, way, way back and throughout history. You take a look at Egyptian hieroglyphics, there's so many instances of the blue lotus flower being put on your face or the mimosa flower being put on your face. Those are all, you know, very strong, sort of. They have strong antigenic properties. Okay, okay, so, but why were they used? Who used them? What was the purpose? And the little bit that we know is that in many cases they were even kept away from nobility. They kept away from the masses. Right. It was just for nobility to use as a means to either communicate or to have downloads or visions.
[00:26:43] Speaker A: Gave them a certain connection to divinity.
[00:26:45] Speaker B: That's correct. Even we found in sort of what they uncovered in China, they were little kind of vessels and that had a hallucinogenic substance in there or antigenic substance, and that was drunk at distinct gatherings.
So we know it's being used. We know it goes back, it goes way, way back in history.
And there's a profound book written by Brian Morescu and Andrew Koh, which is called the Immortality Key. And all he did was. And Andrew was at mit.
Brian is, is a phenomenal, phenomenal, you know, journalist slash author. And he spent 11 years, they spent 11 years writing this book. And all they did was they went back into sort of the museums of antiquity and they scraped the bottom of the vases and the, and sort of, you know, and these, these pots to just see what was the, you know, archaeochemistry in there.
And their view was that most of all the wine was laced with psychedelics to the extent that they have made a very strong case that the Eucharist, as we understand it, had that layering of psychedelics there.
[00:28:03] Speaker A: It's all in the book on the tongue.
[00:28:05] Speaker B: That's correct.
[00:28:06] Speaker A: Interesting. Another one that gets my attention is ayahuasca, where it's comprised of a root and a leaf that have nothing to do with each other from two different parts from a great distance apart from one another.
How, how did any. And by the way, ayahuasca, maybe a quick two minute description of what ayahuasca is and how it's being used.
[00:28:30] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:28:31] Speaker A: And then maybe it's.
Unravel that one for me. Who ever discovered, okay, if you put this and this together and you cook it at this, how did humanity find this?
What seems to be a very effective cure for trauma, drug addiction and many other mental illnesses in many people.
[00:28:50] Speaker B: You know, this, this started with, with me going down to Brazil in 2009 with Graham and a few other academics. There was Michael Winkleman there and Luis Eduardo Luna. It was his place in Florianopolis.
Luis, who taught Spanish and anthropology at the Swedish University in Finland, which is. It's a thing. Okay.
And was there for close to 40 years, bought this 16th century Jesuit monastery up on a hill that was overlooking the bay and beautiful spot. And he created. Created a garden around it even grew ayahuasca and other entheogenic plants. And I went and had an experience there to truly understand and appreciate the ways of the Shipibo tribe, which he's a master at.
And so this is one of those bizarre kind of situations where you go, listen, there's 100,000 different species of foliage in the Amazon, but only if you take this vine and you come and you combine it with that particular plant do you get ayahuasca. So analogy I use is you're seeing a tornado or some sort of a. Yeah, you know, whatever wind tunnel thing kind of going through a junkyard and creating a Mercedes C class to the T. It's amazing.
[00:30:12] Speaker A: Like to really. This is the thing about many psychedelics that I find fascinating.
[00:30:17] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:30:18] Speaker A: That somebody had to figure this out. Somebody pulled a mushroom out of the cow poo and thought, I'm going to ingest this.
[00:30:27] Speaker B: Yeah. That was the stone ape theory, right? That's Terence McKenna stone ape theory, which is that there was a massive shift in our. In our consciousness, in our cognition, in. In the way we operated as humans 200,000 years ago. Right. And that was because somebody decided to follow the shit and pick the mushrooms and go, this. This is doing something for me. We got to have this.
It changed. Right. And that was a paradigm shift now with, you know, in this particular case, when you ask these indigenous communities. So first of all, ayahuasca is. Ayahuasca itself is just a vine, right?
[00:31:04] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:31:04] Speaker B: Okay. It's just a vine. There's no hallucinogenic properties to it whatsoever. If you just have that vine on its own, you boil it, you drink it, nothing happens.
[00:31:13] Speaker A: Okay?
[00:31:14] Speaker B: Now, there's incredible properties to ayahuasca. It's 124 molecules that we've now discovered, which are all very important. It's got harming in it. It's got other. So it does have some great benefits. And in fact, in the Amazon, they make a syrup out of it. They give it to children, they make eye drops out of it. There's other things that they do with it, but there's nothing hallucinogenic about it. Right? What it has quite core part of its makeup as one of the molecules it's got, it has monoamine oxidized inhibitor, which basically means it has the ability to suppress your stomach acids from eating anything or digesting anything. So when you combine the vine with the chakruna plant, which is where DMT resides, okay. Dimethyltryptamine, Right, that's in, you know, that's, that's, that's all living things have that. It gets secreted in copious amounts close to death.
[00:32:11] Speaker A: I've heard this.
[00:32:12] Speaker B: Your lungs and your heart and your.
[00:32:13] Speaker A: Brain, which some believe is the invitation to this eternal existence.
[00:32:22] Speaker B: Right. You know, looking at it from, you know, one perspective, you would say, wow, I guess it's opening a portal up and your soul is going, no, that may well be the case.
[00:32:34] Speaker A: Let me just have that.
[00:32:35] Speaker B: No, no, no, you can definitely have it. But what we've also discovered is that what DMT does in a profound way is it oxygenates the system. So the reason why your body releases it, it's your body's last ditch effort to oxygenate and keep you alive. Because at the end of the day, you get shot, you get this, you fall, it doesn't matter, you die of hypoxia. That's the ultimate cause of death.
Oxygen stops.
That's it. So now if your body's oxygenated still there, you have that ability to, to, to, you know, fight it or go through it. So why isn't there a, you know, kind of like a vial or whatever of DMT in every operating room?
[00:33:13] Speaker A: That's a good question. I was going to ask that. Yeah, somebody, I was going to ask that. Let's write that one down. So it looks like I did it. Okay, but, but why isn't there.
[00:33:21] Speaker B: We have yet to prove, although the scientists all know that DMT is a neurotransmitter. But we have to technically prove it. We still live in this world where you've got to go through all these different processes and just loops and hurdles to get stuff done. Although we all know that it is what it does.
I am very hopeful that at some point, not in the too distant future, we will have that ability to recognize that there should be a vial of DMT in every operating room. Imperial College in London is doing some profound work into this as well. But, but anyway, the chakruna plant again has the dmt, when you combine the monoamine oxidized inhibitor, which suppresses the stomach acids from eating the chacuna leaf. Because if you just had the chacuna leaf on its own, it would do nothing.
[00:34:08] Speaker A: That's the other thing.
[00:34:09] Speaker B: Because your stomach acids would eat it. Okay, so it would do nothing.
[00:34:13] Speaker A: So the vine stops that process.
[00:34:14] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:34:15] Speaker A: You eat the DMT plant chakuna.
[00:34:17] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:34:18] Speaker A: And it's activated.
[00:34:19] Speaker B: That's correct.
[00:34:20] Speaker A: It allows itself to activate.
[00:34:21] Speaker B: Right. Now, how they decided how to beat the vine into a pulp and then combine it with the chicuna leaf and boil it for three days and condense it. It's kind of like how we probably figured out maple syrup. You know, there was a process involved. Yeah. Now, when you ask the indigenous community, how did you know?
[00:34:40] Speaker A: Let me guess. Yeah, God told us.
[00:34:44] Speaker B: Close. Oh, really close.
[00:34:46] Speaker A: Because it just seems to me that. No, no close.
[00:34:48] Speaker B: Ish. This is what this is. This is this part that fascinates me. They said, well, the master plant taught us that.
And then you're like, what's the master plant? Exactly. What's the master plant? It's the tobacco plant.
The tobacco plant has always been the master plant. The way it grows, the way it sort of rules wherever it's growing.
And now, you know, I'm not. I don't want to take this into a different direction entirely, but they're distinct benefits to not smoking nicotine. Okay. And.
[00:35:29] Speaker A: Oh, you're talking about those Zen patches.
[00:35:30] Speaker B: No, I'm talking about the. The NAD things. And, you know, nad. And so, you know, so, so, so that's coming into, you know, more and more. But. But the point.
[00:35:38] Speaker A: Nicotine in itself is a good thing for the body in many ways.
[00:35:42] Speaker B: That's correct. That's correct. It's still controversial because when you say something like this, you're going to probably get a lot of your viewers going, what the hell are you talking about?
But look at the science.
Look at what the doctors are talking and saying about nicotine. Look at what NAD and NAD plus is all about. Right? So we know that. Now the tobacco plant. How the tobacco plant told the guys. Don't ask me that, please. I have no idea.
[00:36:05] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:36:06] Speaker B: I don't know how the tobacco.
[00:36:07] Speaker A: You saw that question coming.
[00:36:08] Speaker B: Yeah, of course it did. I don't. But they say tobacco plant taught us, and they told us this. And you go, okay.
[00:36:14] Speaker A: But now we've established this is an ancient possibility.
Thousands of years. It's amazing to me that somehow we lost that a little bit. Maybe in, in, in the Western world and it existed elsewhere for some time or it hid quietly in the jungles or whatever. But we seem to have disconnected from the idea of psychedelics being. In fact, we've done the other, we've stigmatized it with. It undoes mental health, it undoes your health.
I think that the stigma must be part of the battle.
[00:36:51] Speaker B: Of course it is. And this is where my own theory on this gets maybe a little wonky.
But when you take a look back at our history, the relationship between us humans and something numinous, God consciousness, whatnot, there were certain echelons of society that really wanted to protect that. You can't have a relationship with God one on one. You got to go through a middleman, talk to the middleman. Middleman will get your message and then the middleman will come. One on one relationship. No, no, no, that's just for nobility. Right. And nobility was always linked to God. Always. You were anointed as the king, right?
[00:37:37] Speaker A: That seems to be the case, yeah.
[00:37:38] Speaker B: It was always like you were anointed, even to this day, you know, when we, we take a look at, you know, how all these processes took place, the commemoration and so on. And, and I'm, I'm anyway, queen victorious.
[00:37:49] Speaker A: Another good example. She became a vessel of God.
[00:37:51] Speaker B: That's right, yeah. And, and, and again with, with, you know, the Protestant Reformation, so on, it was. There was also a direct link between how much you earned and how rich you were, which meant you were closer to God. Right. So when you paraded down these avenues to show your wealth, it wasn't to show the wealth, it was actually to show how close you were to God. Right.
And so I think that there has been a deliberate attempt to try and, you know, keep some of what I call this technology by way of plant medicine away from the hoi ploy, you know, and you want to keep it away from the masses, keep it in ability. We have the direct interaction with the individual.
[00:38:33] Speaker A: Well, it also keeps everybody in check, you know, by way of God. I tell you this, by way of God, you should behave this way.
[00:38:39] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:38:39] Speaker A: But if you have that connection, you have your own freedom.
[00:38:41] Speaker B: That's right. And now what we're seeing is that notion is being democratized. Right. I mean, even just the first rendition of Christianity, which came about 100 years after Christ passed away, was Gnosticism. And Gnosticism was very plain and simple. The this planet is a prison planet. There's something called the demiurge, which is the false God. Right. Which is ruling the roost. Everything. And it's got a whole bunch of archons. The Demiurge has these archons or generals that are kind of managing what we're managing now. That pretty much is the basis of the movie. The Matrix is the basis of so much that we know.
[00:39:15] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:39:16] Speaker B: Prison planet.
[00:39:17] Speaker A: It is false God.
[00:39:18] Speaker B: There is a real God, of course.
But the only way to find salvation.
[00:39:23] Speaker A: You know, is through the system, is to go in.
[00:39:28] Speaker B: Yes, go in.
Know yourself, know thyself, and that will allow you to escape the prison.
[00:39:34] Speaker A: But we've created a preventative wall around that. Just because it's not good in. It's not good for power to have that in society.
[00:39:42] Speaker B: No, no, it. Because what narcissism is saying is you can very much have a direct relationship with God. It's the same thing with Sufism, which is the mystical side of Islam. Right. Which mainstream Muslims would consider Sufis as not Islamic, not Muslim. And what the Sufis did, you've probably seen the whirling dervishes. Yeah, right, right. You know, had a tilt like the axis of the earth, one hand up, one hand down. Right. And they've got a black robe on, which signifies your body, but then that black robe goes off and it's everything white inside, which is your soul, which is your spirit and your whirling. It's beautiful. Your dance, you're always going to be in that dance with consciousness. You're one.
And. And there's a very popular belief that because the Gnostics were completely kind of wiped out and they were persecuted against by the Roman Catholics, they kept moving east. They were in France for a long time, but they also moved to move to North Africa.
[00:40:36] Speaker A: Right.
[00:40:37] Speaker B: Which was really ultimately kind of like the birthplace of Sufism. And so my theory is, and this lot of people talk about it, is that Gnostics are Sufis. Are Gnostics in hiding.
Okay. Because it's. It's. You go into a trance and you have that direct relationship with God, whether you do it through music or dance.
[00:40:56] Speaker A: And the real you.
[00:40:57] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:40:58] Speaker A: Emerges.
[00:40:58] Speaker B: Emerges. You then realize who the real you is, which has always been, you're just a simple drop from the ocean, but you're part of the ocean.
[00:41:06] Speaker A: It's hard to believe I'm having a conversation with somebody in the pharmaceutical industry of the new age.
[00:41:12] Speaker B: And.
[00:41:12] Speaker A: And by the way, I didn't leave that conversation behind. I. I do appreciate us getting this perspective on modern medicine. Like, yes. Where ancient medicine becomes modern medicine, to me, is fascinating. And I think to Many people. It's becoming more and more accepted. Yeah, what, what psychedelics are being used and for what?
[00:41:32] Speaker B: So, so, so I'll let me give you one really important piece of, of historical information here, which is, which is critical to this, which is that in 1949, a guy called John Cade in Australia realized that lithium salts were game changing for people that were suffering from mental health disorders and issues. Because back in the 40s and the 50s, if you had a very serious mental health issue, you were institutionalized. We all saw those movies, Shutter island, all that.
[00:42:03] Speaker A: And very, a lot of very famous families are noted for having had a family member that was institutionalized, either in the home, they're up in the attic.
[00:42:12] Speaker B: You know, they're JFK, like the Kennedys, you know, and JFK's sister. So absolutely.
Now that was game changing. That, that, that, that really was able to solve a lot of these problems. And a guy called Gershon brought it into the US in the 50s, and by the time the 60s rolled around, hospital beds freed up by over 70% when they administered lithium.
Okay, fast forward from the 60s to the 80s, mid-80s, when Prozac came about.
Prozac is literally a slight design improvement to lithium.
[00:42:52] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:42:52] Speaker B: Nothing more.
Okay. It's an ssri.
[00:42:56] Speaker A: Ssri, I've heard this. Yeah.
[00:42:58] Speaker B: So antidepressant, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor. Okay, so now what, what? And then everything thereafter and antidepressants is a slight improvement to Prozac at the end of the day. Okay. So for a long time we thought, hey, we found the Holy Grail. Hospital beds are freed up by over 70%. We didn't understand the long term implications of this and the metabolic impact and the effect. By the way, there is a piece of literature that's out there that was done by two journalists that actually talked about the fact that a lot of these shooters that go into schools or movie theaters or whatnot, two very distinct things about them, either they got off their meds over the last two weeks and did not take them, or they couldn't metabolize it.
And within the first month of taking it and couldn't metabolize it, they went off.
[00:43:53] Speaker A: Right.
[00:43:53] Speaker B: Okay. And in fact, Eli Lilly knew about this. It's all documented, it's all case there.
And there was a big case that took place because there was a, a son that, you know, there's a young man that was suffering through this, couldn't metabolize it, loved his father, but shot his father. Right?
[00:44:13] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:44:13] Speaker B: So you know the story and Anyway, but my. So, you know, coming back to the history here and why it's important that we started to look into other areas is because we soon realized by the time the 90s rolled around that this stuff is not working. The side effects are egregious.
People don't want to take them. They don't feel anything. They feel completely numb.
[00:44:31] Speaker A: That's the one thing I've heard is that you don't feel anything. I mean, okay, so we have zombies. If I do, that doesn't mean we've given you your life.
[00:44:37] Speaker B: That's right. That's exactly right. And you know, I. I'm always trying to connect dots.
[00:44:41] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:44:42] Speaker B: And we've never been able to figure out for the life of me, why is it that you have so many zombie movies and zombie episodes and shows?
It's saying something about us.
[00:44:53] Speaker A: It's telling us, no matter what it.
[00:44:55] Speaker B: Is, you're watching it again and again. Exactly.
[00:44:57] Speaker A: Well, it's wild. I was recently in Calgary and. And I am sorry to report that the.
What I was seeing on the street as a result of fentanyl, for example, it is a zombie march. It's really.
And it's. It's very sad.
[00:45:12] Speaker B: It is.
[00:45:13] Speaker A: So now we start to discover that these drugs are what they're meant to be.
[00:45:19] Speaker B: That's correct.
[00:45:20] Speaker A: And now we're looking for alternative means.
[00:45:22] Speaker B: Yeah, we're starting to explore areas and they're. They're folks that have been working on the fringe, specifically with better understanding how psychedelics have played a role with, you know, shaping and helping us mentally and with our psyche.
The CIA knew this well ahead of time. The whole MK Ultra. Exactly. And stuff that was going on with the CIA.
Distinct links to Charles Manson and his tribe and his crew.
You know, they were using LSD to brainwash and condition and, you know, get folks to do certain bidding in certain ways.
And so we knew that in certain areas they were playing with and better understanding how to use psychedelics for distinct memes.
But there was a lot of work that had been done starting in the 1870s and 1880s by heptor on mescaline, synthesizing mescaline and looking at all these various psychedelics and the impact that it had on the various receptors and what was the mechanism of action?
You know, what was it interacting with the receptor? Was it the serotonin receptor, the dopamine receptor? Right. And which of those specific receptors was it triggering? And so those were all coming into learning. And then we had enough anecdotal evidence to also show that a lot of people that were distinctly suffering from mental health ailments were so much better as a result of this. And we started to then learn that, hey, when you ingest some of these, there is neurogenesis that takes place, which means your brains are creating new cells, that there's neuroplasticity, which is really important to the equation because we often think about the same thing in the same way all the time, especially your problems.
Now all of a sudden what we're doing is we're saying we're going to shut off the default mode network. Okay. And you can't think about that problem that way anymore. Now you're forced to think about it.
[00:47:21] Speaker A: To come up with a different solution and different.
[00:47:24] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:47:24] Speaker A: Perspective.
[00:47:25] Speaker B: So somebody gives you, you're in a jungle, there's a path there that's well trodden. Everybody takes it. And now that path is closed.
[00:47:32] Speaker A: It recontext is the recontext on this is, I think, how you reposition, I think yourself mentally, is that the end result?
[00:47:40] Speaker B: Very much so. You're now sort of forced to kind of take the machete and create a new path for yourself down to the same place that you want to get to. But now it's a new path and you're going, whoa, this is better, much better path. That's correct. And so that's what it forces you to do. Another way to explain it and understand it is that let's say you're dealing with your proverbial 800 pound gorilla in the room through the use of distinct psychedelics. Again, done responsibly. I want to be very careful that I explained this very carefully. Right?
This notion that. Yeah, man, I took mushrooms in high school and we were doing beers and funnels and upside down.
[00:48:18] Speaker A: No, I remember you. Okay, now that you said that.
[00:48:20] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:48:21] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:48:21] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
So, so it's. You got to stay away from, you know, there is, you have to revere these things, these substances. There's a protocol in which you take it, you have to prepare for it in advance. There's also work you need to do afterwards. But that being said, that's important, actually very important.
[00:48:39] Speaker A: That's an important stop, incredibly important part of this.
[00:48:42] Speaker B: And also I will say to those that are listening that are under the age of 20, 25, including my daughter, that your brain is developing to the age of 25.
[00:48:50] Speaker A: Right.
[00:48:50] Speaker B: Okay.
Beware of that. Be mindful of that. Don't mess with it. Let it develop, let it develop.
[00:48:57] Speaker A: They say the same thing about cannabis. And just about Any other.
Okay. So now it's funny because I have this discussion with people. I will tell you, Saad, that I am a proponent because we have a mutual friend who has.
Your partner, actually in one of your partners in this business has really kept me informed over the years what's going on scientifically with this. And I asked you to talk about the history of it and the ancient element of its day to make people realize that this is not new discovery, that we're not just messing around with the 1970s chemicals now that there is an application. And the comparison that I make is. And I actually brought this to the. The table at home the other night was fentanyls. Terrible drug, right? We've got a fentanyl problem, don't we? It's also the number one way we treat pain in measure according to the prescribed amount and it can be used effectively. But when it is put to the street and synthesized and mixed and made an escape mechanism, that's when it becomes a problem, just like any drug.
[00:50:08] Speaker B: You know, the Adderall pure definition of poison is about dosage.
That's what it is. Poison is always just about how much of what you're taking. You could be taking copious amounts of anything, good even, and it'd be bad for you. Right? It's about dosage at the end of the day. And so we're, you know, fentanyl has a purpose in science and anesthesia in pain management.
But once the commercial aspects get in and you realize, wait a second, you know, we can, you know, this is just a quick way to make money in such a profound way, it kind of takes over. And the reason why none of the big pharma companies have been focused on CNS more broadly, but also CNNs away from SSRIs.
Again, CNS being the central nervous system and all their focus has been on, you know, again, cancer, cardio immunotherapy. Immunology is because that's where the money is.
[00:51:05] Speaker A: And they seem to tamp down symptoms with.
With pharmaceuticals. That can be.
[00:51:11] Speaker B: No, because. Because here's what it is. It takes on average about 9 to 11 years to be properly diagnosed with the kind of, you know, mental health condition that you have. Okay. There's a long waiting line, and then by the time you get in the system, there's a process to truly understand it. Okay? Then you get on these meds and you realize, I don't need to be on the. I hate these meds. They're ruining my life. Okay? But you can't get off of it now.
Because if you do Fast and Furious, you'll be one of those guys that walk into a movie theater or the school and so, you know, whatever. Or it can have a very adverse effect course.
So there's something called Taylor Horowitz method and which is that you've got to decrease to the tune of 6 to 8% every six weeks. Okay. So you, you're reducing your dosage.
[00:52:02] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:52:03] Speaker B: But that takes another bloody 11 years.
[00:52:05] Speaker A: That's some cases. That's a long process. Yes, because percentage is so minuscule and.
[00:52:11] Speaker B: And because, because of comorbidities, you know that, you know, most people are not just on one medication, they're on six.
[00:52:17] Speaker A: Right.
[00:52:17] Speaker B: Because because of ptsd, they're also dealing with major depressive disorder. Because of PTSD and major depressive disorder, they may be dealing with fibromyalgia, which is simply, you know, pain plus ptsd. That's right. Kind of the definition of fibromyalgia. Right. I've got pain in my body.
It's, it's trauma related. Typically it's because of some ptsd. And now my body is, is showing.
[00:52:40] Speaker A: Well, if your central nervous system is reacting badly to trauma of some sort, it's going to have some sort of nerve related.
[00:52:48] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:52:50] Speaker A: Fibromyalgia or something else. So now how you're out there putting money behind companies that are breakthrough, not just in psychedelics, but in many areas. But where on the psychedelics end are these applications being made and with what psychedelics?
[00:53:12] Speaker B: The key ones are psilocybin, which is magic mushroom. Okay. And, and the, the work that's being done there. Like first of all, you know that ketamine is already out there. Ketamine typically gets talked about as the first real psychedelic that's already legal out there.
And there's so many clinics and they've only got one thing on the menu, which is ketamine.
[00:53:34] Speaker A: Right.
[00:53:34] Speaker B: And regardless of what your problem is, it's kind of like, you know, I have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
[00:53:38] Speaker A: Right.
[00:53:38] Speaker B: So ketamine, will sol come in, you know, no matter what your ailment is, which is, is not the case now. There's nasal sprays, there's intravenous and so on, but it isn't. Ketamine has been, is a horse tranquilizer that's been legal for 50 years. Okay. And, but with true sort of psychedelics, which is magic mushrooms or psilocybin, which is lsd, iboga or ibogaine from, from the plant and in West Africa, those are the key ones where the focus is right now and more so on psilocybin.
And the ailments that they are going after include treatment resistant depression, major depressive disorder, alcohol use disorder, and pain management as well.
And pain management is again, the opioid crisis, the pantalin crisis, you know, the oxycontin crisis. Right.
That's, you know, you get on, on, on these pain meds and to try and alleviate a little bit of pain, and next thing you know, you're hooked, you're done. You kind of, you can't get off of it.
[00:54:43] Speaker A: So, you know, with all due respect, and why are financial guys leading the way on this obviously needed advancement in medicine? Why aren't the pharmaceuticals that are already there making these advances 10, 15 years ago when obviously, as we just discussed that the results of the science was already in.
[00:55:05] Speaker B: Results of the science have been in for a long time. Pharmaceutical companies love a product that just keeps getting used and used and used and used and used. Right. So once you're on an ssri, I got you. Yeah, I got you for a very long time.
And hopefully you're also taking my other meds for your other ailments in mental health because they're comorbidities. Right. You're not just ptsd, you're also major depressive, so you're taking other things for those things too.
[00:55:32] Speaker A: So if you hear everything, you're done.
[00:55:33] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:55:34] Speaker A: There's no exit.
[00:55:35] Speaker B: Yeah. You know, I love listening to certain sort of philosophers, and by the way, I find all these philosophers, rascals, and one of them was Osho. Okay. And he talked about the fact that, why can't we turn our entire medical system into, into some, into a construct where you find your family doctor.
You pay the family doctor regularly. As long as you're healthy. Right. As soon as you're not healthy, stop being the hospital.
[00:56:03] Speaker A: Take your foot off the pedal.
[00:56:04] Speaker B: That's it. I'm not paying anymore. Right. Get me healthy again, I'm going to.
[00:56:07] Speaker A: Start paying you again.
[00:56:08] Speaker B: Right. Ours is the other way around. It's like, you know, it's so. It's designed, it's incentivized to keep us unfortunately unhealthy. Because that's the business for pharma. The more unhealthy you are, the better it is for pharma. And we go there now, what happens then is that, you know, they start to realize and they're always looking for from their sales team, where is it in the marketing team. Where is it that we can generate more Revenue. What are the areas that we need to look at? So we've exhausted oncology or starting to exhaust, and we're exhausting other areas. The central nervous system. Mental health is taking on a big focus. Why? Pandemic had a huge part to play in that.
Right. All of a sudden people came out and started to talk about it a lot more. The amount of CEOs that I've heard of actually come out and say, I suffer from bipolar.
[00:56:53] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:56:53] Speaker B: You're like, holy, wow.
[00:56:55] Speaker A: Like, you know, the discussions are the acceptance of us saying, okay, absolutely. You know, you still be part of my friendship, still be part of my company, still be part of my world.
[00:57:05] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:57:06] Speaker A: We are going to be part of the nurturing that you need.
[00:57:08] Speaker B: That's exactly.
[00:57:09] Speaker A: That's happening.
[00:57:10] Speaker B: That is. That is happening. And that conversation, that discussion that really came from grassroots and that's a beautiful part of it, has kind of forced the hand again of another institution, another establishment in our ecosystem, which is the pharmaceutical industry, to kind of go, okay, well, let's keep an eye on it. Let's see what happens. Okay, so. Right. Great question. Why the hell did some finance bros decide to get into this space?
[00:57:34] Speaker A: I don't see as bros, by the way, but I know what you're saying, you know.
[00:57:37] Speaker B: No, but you know what I mean.
I personally am a little shocked as to why the government hasn't taken more of an initiative. I'm definitely disappointed with some of our bigger institutions here, the likes of the Canada Pension Plans, Ontario Teachers, the hospitals of Ontario. I mean, these guys should have been in this in a bigger way to kind of go, you know, we've got huge portfolio, 600 billion plus that we're managing. Why can't we put less than half a billion to work in trying to discover, do the research, but also own the ip, Fine. The intellectual property that is the patents on some of these things. But let's research this area. Mental health is such a big issue.
[00:58:19] Speaker A: Oh, no, no, no, no, no, Sud. We have to put that money into the Downs View park to build a stadium and do something with the airplane hangars. Yeah, but I know that misdirection of thought. I do believe that you're in the right space at the right time because we are making a big sea change, certainly in the, in the west, maybe in other parts of the world. They've been there for a while. Yeah, but to see that this is doing well for you guys, I mean, this is not. This is not a venture that fell on its face immediately the results were staggering.
[00:58:51] Speaker B: Yeah, no, look any which way you would have sliced and diced it. It was a dumb business move.
It made no sense. You're going into an area that is absolutely new. There's not much research in it, there's all the stigma against it and it's starting to get better. Understood. But it's not there yet.
Warren Wright, who's my business partner, my best friend, my brother, and we worked together for over 21 years and collectively between us, we've raised over 20 billion in our careers from institutional investors, for hedge funds and for the businesses that we ran in the hedge fund and fund of hedge fund space.
[00:59:34] Speaker A: And remind me, I have an idea to pitch you for my new hybrid flask.
[00:59:37] Speaker B: Nice. Nice.
[00:59:38] Speaker A: It's actually, they have already been invented, but anyway, I digress. But that's an impressive portfolio.
[00:59:45] Speaker B: No?
And we've always been Canadian, we've always been here, we've always been domiciled in Canada. And one of the things that we always kind of like scratched our heads about was that why is it that Canadians are not resonating with us as much? We've got all these investors, very high flying investors, institutional investors from around the world, but our own Canadians don't really kind of, they go, well, how good can you be here in Toronto? Right?
[01:00:08] Speaker A: Wow.
[01:00:09] Speaker B: And I come back to this notion that there are two countries in the world that really understand this notion of a tall poppy syndrome. That's Australia and Canada. They understand it. As soon as one poppy grows taller than the others, you cut it off. Got to be like the rest.
So that's a different discussion. And that's why I also feel that.
[01:00:26] Speaker A: Please come back for that discussion.
[01:00:27] Speaker B: Oh man, don't get me on that discussion. Because that's like, why have all our best comedians left? Our best actors left? People in the entertainment industry, sports industry.
[01:00:35] Speaker A: We cannot wait to stop ourselves.
[01:00:37] Speaker B: Right. So, so anyway, so the point is, and I forget my point actually, but, but coming back to.
[01:00:43] Speaker A: Oh, just the acceptance of, of this.
[01:00:46] Speaker B: From a business perspective, it made no sense for us to be in it. Okay. We saw a few opportunities at that time. Compass Pathways was private.
You know, we had Siben, that was private.
We had a few that were private that we were, that we felt that given the data that they're suggesting and showing, given the path that they're on, whether the pharma companies will come into it or not, people will want it, they will want that solution. I don't care. That makes sense. I'm willing to give it a Try. Because everything else has not worked for me. Okay? And as such, we made a bet. So Warren and I put our own money to work. We put money to work from friends and family because they were interested. It was a mission driven exercise for us. And more and more people started to find out and we're, we're, you know, we ended up being, we're, we're modest organization. When I talk about billions before, I mean our assets under management are over 200 million in this space, but we are one of the largest in the world.
[01:01:49] Speaker A: That's still not impressive.
[01:01:50] Speaker B: Perhaps the largest in the world. And we've made a lot of investment in psychedelic drug development. Now, I went to the institutions and I said, guys, I'm not understanding why you're not looking at this. You have all these constituents, be that shareholders, employees that are suffering from all these various mental health ailments.
This could be a real thing in four to five years. Why aren't you looking at it? Well, they would come up with all various reasons, oh, you know, talk to this department, maybe our philanthropy department look at it, or maybe a charity department look at it. And they're like, wow, like, you know, so fine, we decided to do it anyway. And the last five to six years have been brutal.
Brutal. They've impacted our lives, have impacted our waking and sleeping. They've impacted our relationships with our kids, with our spouses, with our partners. It has been brutal. It has not been. In fact, I would have to double, kind of think about it if you came to me six years ago and go, okay, here's what you're going to look forward to is what may happen.
[01:02:52] Speaker A: After the Double it and I'll think about it.
[01:02:54] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
So, but that being said, I'm so glad we stuck to our knitting. And we're now at a point where these companies that we seeded, that we went in at valuations of 8 million, 10 million, 12 million are now being acquired for well north of 1 billion.
And by pharma, by big pharma. Because they're realizing, wait a second, you just showed me results just through phase two trials. Like in FDA trials, you go through three phases. Phase one, two, three. Phase one is to see if there's any toxicity. Phase two is to see if it's efficacious with a smaller pool. Phase three is to see if it's efficacious with a larger pool. And just in phase two, they're being shown results that have never been seen in the history of psychiatry. History of psychiatry. You put any SSRI up against this and you're going, holy shit.
How can you ignore this? Now the Otsukas and the ab, well.
[01:03:58] Speaker A: Also, they don't want you out there making noise that might actually light a fire against them. Almost better to be part of the societal change, even if only by perception. Sorry to be skeptical, but you know, that seems to be their MO.
[01:04:14] Speaker B: Oh, true, true.
[01:04:15] Speaker A: Okay, well, we'll do it because there's a trend, there's.
[01:04:19] Speaker B: But a more nefarious. A more nefarious pathway that they've often taken is to quickly go in, buy it, shelve it. Yeah.
Never see the light of day.
[01:04:30] Speaker A: I heard a funny story and I won't keep you much longer. By the way, if people wanted to find out more about Noetic, you can get one of these wonderful hats, I'm sure. Where could they find out more?
[01:04:40] Speaker B: Well, you go on to our website, noeticfund.com and we've got a lot of resources there. I mean, we, we're very mission driven. For us, it's so important to get the word out there that, look, there are solutions that are coming and that are underway that we all should get very excited about. And as I mentioned, major depressive disorder, alcohol use disorder, pain management are the key things that are front and center. Right. We've also got general anxiety disorder that is being tackled in a big way. Treatment resistant depression. Just by virtue of the term. There's no treatment that impacts that form of depression. It's resistant to all treatments. Right.
But we're done with treatments. We set out on a mission to find cures. Why? Not because we were stupid and just woke up and said, it's because there was enough evidence to show that cures in this area are possible. It's the one area of science in medicine that never finds a cure. Right. You break your arm, you go to the hospital, you get it fixed, whatever, everything at the heart or whatever, whatever mental health, it just. You're seeing a shrink for the next 20 years plus years or you're on meds or whatever, you never get better. We're done with that.
The holy grail for us is to see a future. And this I credit entirely to Warren. It's a beautiful analogy that he has. And the way to explain it is that, you know, we go now to a dental hygienist for preventative means, right. Before you go to a dentist every time you had an issue, Right. But then you started to see the dental hygienist twice a year, three times a year, four times a year, depending on the condition of your teeth and your gums. And they cleaned it up and made sure that it was healthy so that you wouldn't have to have these issues. You didn't need to have root canal or cavities or whatnot.
And that'd be great to see in mental health space so that, you know, if you and I were neighbors, Mike, I'd walk out and you'd walk out and you go, hey, how you doing? Have a good day? And I'd say, yes, Mike. And I'd say, oh, Mike, by the way, I can't make it to the barbecue tonight because I'm going into the clinic for my, you know, annual or biannual, you know, treatment for, with. With psilocybin, with whatnot. That, you know, I really need to have a reset and to understand my place and just to function better and everybody would be okay with it because it's a normal thing to do.
That would be beautiful to see.
[01:07:01] Speaker A: I wish a world like that. Absolutely. You know, Saad, thank you so much for joining us. Saad Shah Noetic. And thank you very much for. To Warren, your good friend, for lining this up as well indeed, for near. For joining us. For Nick and Brady, I'm Mike.
We'll talk more about this in the coming days. And an upcoming episode about.
And we didn't even touch on it too much today, but we will in the future.
There's a gray market out there for psychedelics that's happening across the country. Seems dangerous, and we'd like to know who's behind it. More on that in an upcoming episode. Meanwhile, today we learned a lot about the history of psychedelics and. And where we're going with the medicine.
Thank you for joining us. We'll catch you next time right here on tpl.
