A Scientist Explains Why Psychedelics Can Feel More Real Than Reality

From a neuroscience perspective, what's actually happening? How people process information from the world continues to be altered for up to 30 days after the trip is over. That's pretty fucking wild. Sometimes you get home from work and you're like, I don't even remember how I got here. Why that happens is because your brain predicted that drive home so well, and oftentimes the brain kind of filters out the well predicted. and this is to conserve energy. If we kind of perceived everything around us all the time, it would be extremely exhausting. What are the components that have us actually believe these things about us? Fear, thinking the same thought over and over again. Obviously a big aspect of psychedelics is ego dissolution. If you really did live your life the way Jesus taught us to live, I think that over time really does chip away at the ego. So it's kind of like an ego dissolution process. I do kind of see a world where people raised in these environments are able to use psychedelics for healing and also have that fit in with their Christian worldview.

As a neuroscientist, when you say someone's tripping, like what do you find in the brain? What we did to kind of get a measure of what's happening during the experience was we Doctor Chloe, welcome to the podcast. I'm curious, you've been doing this massive research study. What was the most surprising thing you found when it came to studying psychedelics? Oh, that's a good question. I think the most surprising thing was that, you know, we think about when somebody's tripping, that they're in this altered state of consciousness, but once the trip is over, we kind of assume, OK, they've gone back to their normal everyday state of consciousness. But what we found was that how people process Information from the world continues to be altered for up to 30 days after the trip is over. Like altered in what way? As a neuroscientist, when you say someone's tripping, like what do you find in the brain? Yeah, so in our study, we had to get a little bit creative because the lab that I worked in was not a psychedelic research lab. I kind of came to the lab and was like, we're going to do psychedelic research. Um, and so we didn't have any of those.

FDA permissions that you have to get to do psychedelic research because of the legal landscape. So we had to get creative. We did not administer psychedelics to anybody. We had them come into the lab afterwards. And so what we did to kind of get a measure of what's happening during the experience was we gave psilocybin to mice. So we kind of have the during the trip with the mice and then the after the trip with the humans. So what did you find with the mice? With the mice and with the humans, we saw kind of both. During and after the trip, the way that the brain processes visual sensory information is altered. And so, kind of to give a little bit of background, go for it. The way that we kind of perceive the world is not our just kind of raw perception of what's going on around you. So we're getting this incoming sensory data from what we see and we smell and we touch, but what actually makes it up to the level of perception is heavily modulated by our brains per day. of what's going on. If you kind of think about moving through the world on your drive home from work every day, there are going to be things that you see that are very predictable and kind of sometimes you get home from work and you're like, I don't even remember how I got here. And that's because yeah, you go into like autopilot mode on your way home, you're like, oh shit, I'm home now. Exactly. So why that happens is because your brain predicted that drive home so well, and oftentimes the brain kind of filters out the.

Predicted information. And this is to conserve energy. If we kind of perceived everything around us all the time, it would be extremely exhausting. And so what the brain does is it kind of will filter out a lot of the well-predicted information, and then it'll light up if there is information from our environment that is not well predicted stuff that's surprising. So like if an elephant kind of jumped out in front of you on your drive home, for example, and that's so that you can respond and react. Accordingly to a potential threat, kind of know how to navigate a novel situation. And so we call that kind of predictive processing in the brain. And what we found in our research was that psychedelics disrupted predictive processing. So typically we've got these kind of top-down predictions coming from higher areas in the brain, saying, I, I think this is what that thing is, or I think that's what that is. And again, those kind of modulate our perception. After psychedelics, we see kind of a Weakening of these top-down signals. So it's kind of like that sensory information is flooding in more strongly. Sometimes things that would normally be filtered out are treated as if they are more novel.

So like what's happening in the brain that's creating those predictions and then what is getting the information now? Yeah, so the whole idea is that we have these internal models of everything in the world, and those models are built based on everything we've ever experienced, our knowledge. And our beliefs as well. And so these models are kind of kept in higher brain regions like our prefrontal cortex. And then when we have some type of, you know, in my research, we looked at the visual system, so I'll use that example. But when we have some type of visual stimulus, light hitting our eyes, being sent to the visual cortex, at the same time, those higher regions are sending these signals down. And that prediction is kind of compared to the actual bottom up. sensory information. If, again, it's something that was well predicted, normally the brain will kind of filter it out. If it's something that is surprising, it will make its way up through that neural hierarchy, and then hopefully the model will update itself so that future predictions can be made more accurately. So the model is always trying to get more and more accurate over time.

How did you test the humans afterwards to see that there was lower predictability? So what we did was we used a paradigm. The oddball paradigm. We actually did the same thing in the mice. And so with an EEG cap, we had people come into the lab and look at a movie on the computer screen. And the movie would flash these vertical lines on the screen, just black and white lines, kind of flash them over and over and over again. And then this is going to kind of build the prediction that, you know, in a few seconds, another image of vertical lines is going to pop on the screen. So it becomes our expected stimulus. And then we surprise them with some horizontal lines, and we look at, yeah, surprise, and we see how the brain responds. So of course, the brain is going to respond much stronger to the horizontal surprising lines than the vertical, and we do kind of some more complex versions of it, but that's the most basic version. It's what we can look at then is after psychedelics, are people showing that strong prediction response to the.

Affected stimuli to neutral stimuli to stimuli that would normally be filtered out, and that's exactly what we found. So you said that after psychedelics, people and mice have about a 30 day window where they're still in that sort of altered state. I imagine this is the neuroplasticity window. So from a neuroscience perspective, what's actually happening? Is it just that we're not like that prediction thing you're talking about is that's what's happening for 30 days, or like what makes that such a good time to create new habits? So if you've got to think about your brain as like a, I'm sure maybe you've heard this metaphor, a kind of snowy hill with sleds going down it, and your thoughts are the sleds. You can kind of see these well-worn paths. So let's say you have a negative thought about yourself, and no matter how hard you try to like go down a different path, you keep getting pulled into the well-worn path. So the metaphor is that psychedelics are like this fresh blanket of snow, allowing you to kind of explore new pathways. And that's exactly what's happening in that 30 day window, we've experienced the fresh blanket of snow, those top-down predictions, which oftentimes are beliefs and thoughts about ourselves, how certain the brain is that those are true is reduced. And so it gives somebody this really rare opportunity to reframe how they think about themselves and revise and update their beliefs.

OK, in one of your clips I saw you, you were talking about what makes a belief strong. And like why we believe certain beliefs. What are the components that have us actually believe these things about us? Yeah, so there are a lot of different things. Number one is just evidence. So if, you know, over and over again you're acquiring the same evidence for a belief, it's going to reinforce that belief and make it stronger. Another one is what I call grip, that is thinking the same thought over and over again. So every time you revisit that thought, you're strengthening those pathways, neurons that fire together, wire together. It's kind of what we in neuroscience or like when you're stuck on a thought and you just keep looping this thing. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And then also fear, strong emotion. So if you've experienced something when you are in a particularly strong emotional state, that can kind of get consolidated in the brain a little bit deeper than if you're in kind of a baseline state. What led you to want to run this study? I mean, you showed up at the lab and we're like, we're doing psychedelics. What was, what was that?

It's like when someone shows up to the party, they're like, We're doing acid. I already dosed the Kool-Aid. What happened two hours before that? Yeah, so I was really interested from the start when I started learning about psychedelics in the mystical aspects of the trip, growing up evangelical. I just thought it was so interesting, all of the different beliefs that people held, why they held the different beliefs that they did, and I was just drawn to kind of learning more about these mystical experiences where people claim that they have directly communed with God, the universe, the divine, whatever you want to call it. And so I was really interested in what those experiences do to our beliefs. So I started reading the literature and you know, there's plenty of papers showing that the stronger the mystical experience, the more therapeutically beneficial psychedelic trips are. And so I really wanted to dig in what's actually happening at the level of belief. Was there and papers that like really struck you, like you really connected with? Too many.

There's a paper comparing psychedelic and non-psychedelic God encounters, um, and religious, spiritual and mystical experiences. In this paper, they use tools like the mystical experiences questionnaire and look at the quality of mystical experiences people have under psychedelics, near death experiences through prayer, spontaneous. And what they found was that mystical experiences induced by psychedelics seem to be stronger than those that happen spontaneously. This really validated psychedelics as, you know, something that evokes subjective mystical experiences. Doesn't say anything about, you know, what's actually going on here, but psychedelics do reliably evoke these experiences, and I thought that was really, really cool. And then the God encounters paper looked at Kind of how people experienced God under psychedelics. And, you know, people come out of their psychedelic experiences saying they met this loving, all-knowing force. And I just think that there are so many people who are afraid of God if they believe in God and have really harmful concepts of God. And so that God encounters paper really struck me as like, wow, this could be a tool for really helping people reframe how they Look at God.

So like I'm not too familiar with how evangelical church projects how they view reality, but it sounds like some of these religions create a more fear-based God. Through church history, the concept of God has changed a lot. Pre-Jesus, God was kind of talked about as this wrathful storm god, um, who would help destroy enemies, a God of war, um. Yeah, essentially, yes. Then Jesus kind of came along and God adopted more pacifistic kind of characteristics, loving your neighbor, loving your enemy, which was very radical at the time. And then over time we've kind of shifted back towards this kind of warrior god mentality. Especially in the US with Christian nationalism. It's a lot to reconcile. I call it like a Frank and Jesus because we're like patching together all of these different versions of God and people have almost replaced the Jesus of the Bible with like this John Wayne kind of character. There's a book called Jesus and John Wayne that talks about this. Um, yeah.

So it's this idea like we don't need like this gentleman, we need a warrior because we're in a spiritual war kind of thing. I think with that, people kind of look at God as something to fear oftentimes, and yeah, it can be very detrimental to mental health. That's super interesting. What has been your experience being in the church and then studying this? Has it been a conflict in family or friends and like what, what has that whole experience been like? Um, so I left church in college after attending a mega church. That was kind of the end of it for me. The mega church really did me in. What defines a mega church? We're talking about like a football stadium vibes. It wasn't quite that big, but it had multiple campuses and the preacher would be at one location and we'd watch him on a video screen. Oh, so you weren't even in the same building usually. Interesting. So you started at a smaller church and then when you went to the mega church, that's when you're like, OK, this shit's kind of. Yeah, my family was actually pretty chill about religion. We didn't go to church every Sunday. We went on holidays and things like that, but I went to a summer camp that was pretty fundamentalist. I've just been drawn to the spiritual for my entire life, so I just got so into it. And I don't think my family understood at the time, you know, what was going on. I internalized a lot of the anxiety from the kinds of things I was taught, but as I got older and my doubts.

started to grow, that's when I kind of doubled down, and that's what led me by myself in college to join this mega church, because I really was seeking answers and trying to figure out what I believe. But by the time I left the church, I had already reshaped my world in a way that I didn't feel a lot of backlash. And I know a lot of people feel a lot of loss when they leave their community, but for me it was a slow kind of exit. Did you have any judgment towards you? From any friends or probably, I mean, I don't know like I'm out. And my family's been super supportive. My dad is a doctor and so when he was in medical school, he learned misinformation about psychedelics essentially. And so at first he was like, I don't know about all of this, but then he read the science that was out at the time and got on board. So yeah. Yeah, this is a really cool time. I mean, there's constantly new papers coming out and now that things are a little more chill in the studies area. Tons of studies are starting to pop off.

It's gonna change a lot. And now Eli Lilly just bought a Ty Beckley, so they're going to start making like DMT injectable peptides or whatever nasal spray a wild 5 MEO nasal spray, and they have an MDMA study right behind it or something. There's a couple of other companies like Cilicin, I think one's a Canadian company and a couple others. But yeah, there's so many research papers. I imagine you're just trading back and forth with your dad all the time sending him stuff. And what's his views on it now? He's fully in support of it now. Yeah, yeah, he's in it. Do you think he'll ever try it potentially in the future? I do. Yeah, I do. Very cool. Yeah, it's awesome. I just recently got my mom to take some psychedelics, and she, similar as your parents, grew up with a lot of misinformation about psychedelics. She came to the US during the whole reefer madness. Era, so thought weed and all drugs are just the devil, and then she became a nurse and so you learn obviously only Western medicine and psychedelics were definitely not a part of that and She recently took some mushrooms, MDMA and LSD, little microdoses, but she's, she's getting there. So I think there's hope for our older generation for sure. Oh yeah, for sure. My dream is to go to Ayahuasca, make my family come with me to South America. I think that would be really cool.

That's cool. I think, yeah, we have to reframe. There's drugs and then there's like psychedelics, and unfortunately the word psychedelic has been You know, vilified, but I always tell friends, psychedelics has only been vilified for less than like 100 years. Like it wasn't until like it wasn't in the 50s and then they saw that it was starting to like really take hold and then they shifted it, right? And then it got scheduled with like cocaine and stuff. So it's only been. Like throughout human history, it's been a normal thing. It's like a bin in our toolkit for so many different uses from mental, physical, spiritual, like health. Yeah, and I'm starting to explore kind of the historical use of psychedelics, and I really do think that obviously it shaped the belief framework of a lot of indigenous cultures around the world, but I do think that it's influenced even the Christian religion as well. So I'm kind of digging into that. Currently. Do you have any things that you've read or like your own thoughts about how you think it was influenced?

I'm sure you've heard the claim that in the story of Moses, the burning bush was actually an ayahuasca plant, and if you look back at kind of the plants that were around the area at the time, it could have been. I haven't dug into that claim too much, but in Christianity, people often wonder why, you know, back in the day, were people having all of these kind of mystical experiences, and then they just stopped. And so I wonder if many of those mystical experiences were actually induced either through psychedelics or through natural means. I think there are a lot of different routes to having that altered state of consciousness, and psychedelics are just one. So I wonder if psychedelics, prayer, fasting, all of these things kind of led people toward these experiences that are described in the Bible. I mean, yeah, you had in Greece, the Lucinian mysteries for 2000 years. And they would go into the, I don't know, underground, and they would take this, you know, drink concoction that had like ergot-ish LSD type stuff with wine and a mixture of things, and they would experience this change and, you know, and that shaped a lot of Western civilization, probably even just, you know, the Modern Like Christian and Western religions as well, right? And that was like a huge part for a long time. Uh, what, what A tool they would use And I Have, you know, this idea that maybe one day there will be churches in the United States that are open to using psychedelics as a tool again. I think that would be really cool.

There's a bunch now. Maybe not from the not a Christian Christian denomination, a mushroom, yeah, exactly, but they will merge. They will merge soon. Yeah, that would be really interesting. There's a, there's, there's some non-denominational like a dame church. Um, there's one here in Austin where they take this blend of ayahuasca. It's not like the super. Psychedelic version of ayahuasca, but it's still this, this like similar roots. I can't remember the exact structure of the, of the plants. It's less intense and it's you dance the whole time. You'll drink this sort of different ayahuasca and then you're dancing and praying while dancing, and it's, it's non-denominational, but it's very focused on God and higher power. Seems really cool, very, very community based, very like joy based, and obviously there's a lot of like healing that comes from it and people will cry and stuff, but it's mostly just celebration, like when you go to church, you're there to celebrate and commune with the others. Yeah, I had a friend who actually She's been studying 5MEO and she recently started going to that church and she says it's really cool. Yeah, we, we, we wanted to interview somebody from that, we gotta go check it out.

I, I just recommend if you decide to take your family to go to Ayahuasca, I want to probably talk to you off camera about there might be some better things to start with because that's like a whole, I have some opinions having dabbled in many ceremonies. I have a perspective of what plants kind of to go to first, because to me ayahuasca is. It's, it's, it's powerful, but I think it's one of those things and having a discussion with my friend, it's It needs to be kind of like a practice for a while, whether it's once a month, once every 3 months, right? And you have to kind of study with the plant for a while, because if you just do one, depending on who you're with, it can disorient people in a weird way. Like the girl, I had a girl on here, gal, and she creates a kna product, which is like a, it's like a legal, not psychedelic is a pathogen, but she did an ayahuasca ceremony and It left her with like intense PTSD, right? And she healed it through Kna. So it's, you just, there's, I think like because you're curious, you're going to get there anyways, and that may become like a personal practice that you continue with like maybe like that.

Saint Todaa Church or you have a good like shaman or mastero or curandero that you like follow for a little while, but I think with family. A good place like with a high dose like hero mushroom is like a good, that's like a good, that's a good place to begin, I think, right? Oh yeah, nice. Um, so I'm curious kind of what's your perspective on 5MEO DMT versus Ayahuasca. So from what we understand, like, Ayahuasca is NNDMT, right? And, and like our body has precursors and we have DMT in us and having done both. Vapped and ayahuasca, it is. It is like a It is a telecommunication. Internet connection to the spirit world, other realms, and also Mother Nature in itself. And so doing just straight DMT out of a pen like will hit you into these.

Realities depending on Like, literally different dimension realities. That was that book I told you, you should definitely check out like Death by Astonishment. He goes through the entire, like you read that, you will know everything about everything from about that specific molecule. But 5 MEO from what I understand is when you do that, you just go to a white light, and it just literally shuts the default mode network completely off and back on. It's almost like your computer's freaking out, you just literally turn it off, turn it back on. Where with NMDMT or like Ayahuasca, it never gets turned off. You just get deeper into the the the multiverse. Like it's a completely different thing, and ayahuasca is a beautiful thing because also depending on the plants. And also the tribes and the energy the shaman brings, there is such different experiences you can have, but that's what I'm saying is, In the first couple times, depending, it takes time to clear things out of yourself because like a lot of these shamans or whatnot, they've done it so long, you can, they can kind of bypass all the gunk or filters and things we've built up in our lives, and then they can go to these places where they're literally communicating with entities and whatnot, but that can take time to get to those.

Levels, or it can take time to clear stuff through you. But I think there's some other psychedelics that are a little more grounded, like I begain or mushrooms is a good place to begin too. Wathuma would be a great starting point too. Yeah, Wathuma, which is, uh, San Pedro, San Pedro, which is A little less, I think visual, right? It's more not visual at all, really, yeah, grounded, um, but yeah, like I think they're for different purposes, right? So like a lot of people will do IBgain because it's a very, to me it's a very grounded, works on like your story as a human being and clearing. A lot of people go back to like their childhood from around 7 to 1 years old, very specifically, and I begain is very It is like if you have an intention and you're thinking about it like I want to work on this thing, it will show you that. It will show you that and you will work on that. Ayahuasca, you're just fucking At the heels of a tsunami, and you just go, here we go, and you don't get to tell it where you want to go or what you're going to see, and it's like radical, right? But a lot of people after I began to kind of bring everything together, they'll do 5MEO because it's like, it really regenerates the brain, it heals a lot of the nervous system, it like really lets go of this like root core traumas or problems that may be just in the physical body, but then you can just Reset the whole system of your identity back to like default like like you just completely reset your computer back to all the stuffs off of it, right? So, it's like, you got rid of all the, you know, viruses, and then you reset the computer and you're like good to go.

Nice. OK, so that kind of goes along with what I was talking about earlier with the predictive processing. It's like all of the preconceived predictions that we have are kind of just washed away. People can see the world almost through childlike eyes again. Totally, and there's some people that, you know, if you've had something happen that's like really, really horrible and maybe when you're young, it's, it can be hard to get to that stuff, so it can It can take time, but I think Ivy Gine is one of those things that's very specific at working on those things, where Ayahuasca, I think, can. But I think it's more of a, it's, I think you can continue to take ayahuasca for your entire life as like a sacrament and discover so much. I think like even for me personally, I will always continue to take ayahuasca every few years as a Because it it's just like communing with, I don't know, Mother Nature, spirits, like you just reconnect to just, uh, yeah, it's near impossible to explain, but it's more of like a longer study. Hm.

I'm excited when you do it and you can, if you ever do it and you can talk about it, it'll be, it'll be, it'll be really cool. And when your parents do it, yeah, I'll bring them on. You should also don't listen to anything I just said and you should do whatever you want. It's fucking do whatever you want. Like, don't like that's my thought and perspective on everything, but you should also like, clearly you're following what feels good to you and just do that, right? Just really make sure that when you go do anything with anybody. That you've had a couple of people you, you know, and they're experienced, and they're like, yes, this checks out and this is good. And the other key is there is good pre-preparation that is very like thorough and a real strong integration period afterwards, right? And they really emphasize that and you're very supported during it because almost anybody can serve Ayahuasca if they can get their hands on it. So just, you know.

Know that. Oh yeah. I think one of the most tragic things that happens after psychedelics is when somebody has this really profound beautiful experience, and then they don't do any integration afterwards. And it's like You Don't see that lasting impact that could have been there if if somebody had access to a knowledge about integration. What would you say is the proper way to do your integration? Let's say you've had an incredible, profound psychedelic experience, but you don't know where to start with integration. Like where would somebody Put their piece to start. I would say if you can, therapy, a therapist that is familiar with psychedelics and can help with preparation and integration afterwards. Um, and then the other piece is community. Um, I think a lot of cities around the US have a really great psychedelic communities where people can kind of come together and talk about their experiences.

Um, and then I also think just, um, taking guided actions. Obviously after psychedelics, sometimes people want to make huge changes in their lives, and a lot of times those can be good, sometimes they can be a little, um, Uh, what's the word, impulsive. Um, and so I think, you know, if you have a psychedelic experience and you're working with a therapist or integration coach, and you know there are things in your life that are causing you harm that you can change, um, actually taking that action and, and having that, um, Uh, I guess bravery to make the changes in your life, um, so that you can kind of, uh, change your world after psychedelics. And I know you're working on a book right now that kind of links this all together, especially with the church and psychedelics. Have you interviewed quite a few people for this book? And like what were some of their stories? Yeah, so, um, everybody's story has been so different. The outcome, the outcome has been so different, but the starting place is always the same. Um, people raised in high control religious environments across generations, so I've talked to people from, you know, 25 to 70 who have experienced religious trauma growing up in evangelical.

Uh, fundamentalist Christianity. Um, and a lot of times, uh, all of these different people have held really harmful beliefs, um, beliefs about God, kind of like we've talked about already, but also beliefs about the self. Things like I am not worthy of love or anything. Um, I am nothing. Um, I am a sinner to the core. If something bad happens to me, it is punishment by God. Um. You know, even beliefs like there are angels and demons in the room around me. If I do the wrong thing, it could open a portal, um, to possession, um, uh, harmful beliefs about other people as well. Um, and so I think all of the harmful beliefs. One, and I talk about this in the book, um, really bend our perception of reality, um, how we kind of move through the world, how we see ourselves, how we interpret situations. Um, And then also.

It detrimentally harm mental health, uh, you know, depression, anxiety, complex PTSD type symptoms, um, hypervigilance, um, all of these kinds of things. Um, and so with the people that I've talked to, um, they will Have their psychedelic experiences. Um, and really the main common theme is just letting go. Um, I think a lot of people come to psychedelics seeking answers, um, but one of the most therapeutically beneficial aspects of the psychedelic trip is the letting go of the things that are harmful, the stories we tell ourselves, the, the things that, you know, church leadership. told us as little kids that are just absolutely terrifying things to believe about how the world works. Um, and then from the letting go, that's where everybody's path kind of diverges. I've seen people walk away, um, very at peace with kind of an atheist worldview. Um, I've seen people walk away, um, and it only deepened their Christian faith, but their concept of God has kind of changed from that wrathful God who's going to punish you to a more loving God who um is guiding you down your path, um, and then I've seen people kind of reframe their spirituality to, um, be more broadly like spiritual rather than any one religion or another. Um, so yeah.

That's, yeah, that's, that's most people I've met that have done psychedelics usually have a stronger connection to, yeah, their version of God. And that's kind of what I think is, I don't know, I, I come across these like really intense. People on social media that are like, yeah, you know, extremists in whatever religion. And in my mind, I'm like, like if you don't have a religion and you're not really following or going to church, like your life's fucked up or whatever, you're like, I don't know, like. As human beings, when you take psychedelics, or in general, I just believe and you experience at the core, human beings are just good, right? And you get this higher perspective, and so, If you just embody what you're Soul or yourself knows, and the best way to, one of the ways to do that is just get all the bullshit that was given to you from humans and fucking all this other shit, then you actually get to the core of, I think what most religions are about, like love, kindness, you know, if you do shitty things to people, you'll probably experience it later or whatnot like everything has a cause and effect, and so, yeah, most people seem more connected.

Oh yeah, and I think, you know, for a long time I was trying to reconcile Jesus as a figure with um the lessons that come from psychedelics, um, and obviously a big aspect of psychedelics uh and psychedelic healing is ego dissolution, um, so this kind of blurring of the boundaries between self and other, and um. Recently, I've kind of been looking at Jesus' teachings within that framework. So, if you really did live your life the way Jesus taught us to live, all of these things you've talked about, um, just loving each other, taking care of each other, putting others before. You, I think that over time really does chip away at the ego. So it's kind of like an ego dissolution process. Um, so I do kind of see a world where people, uh, raised in these kind of environments are able to use psychedelics for healing, um, and also kind of, uh, have that, um, fit in with their Christian worldview, if they choose to kind of Continue with with believing in Christianity, but I like what you said about the personal experience, and I think so many people in high control religious environments are handed a religious framework early on, and one that's very scary, um, and psychedelics offer people the chance to kind of let go and now figure out what they believe through their own experiences. Um, and I just think that that's so beautiful.

Yeah, I think. A spiritual path and psychedelics will take you to the same place, just at different speeds. So, if you take, like you said, that spiritual path and you live like Jesus and you, you follow that moral compass, you're probably going to end up at a state of quote unquote enlightenment, right? And psychedelics are supposed to be the shortcut to get you there. Like it's going to get you there way faster. You'll probably have the same level of ego dissolution at the very end, but the problem is because psychedelics were such a fast acting thing. It's not immediately integrated, whereas if you followed the path and you did it yourself over decades and decades, it has to be integrated into you at that point. So, I think shortcuts. are very useful and psychedelics are a great shortcut to get there. But like you said, if you don't do that integration, then you're just having fun. Like you're just doing a trip or maybe you had a bad time and you still didn't integrate anything, so then you got zero benefit out of it. So, In in conjunction with each other, I think they're so powerful. So I'm really excited for, like we talked about having churches and psychedelics come together working in unison.

Um, absolutely. There's one thing I wanted to ask you that I think is like a big part of your work, which is the theories of consciousness and, um, you know, you talked about Robert Kuhn and his interactive map, and there's 400 different theories of consciousness from like materialism to panpsychism and all this, but out of all those 400, do you have a particular theory that you subscribe to? OK, so as of right now, I would say I'm still a materialist, so I kind of. My doorknob knows exactly what's going on a scientist. Um, I just not after Ayahuasca won't be. Well, you'll be, you'll be, you'll be a scientist, but a very different one, a multi-dimensional. And I'm early in my career too, uh, so, you know, I've been studying the scientific method, and so I, I'm very much, you know, I, I'm a natural skeptic. However, if I were to entertain another Uh, kind of theory, it would be panpsychism. I do really like panpsychism. Um, isn't that that's the opposite end of the complete opposite.

Yeah, so I believe this, but if I were to believe something else, it'd be the opposite, you know, I don't believe in fairies, but I believe in an entire fairy realm. But, well, hold on. So, but panpsychism and materialism are those are like, uh, broad. Umbrellas, right? I think there's specific niche, uh, theories underneath those, right? OK, yeah, and I don't, so I'm still learning about it. I think it's called non-constitutive panpsychism, don't quote me on that, um, but it solves the hard problem of consciousness, um, and the guy who who talked about the hard problem of consciousness for the first time. Um, he, he kind of entertained the idea of panpsychism. Um, and it kind of changes how we define consciousness. Um, so when we think of consciousness, we think Of like, um, sit right here, seeing, feeling all these cool things that the brain does. Um, but in this particular view of with panpsychism, um, consciousness is a lot more basic. Um, and so, it's like consciousness where if you closed your eyes, you can still say, OK.

Unconscious. If I couldn't see or hear, OK, you're still conscious. You couldn't see or hear or feel. That's a little weird, but like you can imagine what that experience of consciousness would be like. Um, but then you, uh, let go of remembering. So if you can't remember, but you can see, or sorry, you can't remember, you can't see, you can't feel, um, You have no senses. Um, maybe there's some type of basic. inner experience happening and that's, that would be what consciousness is, where from moment to moment, there's no continuous experience. Um, but it's very basic and it's not as, um, impressive as the consciousness that we have. And so this idea of panpsychism would be at this very basic version of consciousness is fundamental. So what is the materialism for like the one you subscribe to in this moment? Like what is the definition of that?

Basically that consciousness uh emerges from complexity in the brain, um, so that all there is is matter and physical things, um, and consciousness emerges from, uh, how the atoms are arranged in a particular way, um, and so there's no kind of separate. Uh, no dualism, um, no, like mind, uh, or soul that's separate from the rest of the body, but it just arises from the physical matter. Interesting. Interesting. It'll be interesting to see what you think after you read that book, Death by Astonishment. Yeah, yeah, I, I mean, so many people have. Uh, suggested, uh, Gallimore's work to me, and I just know it's gonna be a rabbit hole once I start going down it, so I'm excited. You're gonna be on that roller coaster for a while. He, he did, it's very detailed. Most people probably would enjoy it because it's like you got to be really into it and it goes through the history and all this, but a big part of it is, I think it's a little similar what you're saying where you're, you know, the.

The part of the brain that, you know, takes information in through the eyes and predicts. When you hit certain levels of DMT that completely get wiped and a new complete reality gets formed that has no Even references from this reality and he's like, how is that even possible? So that's. Pretty, that's pretty, that's pretty fucking wild. I, it'll be, it'll be, it's cool that podcasts are a thing now because when she's been in her career for like 20 years, she can like look back at how her thoughts about all this shit's changing. Can you imagine in 20 years, what the fuck's going on with psychedelics? Like I can't even imagine. It's gonna be really cool to go because it it's like you're beginning and sharing all this and doing a lot right now, you know, writing a book, starting studies so young, and then just to be able to have that. Tracked and keep doing podcasts and exploring stuff. It's gonna be a like a really fun journey to follow. Do you have another Study that you have like an interest in potentially doing.

Um, I don't want to say too much, but I, I'm really interested in, um, belief. Uh, so I looked at belief revision at a very simple visual level in the brain. I like to look at, you know, bigger beliefs. There's been a lot of interesting research on how metaphysical beliefs have changed after psychedelics, so people shifting from materialism to panpsychic kind of. Uh, viewpoints. Um, I'm interested in looking at, um, beliefs about the self, beliefs about God, um, all of these kinds of things. Um, and also religious trauma. I would love to actually study psychedelics and religious trauma, um, because it hasn't been looked at. Um, directly. Yeah, it sounds like you have a real desire to help people like with that. And I think that's important, like how that sounds horrible to be the whole point to me to join religion is to find more purpose in life and give you more joy, not feel awful about everything. Yeah, that's uh that's rough. I think our, we have this kind of innate um desire to feel connected to something bigger than ourselves as humans.

Um, and so, I mean, I don't, nothing makes me angrier than when somebody or an institution preys on that to manipulate people and especially children, because it's such a sacred personal thing that people care about so much. And so, Yeah, I just, I really wanna help people who have had that taken away from them so that they can have that chance to go on their journey with a fresh set of eyes. Do you, do you, why did you like set your eyes on Ayahuasca? Like what, what? What made you pick that? You're like, family, we're gonna go do this. Um, I watched a documentary on Ayahuasca when I was like 10. And I didn't even know at the time what psychedelics were, um, but I just really liked the whole ceremonial aspect of it, um, being surrounded in the jungle. I Really appreciate kind of the indigenous use of psychedelics and their kind of spiritual, um.

Uh, framework and how, um, they relate to the nature around them. And I just think there's a lot of knowledge that can come from, uh, understanding those communities, and I, I would just love to be immersed. I would love to go spend, you know, two months, um, somewhere in South America. I can Bring a portable EEG cap with me, um, collect some data. I think you should, I think that's a great, I mean, that's to do that. I mean, just to be, so I've never done it like in the actual Amazon jungle, but that's going to take it to a whole another level, like because you're going to be. reconnected to nature in a whole different way. Just being out there, right? And slowing completely down and then being in that environment, it's, it's a Yeah, you definitely need to document that journey and share it. One thing I, I like, I have a friend and she is going to do a ceremony somewhere out in the states, but the guy who leads those, he studied with.

Uh, their tribe lives in the Indian mountains, and they have like a little bit different way of doing it than like the Shapibo. So, just check out the different tribes and see how they do it and see which one kind of resonates. Yeah, OK, cool. Yeah, this is super cool, uh. Do you have any other Uh, like projects or things coming up that you want to share? Um, Really, if you're interested in kind of hearing my perspective on things, I've started, uh, writing essays, uh, on sub stacks. So I publish them every Sunday. I have a really cool essay coming up this Sunday, so it'll be out, um, by the time. This comes out, uh, looking at the Sonoi tribe in Malaysia, uh, who, you know, people have claimed, have kind of telepathic psychic abilities. I'm kind of looking at, um, those claims through a predictive processing lens. Um, and so definitely check out my essays if you want to hear more from me. Yeah.

Very cool. And you're just on Instagram, TikTok, where can people follow you? Instagram, um, should I say my handle? OK, Instagram is Doctor DR. Chloe West, um, TikTok is Doctor Chloe West, and then, uh, my sub stack is linked on both of those. Um, it's too long, so. Hell yeah. Well, thanks for sharing all this. It was super fun. Look forward to You know, having you come back when you've Gone into the jungle and come back. Yeah, I'm excited to have you back after like 5, 10 more years of studying all this stuff and see how deep down the rabbit hole you've gone and all the new knowledge you can share with us. Oh yeah, I'm super excited. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, this was great. Thank you, Chloe.