The guest
Rick Doblin: Founder and president of MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies); psychedelic researcher who pioneered MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD through decades of FDA clinical trials.
What this episode covers
Rick Doblin recounts a 51-year career devoted to psychedelics, from being a Vietnam-era draft resistor to founding MAPS in 1986. He details how MAPS shepherded MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD through two successful phase 3 FDA trials, the science of neuroplasticity, and the case for ibogaine to treat the opioid crisis. He debunks famous frauds and scares on both sides: the manipulated 'holes in the brain' MDMA imagery, a retracted Johns Hopkins study that accidentally dosed primates with methamphetamine, and Timothy Leary's Concord Prison experiment. The conversation closes on the crossroads MAPS faces: whether to remain nonprofit-owned or go public to fund FDA approval, with Joe pushing back that mixing sacred substances with capitalism is dangerous.
Recommended on this episode
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How to Change Your Mind
Michael Pollan
“his amazing book”
“Dr Carl Hart all these different people Michael Polland and his amazing book all these people that are talking about these experiences now”— Joe Rogan
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“he's such a respected journalist you know from doing the omnivores dilemma was amazing and then to so to get him invested”— Joe Rogan
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Who Feels It Knows It
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“this incredible album”
“Rita Marley has this incredible uh album Bob Marley's wife and it's called um when you who feels it knows it”— Rick Doblin
Also referenced (named, not recommended)
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The Doors of Perception
Aldous Huxley
“aldus Huxley had had written the dors of perception and was talking about masculine and spiritual experiences”— Rick Doblin
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Tell Your Children
Alex Berenson
“I had Alex baronson on who wrote a book called tell your children and it's all about the dangers of marijuana”— Joe Rogan
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How to Change Your Mind (Netflix series)
Netflix
“Michael pollin's book how to change your mind and then the Netflix series the four series of that has changed lots of people's minds”— Joe Rogan
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Food and Drug Law
Peter Barton Hutt
“from the the leading pharmaceutical expert Peter Barton Hut he wrote The Textbook Food and Drug law”— Rick Doblin
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Ecstasy Rising
Peter Jennings
“Peter Jennings was doing a documentary called ecstasy rising and this was the first documentary that really had a bunch of people talking about the benefits”— Rick Doblin
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Reefer Madness
“when you watch the re for madness films and you know and you find out about this whole Harry anslinger William Randolph Hurst connection”— Joe Rogan
ProductReferenced
5-HTP
“there's mitigation techniques like with 5htp we don't use those but people do use those”— Rick Doblin
ProductReferenced
Depend (incontinence pads)
Depend
“so I had to wear and still do these um sort of basic Depend and pads and all kind”— Rick Doblin
Big reveals from this episode
- Doblin's pivotal 12-hour ibogaine-plus-LSD experience severed his self-criticism from self-hatred, which he credits as central to MAPS's success.
- The infamous MDMA 'holes in the brain' image was a graphically manipulated SPECT scan aired on MTV and then Oprah, which Doblin warned them was fake.
- MAPS's first phase 3 MDMA trial produced a one-in-10,000 chance of random results, with 88% responders and 67% no longer meeting PTSD criteria.
- A Johns Hopkins study claiming MDMA causes Parkinson's was retracted after researchers discovered they had dosed primates with methamphetamine, not MDMA.
- Doblin debunked Timothy Leary's celebrated Concord Prison psilocybin study as statistical fraud, comparing 30-month recidivism data against 10-month data.
- MAPS is at a crossroads: stay nonprofit-owned or go public and take investors to raise roughly $75M needed for FDA approval.
- MDMA won't immediately go generic because of 'data exclusivity' (5.5 years), which Doblin learned by chance from a patent attorney while high at a party.
- The FDA agreed to let MAPS use inactive placebo because the double-blind rarely works for psychedelics, making approval legally likely if data holds.
Worth remembering
- Jimmy Carter pardoned all draft resistors on his first day in office in 1977.
- Doblin built a bridge with anti-drug rocker Ted Nugent via his son Rocco, and accepted a controversial $1M donation from Rebecca Mercer earmarked for veterans.
- Around 800 Navy SEALs have traveled to Mexico for ibogaine to treat PTSD, depression, traumatic brain injury, and addiction.
- Chemist Sasha Shulgin invented hundreds of psychedelics and tested new drugs with people at Bohemian Grove.
- Nixon aide John Ehrlichman admitted the drug war was designed to target Black civil-rights activists and anti-war hippies by exaggerating drug risks.
- Bill W, founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, first got sober via a belladonna experience and later experimented with LSD.
- Stan Grof gave obsessive-compulsive patients over 1,000 micrograms of LSD and they could still play chess.
- Non-psychedelic bromo-LSD treated cluster headaches ('suicide headaches') even better than LSD or psilocybin because it can be dosed in grams.
- Doblin offered each of his three kids MDMA or marijuana at age 13; all refused, which he calls the best anti-drug strategy.
- MAPS's stated long-term vision is 'net zero trauma by 2070.'
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