Mystical experiences are, in fact, biologically normal.
Last week I published a poll on Instagram and I asked you to tell me how shocked you
were by the following statement: "The best cure for chronic depression is a single mystical
experience."
0 for "Not shocked at all" and 100 for "Oh my gosh!
What are you even saying???".
64 people responded to that poll and the average response that I got was 55 (which I think,
looking back... that might have been the most nuanced poll that I've ever conducted on Instagram).
What I want to do in today's video is I want to make the case for you that the best cure
for chronic depression is a single mystical experience and to add a footnote onto that
—we're going to find our answer in psychedelic-assisted therapy but before I even get into the research
on psychedelic therapy and mystical experiences occasioned by psychedelic-therapy, I want
to share with you a story from my life that I haven't really opened up about at length
on this channel so far.
This is a story that almost made it onto a TEDx stage last year but for the fact that
I got cut in the final round.
And at the time I wasn't even upset about getting cut because, intuitively, I knew that
there was something about my story in the way that it existed last year —something
about that story had been missing and it was the "idea worth sharing."
Only recently did I truly understand that what had happened to me was a mystical experience.
It was a spontaneously-occurring mystical experience, but it wound up curing me of my
depression and it turned my life around.
You know... we've talked about PTSD on this channel and how people generally understand
that a single event can be so traumatic, that it can change you in profound ways.
And that I've used a metaphor in a previous video about comparing mystical experiences
induced by psychedelics to "the inverse of trauma" because it too can change you in profound
ways.
So I want to leave you with that and then on the other side of this transition, I'm
going to get into my story.
Then we're going to take a look at some of the landmark research that's been conducted
so that, hopefully, by the end of this video, you will see and understand the point that
I'm trying to make.
I was 19 when i was first diagnosed with major depressive disorder.
My doctor put me on several medications.
Nothing worked.
I sought counseling services.
That didn't work.
I tried praying a little harder; that didn't work... and so for the next two years, my
friends and family watched as I shrank from someone who had once been so motivated to
somebody who couldn't do so much is get out of bed and into the shower.
The way that I would describe depression to somebody who doesn't understand is just imagine
a condition whereby your mind is constantly lying to you.
It lies to you so much that at some point, you're no longer able to distinguish lies
from the truth and, truthfully, you no longer care.
My depression had gotten so bad that when my mind started telling me that the only way
forward was out, I started to believe it.
And one night, in December, when I was just two weeks shy of my 21st birthday...
I tried to act on what my mind had been telling me.
Obviously, my plans didn't work and instead I was taken to the hospital, where I was held
for the next three days.
I don't know if you guys have ever been in the psych ward but for me it was truly like
something out of a movie.
Everywhere I looked, there were people screaming into the air or banging their heads on the
walls.
And it's one thing to feel like you have compassion for people like this (as long as "these people"
remain a construct in your mind).
But it's another to be faced with the realization that "Holy crap.
In this moment, I AM these people.
In this moment, these people are like me."
When I was admitted, the ward had been at capacity, so I slept on a stretcher in the
common area for the entirety of my stay.
I was there for three days and, for the most part, I didn't know when I could leave.
So really, what the psych ward is about (in addition to being reminded that you are at
your absolute rock bottom everywhere you turn) is —the only resource you have in there
(the only thing that you have) is time.
And that was really, really difficult for me because, for the first time, I really had
to sit and just be present in my situation.
You know...
I can tell you that YES, I did feel every negative emotion under the sun.
I was terrified.
I was ashamed.
You go through the entire roller coaster... but by the time day three had arrived, I had
just set my mind on on passing the time by and I was just looking forward to leaving.
Day three was also the day that my mystical experience happened for me and it happened
right before I found out that I would be leaving that day.
I'd been circling the hallways trying to kill time and eventually, I stopped in front of
a bookcase (which I knew had been stocked entirely with children's novels, for some
reason).
But this time I didn't care because I was so bored, I was willing to read Charlotte's
Web.
So there I was, searching through the books... and then I land on a flimsy paperback that
I hadn't noticed before.
And so I take it out... and it turned out to be a copy of the New Testament with the
cover torn off.
Now, I wouldn't describe myself as a religious person today — in that I don't subscribe
to any one religious tradition.
But, at the time, I had been searching within the Christian faith, which is why finding
this book meant so much to me at the time.
Like it meant so much, that in that moment, it felt like all time had come to a standstill.
And I thought I had already had an awareness of what it meant to hit rock bottom... of
what it meant to survive an attempt to take my own ___... but I didn't fully understand
the profundity of the situation I was in up until that point.
What I recall is...
I recall looking up and then a voice came over me.
This voice sounded nothing like the voices in my head.
This voice, instead, was still and stoic and it told me that the silver lining of feeling
like I had nothing to live for was the fact that I also had nothing to lose.
And because I had nothing to lose, then I had nothing to be afraid of.
Then it clicked.
It clicked that...
I don't...
—See, it's even hard for me to describe this this single moment but I can tell you
that when it clicked, it felt like a ton of bricks had been lifted off my shoulders and
the shackles of of depression literally melted away.
And I know that kind of sounds like... *you know* but, really, I think "shackles" would
be a good metaphor for what depression is.
It's like you're chained to something and it's what you know for so long, you don't
question it.
And then to suddenly see clearly; to see not only through your ego, but just to see into
a realm that consists of nothing but interconnectedness and peace and love.
I felt, for the first time, connected to something and that is what I took comfort in.
When I got discharged from the hospital, I was a completely new person.
I had a sense of tenacity and fearlessness and it really carried me into the next chapter
of my life and this was reflected in some of the the things that I did that 21st year
of my life: I dropped out of the program that I was in, I quit my job, I started a company...
we made our first sales that first month.
All of these things that I did that would have made the previous version of me feel
uncomfortable —but I didn't feel uncomfortable in those situations because I had already
been to hell and I survived it.
So, of course, this sense of fearlessness didn't last me forever.
It lasted, you know, it lasted until I basically felt like I had something to lose again.
But it lasted long enough that I was able to write the next chapter of my life and live
by design.
I understand why the people at TEDx might have rejected my story.
I think it's because towards the tail-end of it, it starts to sound like a cheesy, motivational
"You can do it too!
You can will your way out of anything!"
But that's the thing.
I don't think I willed my way out of depression.
I was cured.
I had lost all of my will to live and something happened... looking back, I understand now
it was a mystical experience and it changed me.
To the people who are depressed today... my message for you is not: "You can get out of
this too!"
That is not my message for you.
What I would say to you is: I understand your condition.
I understand that your mind is lying to you.
I understand the sense of hopelessness and powerlessness you feel.
I also don't want you to have to hit rock bottom to maybe find a sense of relief.
don't think that's fair and I don't think —it's like... for me, the fact that I'm
here...
I recognize how lucky I was.
I don't know if I hadn't found that book that meant so much to me at the time, whether or
not I would have... whether or not the mystical experience would have happened for me.
And this is why it is so important that we turn this conversation back to meditation;
back to psychedelic-assisted therapy.
YES; with meditation —through years of training— there have been so many people who've reported
having mystical experiences through their meditation practices.
In fact, having a spiritual practice rooted in meditation is a good thing for helping
you for gain a sense of what is important.
For helping you gain a sense of clarity and not having to wait for illness or death to
get you there.
That's what meditation's for and I understand that and I appreciate that.
Psychedelic therapy is different in its own category because we are talking about a treatment
that consistently produces healing; that consistently produces mystical experiences.
You don't have to leave it up to chance.
I want to tell you now about a landmark study conducted by researchers at Johns Hopkins
in which 51 end-of-life cancer patients were given either a single low dose of psilocybin
or a single high dose of psilocybin.
At the five-week follow-up mark, researchers noticed that patients who were given a single
high dose of psilocybin demonstrated (quote) "Large decreases in measures of depressed
mood and anxiety, along with increases in quality of life, life meaning, and optimism."
(End quote.)
Even more astounding still is the fact that approximately 80 percent of patients in the
high dose psilocybin group went on to show clinically significant decreases in depressed
mood and anxiety six months after the initial high dose had been administered.
So what this means is that there is something about a high dose of psilocybin that actually
produces long-term mental health benefits and the thing that makes all the difference
is the mystical experience.
So what exactly is a mystical experience?
I think it's important to finally actually define it in the empirical sense, so that
we can have an understanding that, actually, there is nothing "mystical" about a mystical
experience.
Last year, researchers at Cardiff University in the UK published a narrative review of
the state of research on mystical experiences induced by psilocybin.
According to these researchers, the core constitution of mystical experiences include: feelings
of oneness with all people and things; a sense of peace, awe, and sacredness; a transcendence
of normal time in space; and an intuitive belief that what you are experiencing now
is a window into the objective nature of reality.
Reading this over, that's how I knew that what I had experienced had been a mystical
experience.
Before then, I didn't have the words to to understand what I had been through.
Sometimes it really helps to have a label for it so that you can use that label as a
shortcut into a greater library of information (to help you understand your subjective experience).
Interestingly, there is some debate within academia about the legitimacy of mystical
experiences induced by psychedelics.
In particular, a lot of this skepticism comes primarily from religious scholars... so they'll
say, "How can psilocybin-occasioned mystical experiences be thought of as real mystical
experiences when we have a whole history of documented cases of spontaneous mystical experiences?"
I would argue that if two phenomena are essentially the same in how they are experienced and how
they are perceived, then it wouldn't make any sense to say that one is legitimate and
the other is not.
A mystical experience is a mystical experience, whether it is naturally-occurring or psychedelic-induced.
Whether it occurs in a religious person or in an atheist.
And in fact, the fact that we have so many documented cases of mystical experiences happening
all throughout humankind —regardless of who, where, how, etc, etc...
All of this indicates to many in the scientific realm that mystical experiences are, in fact,
"biologically normal."
And as such we can expect for their healing potential to be just as ubiquitous across
the board.
Psychedelic therapy allows us to not have to leave healing up to chance as an intervention.
It is reliable, cost-effective, it doesn't require you to take a pill every day for the
rest of your life, and it comes with minimal side effects.
And, furthermore, all of this —the way that this model has been developed and is now being
studied— this model of psychedelic therapy fits within our current medical framework.
The more I learn about psychedelic therapy, the more saddened I become about the fact
that psychedelic therapy doesn't already occupy more space within our current collective consciousness.
You guys know depression is the number one cause of disability worldwide and depression
rates and anxiety disorders have only skyrocketed over the past year.
We are truly in the midst of a mental health crisis.
What we need is a treatment protocol that is robust.
That actually works.
That leads to healing.
That doesn't just numb us out but actually makes us *feel* so that we can find the answers
within ourselves.
I truly believe that everybody every single one of us has it within us.
I've seen in my own life, you know...
I've been at rock bottom and I've also known what it's like to get out of rock bottom.
And that is what makes life so, so worth living.
I know this video isn't going to convince any lawmakers of anything but I hope that
at the very least, if it can inspire hope in those who are feeling powerless right now
in their present situation, then I will have done my job.