Name: Joe Rogan Experience #1678 - Michael Pollan
Uploaded: 2021-07-05T00:00:00.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #1678 - Michael Pollan' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-07-05. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #1678 - Michael Pollan' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-07-05. Transcript available.

Joe Rogan Experience #1678 - Michael Pollan

Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.
The Joe Rogan Experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day.
All right.
Mr. Pollan.
Yeah, hey.
Good to see you, man.
Good to be here.
Good to be back.
Good to see you again, and good to see you in the...
You're done with the headphones, huh?
I'm done with the headphones, yeah.
In and out instantaneously.
Your new book, this is your mind on plants.
Yeah, right here.
Yeah, I like it.
Since you've been on, I have to say that out of all of the people that have
discussed psychedelics,
I think you've been one of the most important ones because you were a respected,
esteemed journalist.
You're like a real writer already.
And for you to introduce the world of psychedelics to people that maybe would
have been skeptical of someone's intentions,
like there's a lot of folks that like you read something about drugs and even
if it's from someone that has credentials,
you sort of assume that they're trying to justify...
Yeah, they have an agenda when they're starting out.
I think you're right.
I think that made a huge difference.
I was coming at that world from outside.
I'd had very little experience of psychedelics, virtually none as a kid.
I'd heard about this research.
I was curious.
I was skeptical.
And so I went on this journey that brought me into this community.
And I think that allowed people to follow me, to come with me.
I think people would much rather go on a journey with you than have you lecture
at them.
Oh, for sure.
And so in all my journalism, that's what I try to do.
I start out as unknowing or ignorant as the reader and then gradually work my
way into the world of whether it's food and agriculture or psychedelics.
And so in all my books, I kind of start out like an idiot and gradually move
toward a state of knowledge or more knowledge.
I think that's incredibly relatable to people because it just lets people know
what you're learning, how you're learning it, why you're learning it.
And how you come to your conclusions, that it's the result of having these
experiences or talking to these people.
And they see all the armature of journalism.
They see how it works because you're letting them, you know, you're being very
transparent about the process.
And also, you know, I think that, you know, there are lots of most of the stuff
that had been written about psychedelics and most of the stuff I was reading
was written from like inside the world, already convinced that these were great
things that were going to change human consciousness.
And that's a turnoff to people, especially if you have this resistance, which
many, many people do.
There's so much cultural baggage around psychedelics left over from the 60s.
You know, people, you know, the risks, the how disruptive it was to society.
And people still hold these ideas in their head.
People say, well, don't people like jump off of buildings?
I mean, I hear the or doesn't it scramble your chromosomes?
These are urban legends by and large, although there were some people who
jumped off of buildings.
But the chromosome thing was not true.
The staring at the sun till you go blind was not true.
But it's amazing the power of these memes and it just lingering in our culture.
Well, there's a great fear of losing your mind.
I mean, you know, about the guy from Pink Floyd and people hear about, you know,
some guy in the neighborhood that did too much acid.
The thing is, they are real.
There are real.
Oh, yeah, there are casualties.
Yeah.
And I think we have to acknowledge that.
And I think unless we're really frank about the risks, we risk another backlash
because bad shit will happen.
Yes.
You know, if you're trialing, you know, a couple thousand people for depression,
which they're doing, these clinical trials to see if psilocybin can help with
depression, some of those people are going to commit suicide.
That's what depressed people do.
And, you know, especially if you get them off their SSRIs, you know, that
increases the risk.
But that narrative, when someone in a clinical trial for depression with
psychedelics gets out there, it'll plug into this old narrative about people
jumping off of buildings.
Whereas people routinely commit suicide on SSRIs and it doesn't make the news.
So there are these – it's when a story plugs into an existing narrative in
the culture that it really takes off.
It has this, you know, incredible power.
And that could happen.
So I think we should be – I think the way you inoculate the culture is
talking about risk and say there were casualties.
There are people who, you know, did, you know, I don't want to say fry their
brains because it's pretty imprecise.
But people had some psychotic breaks on psychedelics.
Would they have had them anyway?
There's a reason to believe they would.
It's not like schizophrenia rates went up during the 60s.
Do you think it triggers schizophrenia though?
Yeah.
I think that's probably what happens.
Any kind of traumatic experience can do it.
Divorce of parents can do it.
You know, if you're at that age and you have that vulnerability, going to
graduate school for a certain number of people does it.
You know, extreme stress.
And it can be an extreme experience.
So there is a good reason that people, even second-degree relatives who have
schizophrenia, you can't participate in any of these trials.
They're screening people.
And also for manic depression, they're screening you out.
And there are good reasons for that.
Yeah, there's this discussion about cannabis that's been going on for a while
now.
Like, what happens to people when they, particularly when they eat edibles?
Like, is it something that triggers schizophrenia?
And I think the numbers, as you're saying, they really do mirror the numbers
that just happen in a general population.
Like, it's one out of 100.
And one out of 100 people seem to have a significant problem.
Yeah, I mean, people, a certain number of people are at risk.
They're bound to get schizophrenia at those windows.
I think it's in, you know, right around 20 and right around 30 years old seems
to be the window.
Really?
Yeah.
Like, there's a very specific window like that?
Oh, yeah.
No, it happens at a very specific time.
Do they think it's like transitionary periods in your life with additional
stress, like you have a breaking point or something?
It isn't really clear.
It may be a developmental issue.
You know, boys or men are still developing into their 20s, right?
Their brain development is incomplete.
I think it's in their 50s.
Well, yeah, that's true, too.
But there's certain brain structures that are not, you know, finished at that
age.
Honestly, I don't know.
I'm out of my depth there.
Yeah.
What was the motivation to write this new book?
So, the motivation for this book grew out of a longstanding interest in our
relationship to plants.
I've been obsessed with plants since I was like an eight-year-old gardener.
And I've written a lot about how we use plants and how plants use us.
And that relationship has been of keen interest.
And I looked at food.
Eating plants is obviously one of the big things we do with them and a big part
of our relationship.
And then when I started working on psychedelics, I was really struck by the
fact that one of the things humans have used plants for forever is to change
consciousness.
And that seemed like a very curious phenomenon.
But there is every culture on Earth, with one notable exception, has some plant
or fungus that they use regularly and often ceremonially to change
consciousness.
The exception are the Inuit, the Eskimos.
And it's only because nothing good grows where they live.
That's interesting.
Do they change their consciousness at all?
Do they use breathing exercises?
They may well.
I don't know.
Because there are many ways to change your consciousness.
You're right.
Breathing can do it.
Fasting can do it.
Extreme exertion can do it.
So, there are other tools for doing it.
But most humans have used plants.
And, of course, there's alcohol, too, which changes consciousness.
Alcohol is not produced by plants.
It's actually produced by a fungus.
So, I've always wanted to explore this issue of why do we do this?
What good is it to change consciousness?
Because you would think, from an evolutionary point of view, it might be a bad
idea.
You know, when you change consciousness, you're more likely to have accidents.
You're more vulnerable to predators.
And, you know, so you would think that it would be kind of edited out by
natural selection.
But it hasn't been.
If drug taking were really bad, the drug takers would be gone from evolution.
And they're not.
And so, I started thinking, well, what are they good for?
How do we use drugs?
Why are they part of our lives?
And we're at this very interesting moment where the drug war is starting to end.
I think we can see the end of the drug war.
The voters have spoken.
And they've essentially sued for peace.
You know, we've had all these ballot initiatives.
What happened in Oregon last fall was amazing.
I think something just happened in California.
Yes.
The California State Senate voted to legalize psychedelics and also MDMA.
Legalize or decriminalize?
You know, they sell it as decriminalized.
But if you read the bill, it's legalized.
So, what is the specifics?
Well, the specifics are that those, the substance in the bill, which are LSD,
MDMA, psilocybin,
ibogaine, which is troubling given the specific risks associated with ibogaine,
which we can talk about.
DMT, yeah, DMT is in there.
I don't know if 5-MeO DMT is in there.
I don't think it is.
Mescaline producing cacti.
And basically, personal use, growing, and social sharing is legal.
No commercialization.
Although, that gets a little weird because if a guide, let's say an underground
guide, charges you $1,500 for her services and just gives you the psilocybin,
is that commercialization or not?
Right.
Is that, is it legal to be a guide?
Like, that seems commercialized.
Even if someone brings their own.
Yeah.
Right?
I mean, you're sort of profiting off of the use.
Frankly, some aspects of this bill do not strike me as being completely well
thought out.
I mean, including ibogaine, where you really should have a health examination
before you use it.
Why?
Why is that?
Well, ibogaine has shown some, this is an African shrub that is a psychedelic
used in Africa for a long time.
Which is apparently phenomenal for people with.
Opiate.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, because in addition to giving you the psychedelic experience, it removes
the craving for opium.
So, it's been, there's a lot of clinics in Mexico who are using it.
However, the medical advice is you should be on a heart monitor the whole time
you're using it because it can lead to various cardiovascular events.
And so, it's not as benign as some other psychedelics in terms of the
physiology.
Anyway, this still has to get through the assembly.
It's amazing.
It got passed.
This just happened June 1st.
And then we had, you know, we also had a whole bunch of decriminalization
initiatives.
Washington, D.C. voted to decriminalize plant medicines and entheogens.
So, we're getting to this new place where the public has had it with the drug
war.
Neither party really wants to fight it anymore.
Even the Republicans are backing off on drug war.
It's not part of the culture wars now, which is fascinating.
We are recognizing how much damage was done, you know, how many people's lives
were ruined,
how many people have, you know, we've incarcerated around the drug war.
And it hasn't worked.
You know, we have more overdoses now than we had before the opiate crisis.
You know, the biggest health problem related to the drug war has been, I'm
sorry,
the biggest problem since we started this drug war, public health problem, has
been the opiate crisis.
800,000 people have overdosed.
Most of them started on legal opiates.
Purdue Pharma, you know, did a lot more damage than any illicit drug, you know,
economy.
Didn't Johnson and Johnson just decide