#1964 - Rick Doblin

Joe Rogan (0:13)

Good to see you again, my friend. How are you?

Rick Doblin (0:15)

Yeah, I'm doing great. It was so nice to be with you a couple of weeks ago.

Joe Rogan (0:19)

Yeah, it was fun to have you at the club. You were there like one of the first days.

Rick Doblin (0:23)

Yeah, I think I saw the first event in the small room.

Joe Rogan (0:26)

Yes. Yeah, did you see Dave Chappelle?

Rick Doblin (0:29)

I did.

Joe Rogan (0:30)

Yeah, that was the first one. Yeah, we had Dave there. He wanted to do that room. We opened it specifically for him.

That was the first time we did a show there. It was very exciting.

Rick Doblin (0:38)

Yeah, I really liked having the opportunity to talk to him a little bit afterwards and to listen to him. It was hilarious.

Joe Rogan (0:45)

Yeah, he's a big fan of what you guys are doing, as is everybody. You know, I think what you guys are doing at MAPS is one of the most important things for society and culture and just consciousness in general that's happening today. And I'm very, very happy that you're doing that.

Rick Doblin (1:02)

Thank you. Yeah.

Yeah, I'm pretty extremely lucky that 51 years ago when I was 18 in 1972 and I decided to focus my life on psychedelics, that now I'm 69 all these years later, and it still makes sense.

Joe Rogan (1:16)

Well, back then, it must have been a big risk because in the 1970s, when you focused your life on psychedelics, that was like right after that whole sweeping Schedule I psychedelics act was passed, right?

Rick Doblin (1:28)

Yeah, that was in 1970 Yeah, things look grim.

Joe Rogan (1:31)

Didn't look good.

Rick Doblin (1:32)

Yeah, well, I was a draft resistor. I thought that I would serve my country by going to jail, which is kind of a funny way to say it, but I had felt that I'm not a conscientious objector. In order to do that, you have to be a pacifist. And so I'm not a pacifist. I think there are some times you need to fight and defend yourselves.

So the only options for me, as I studied how to respond to Vietnam, was to, I didn't want to pretend I had bone spurs or run away to Canada or anything like that. And I studied Tolstoy and Gandhi and nonviolent resistance and decided that the thing that I would do would be to not register for the draft. And I was paying taxes, I had a social security number, I had a driver's license, I was in high school. I figured the government knows who I am and knows where I am and knows my age. And so I assumed that I would go to jail and that that would be a way to drain the system of energy and to register my protest that way. Martin Luther King actually said a great thing. He said, the person that thinks the law is unjust and violates it and is willing to suffer the consequences as an example to others about the unjust nature of the law actually has the highest respect for the law.

He was trying to reframe civil disobedience as patriotism.

And it made sense to me. And so when I talked to my parents about it, they were like, well, okay, you know, we don't think you should go to Vietnam either. We don't think it's in America's best interest. But you're never going to be a doctor or lawyer. My dad was a doctor. He was a doctor because you'll be a felon. And I'm like, that's a price I'll have to pay. What am I going to do with my life?

I can't have a normal job in a way. So then when I stumbled on psychedelics, I was like, great, I could be an underground psychedelic therapist. It doesn't need a license.

Joe Rogan (3:31)

Whatever happened? Did you wind up getting in trouble?

Rick Doblin (3:34)

No, it's astonishing. I think a lot of times we overestimate the efficiency of the government.

And so nothing happened at all. I mean, I turned 18

Later was the lottery. I did have a higher lottery number. But nothing ever happened. And I just was shocked by that. And later what happened was that Jimmy Carter, on his first day in office, he pardoned all the draft resisters.

And that made me sort of move from my identification as a counterculture drug-using criminal to somebody who wasn't quite a criminal in that same way.

Joe Rogan (4:10)

What year was that?

Rick Doblin (4:10)

76?