Rick Strassman is a Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine. His new book, "My Altered States: A Doctor's Extraordinary Account of Trauma, Psychedelics, and Spiritual Growth," is available now. www.rickstrassman.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What experiences led Rick Strassman to explore psychedelics?
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So he's got... Hi, Rick. Hi. Good to see you, brother. Good seeing you, too. So he's got this place called The Boneyard. My friend John Reeves in Alaska. And he made this for me, too. This is like a little skull. That's a woolly mammoth tooth. Like a molar. Whoa. Yeah. So he has this incredible place and he was a gold miner and still is.
And they started finding like an extraordinary amount of tusks and bones and skulls from animals that aren't even supposed to have been there. Yeah. And it's kind of rewriting history, but it's all in his land. So he has complete control over it. And he has like, see, there's John. He's this enormous dude. He's like six foot nine, like a big giant man. And he has this is just some of it.
Like show those warehouses that he has. So he had a research facility built on his property. So they could study this stuff. And if you see outside in the lobby, there's actually a bison skull. It's like a 10,000-plus-year-old bison skull. So this area is only a few acres. This is what's really crazy.
He has one area that's like – I believe it's like four acres and another area that's about six acres. And there's also like a very heavy layer of carbon there. So it appears there was some sort of a mass fire.
And he thinks that this mass extinction event that all the people like Graham Hancock and Randall Carlson talk about with the end of the Younger Dryas, the Younger Dryas impact area, he thinks it's connected to this. And he thinks that site might have been hit.
And all these animals probably in the great flood, their carcasses were washed into this sort of valley in this one area where they were kind of trapped up against the side of this mountain. And so he hoses the mountain down. It's all permafrost. So it's all been frozen forever. And they have these high pressure hoses and they hose it until they expose like a tusk. And they have this.
This is what they do all day.
Yeah, those hosers are what they used to use for mining gold, too.
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Chapter 2: How do ancient cultures relate to modern psychedelic experiences?
It's near Fairbanks. Yeah.
Yeah. So this is where John lives. We do a podcast every year. Every year he comes back, like the last podcast of the year generally, and he gives us an update on what's going on.
Yeah. Let me take a look at that map. You know, I spent my first year after finishing my psychiatry training in Fairbanks.
Oh, did you really? Yeah. Yeah. That's an interesting psychiatry place because the psychology of people that live in Alaska is very different. They're different.
They're resilient humans. Well, and they're there for a reason.
Right.
And their reason is to be at the end of the road. Right.
Or their family's there and they've grown up there.
Yeah.
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Chapter 3: What is the significance of Alaska in this discussion?
Right.
And it's one that a lot of people share, and so you can compare notes. It's like dreaming. You can't really prove that you dreamed or that you were in a dream state. Right. Yeah, it's a personal experience. Yeah, but it's a common one, so you can compare notes. I think that's how it works.
Haven't there been studies done? There's been something done where they've taken people in altered states and had them go into a room where they experienced they weren't connected, they weren't communicating, but they experienced incredibly similar environments. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace.
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Is that who wrote that? Yeah, it's really good. I'm in the middle of that right now. It's a big toe. Yeah. It's a very strange book.
Yeah. That's the name of the book or the name of the experiment?
That's the name of the book. It's my big theory of everything. Toe is for theory of everything.
Oh, I see. Okay. But it has a picture of a toe on the cover.
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Chapter 4: How can AI and psychedelics intersect?
Yeah, that's one of the spinoffs of fasting and starvation. Speaking of starvation, there are a lot of studies of enforced starvation, like the camps in Africa at various times. So there are some advantages, but obviously to a point.
Yeah, obviously, we never want to ask someone to do that. But when people do it voluntarily, like when they go on these three and five day fasts, I've never met one person who said, I'll never do that again. That was fucking terrible and stupid. Yeah. And I felt really dumb and I didn't feel alive at all.
Now they come back with like this very bizarre, euphoric, just like their their version of it when they're expressing themselves. It seems like they were like on mushrooms. Yeah. Weird. Is that something you've tried?
no i've done a day i i've done a day and i sneak in some espresso if i'm feeling you know deprived i don't think i think that's fine because this espresso doesn't uh i mean no calories right there's no calories yeah um i should do it i should probably do like a three day see what's up because my friend dana just did it he did i think dana did a four three or four day he said it was incredible
But everybody reports all this energy, which is really fascinating because I guess that's your body surviving off ketones. Right. You're in a ketotic state.
Well, when people fast for three or four days, do they drink water or they?
Yeah, they drink. Oh, you have to. I mean, there's a thing called a dry fast and people have done that. I've heard of people doing like 48 hour dry fasts and that is no water as well. Yeah. You can keep that. Yeah. I'm so not interested in that.
Well, you can go on a vision quest, like out in the desert, not drink or not eat, and you do start hallucinating.
Yeah. I love McKenna's take on that. Do you know that? I don't remember. He told a story about how this monk, the Buddha was in town. This monk went to visit the Buddha, and he told the monk that he's practiced a city of levitation for the past 10 years, and now he can walk on water. And the Buddha goes, yeah, but the fairy's only a nickel. Yeah.
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Chapter 5: What insights can we gain from the Tower of Babel story?
That's actually really good for you. Oh, right. Well, this new neighborhood I moved into in May, there's a park, Altura Park. You wouldn't believe the number of dogs that are being walked around there. There's these little tiny ones. You know, like I haven't lived in the city in a long time. I haven't seen tiny dogs. But, man, there's some tiny dogs out there.
Yeah. Jamie's got a tiny one. He didn't bring them in today, but – Carl's a little maniac. He's a little French poodle or French bulldog. He's like that big. Yeah, they're cute. He's adorable. But does he weigh? I was 16 pounds now. He's jacked. Yeah. He sounds, he really is jacked.
He's got a lot of muscles.
He's super aggressive. Not with people like, not like real aggressive, like playful. He just wants to play constantly. Yeah. So I bring my dog who's a golden retriever. Who's the opposite. He's just everybody's best friend. If he meets you, he's like, you're my best friend. He loves everybody. Yeah. And Carl just launches himself at him.
Yeah, the one dog I had was a miniature dachshund. Oh, that was a cute little dog. He was tough. Really? He bit children. That's not good.
That's not tough. He's an asshole.
Boy, that dog is an asshole.
Yeah. That sucks.
Well, he lived 25 years.
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Chapter 6: How does language shape our understanding of reality?
Oh, at that time?
Yeah. Wow. Well, it was snowing around Halloween, so I wasn't dressed for snow. I'd never really lived in snow. What was that like, going from Los Angeles to minus 39?
Yeah.
Well, I started to work on enjoying the dark. Like, you know, as a rule, you know, people don't like the dark. But there's forest all around town and it's dark. And especially in the winter, there's 18, 20 hours of pitch black. That's so crazy. Yeah. So I tried to imagine myself liking the dark. And it wasn't all that successful.
I lasted about a year. Is there a thing that happens? Like I lived in Boston when I was a kid. And one thing that it really does benefit you with bad weather is that when you have bad winters, you really love those summers. Those summers are so special. When me and my friends will go out on a summer night, it's like we – It's like we were so happy. It was warm out. We're outside.
We're listening to music, hanging out together. Boston, huh?
Yeah. Is that because you have family there?
Well, no. My family moved there when I was 13. So we moved. We lived in Jamaica Plain for a year. And then we lived in Newton, which is a suburb of Boston. It was a really nice, cool place to grow up.
Yeah. I was in the Bronx for medical school. Bronx, New York. And I lived in the city for about a year. Yeah, it was like it was great training.
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Chapter 7: What are the implications of a universal language?
They say before you die, you actually want to take your clothes off, which is really crazy.
Yeah. Yeah. That's what I've heard. Like in the snow when you're freezing. Yeah. I kind of remember that. And the bears up there are a force to contend with, the grizzly bears. Oh, yeah, man. Yeah. One of my friends up there was living in a cabin, and a bear just stuck its claws in the door, pulled the door out of the frame of the house. Jesus Christ.
And went into the refrigerator, basically, and kind of cleared that out. So was he home? Up in his loft, yeah, sleeping. So he was awake while this was going on? Yeah, yeah.
Oh, my God.
So it just smelled food. It smelled food. It smelled him. And they don't abide by any rules.
They don't really care about your door.
Well, you know, when I was up there, I learned to shoot a shotgun. It's called a bear stopper. It's a sawed-off shotgun you can carry with you if you're in the backcountry. Yeah, you know, so they're just a— Like a 12-gauge? I think it was a 12-gauge. Do you have slugs in it, or is it buckshot? Oh, no, no, it had buckshot. Okay. So does that make it a 12-gauge?
No, it's all to pound the round. So a slug is like a chunk of lead, and buckshot is like a bunch of pellets. Right. So the buckshot is like it scatters into a pattern, and the further it is from the rifle barrel, like how far you're shooting, so if you're shooting 20 yards— It scatters quite a bit, and it makes an area of impact about that big, like a basketball-sized.
Or maybe a little smaller than that. But a slug is a single object, and it has a lot more force behind it. So if you were shooting a bear, I would want a slug.
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Chapter 8: Can technology change what it means to be human?
Pretty much every night in the winter. And it was so quiet up there, you could actually listen to the northern lights. They'd hiss and crackle. Oh, wow. Yeah, it was pretty wild.
They hiss and crackle. Yeah. What exactly is going on with the northern lights? Like what is that caused by? The magnetosphere and some solar rays.
Like what is what is might be cosmic.
It wouldn't be solar rays because it's dark, right? Right. Yeah. Unless it's like something that like is coming around the earth. Yeah. What are they, Jamie?
Are they cosmic rays?
Must be something. Yeah. Coronal mass ejection, so solar.
Oh, yeah. And magnetic activity. I guess there's a few reasons why they could be created. I'm looking through this article.
That alone might be worth living up there for.
Well, in the winter. You could just spend a week up there in the winter. There are all kinds of hot springs in the area, too. How hard is it to get around in the winter? Your car needs to be equipped. There's these things called battery blankets that you put under your battery to keep it warm. Do you heat it?
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