Sam Harris — Psychedelics, Meditation, and The Bigger Picture | The Tim Ferriss Show

Recorded as an impromptu replacement for a planned South by Southwest session that was cancelled, this conversation unfolds in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Sam Harris discusses the nature of fear as a necessary but short-lived signal, and how mindfulness lets you drop anxiety once it is no longer useful. He recounts returning to psychedelics after a 25-plus year hiatus with a five-gram mushroom experience, and he and Tim trade detailed thoughts on dosing, set and setting, LSD versus psilocybin, MDMA for trauma, and the risks of underdosing. The pair also reflect on the collective stress of the pandemic, the failure of public communication and governance, and practical, compassionate ways to help others during the crisis.

• Sam describes a punctate anxiety attack while opening an iPad shipped from Shanghai in late February, realizing he was performing a 'pantomime of preparedness' rather than truly taking the virus seriously with his kids 15 feet away.
  00:11:58
• Sam reveals that under the pressure of the pandemic he has changed his mind and become far less hopeful that even smart people can be persuaded by rational argument, concluding the solution to climate change must be 'surreptitious' through better products rather than political consensus.
  00:24:37
• Sam shares that he returned to psychedelics after more than 25 years, taking a larger dose of mushrooms than ever before, blindfolded in the dark as Terence McKenna recommended.
  00:30:55
• Sam explains psychedelics' aftereffects can persist for weeks or months in both directions, with bad trips once leaving him feeling like 'a worse person' for weeks, while his recent positive trip stayed a vivid reference point.
  00:39:50
• Sam argues the core value of psychedelics for a skeptical meditator is that they give you an experience of altered consciousness 'for which there is no possibility of skepticism,' proving a different mode of mind is possible.
  00:43:01
• Sam and Tim make the counterintuitive case that too small a psychedelic dose can be riskier than a large one, because a higher dose reliably launches you past personal psychological content into transpersonal territory.
  00:53:30
• Tim describes the 'Messiah Complex' novice psychedelic users develop, and advises waiting until you have been 'tumbled and humbled' by a harrowing-but-safe trip before proselytizing.
  01:06:09
• Tim cites MAPS trials in which patients with a median of 17+ years of severe, persistent PTSD went from severe to asymptomatic after just one or two MDMA-assisted sessions.
  01:13:01

• Sam frames the amygdala not merely as a fear center but as a 'salience center,' and notes acute fear is genuinely useful only for a very short period before it should be released.
  00:09:23
• Sam invokes the principle that you suffer twice by worrying: either you can do something about a problem (so do it) or you cannot (so why suffer in advance).
  00:22:59
• Sam notes humans are poor prognosticators of future happiness, overestimating how positive and how negative events will feel, and that people return to baseline fairly quickly even after extraordinary events.
  00:23:30
• Sam states psilocybin and LSD have effectively no known LD50, making them physically very safe, while MDMA can cause fatal hyperthermia and ibogaine can cause fatal cardiac complications.
  00:50:51
• Tim notes he has seen people reach 104 to 105 degree body temperatures on MDMA at events, the mechanism by which the brain can be damaged or death can occur.
  00:51:55
• Tim estimates, from volunteering at the Zendo psychedelic harm-reduction project at events like Burning Man, that roughly one in 30 people have a 24-hour-plus response to LSD.
  00:48:44
• Tim distinguishes MDMA as an 'empathogen' rather than a true psychedelic, well suited to working directly on relationships and specific people.
  00:55:31
• Sam highlights a study combining a meditation retreat with a high-dose psilocybin experience as a promising 'marriage,' and recalls a Spirit Rock retreat with around 100-200 silent meditators.
  01:03:28
• Tim relays Kelly Starrett's advice that the four most important words you can utter in a crisis are 'how can I help,' and that simply offering is itself helpful.
  01:32:45
• Sam points to the bewildering reality that Elon Musk had to buy ventilators for California and private parties had to acquire PPE, citing a lack of government agility rather than money.
  01:40:40