#2319 - Rick Doblin

Joe Rogan (0:01)

Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out.

Rick Doblin (0:03)

The Joe Rogan Experience. Trained by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day. Quick, Doblin, what a turn of events. This is absolutely incredible, Joe, absolutely. A series of unexpected things have led to this day.

Joe Rogan (0:20)

You were supposed to do Duncan's podcast, and then Duncan and I got on the phone, and he was saying, you know, trying to move tickets for the psychedelic event, and then Duncan said, you know, hey man, you can have him on your show. And I said, well, why don't you come on too? It would be really fun. Then this morning, Duncan has a root canal, like an unexpected emergency root canal. So it was just a crazy turn of events, and fortunately, you're here.

Rick Doblin (0:46)

Yeah, I just came in from Ukraine, actually. Wow.

Joe Rogan (0:51)

What are we doing over there?

Rick Doblin (0:52)

Training therapists and psychiatrists.

Joe Rogan (0:54)

Wow.

Rick Doblin (0:55)

So Ukraine has enormous amounts of trauma. And so what I'm trying to do is to go to high trauma areas and try to talk about MDMA-assisted therapy and how that could be helpful.

Joe Rogan (1:08)

What is the legality of it over there?

Rick Doblin (1:10)

Well, right now it's illegal. They have these terrible laws left over from when Russia was in control, and you cannot even do research with Schedule I drugs.

Joe Rogan (1:20)

Wow.

Rick Doblin (1:21)

Not with psilocybin, not with MDMA. You can't even do research. But, over the last couple of years, there's been a lot of efforts by their military, by other people, to change that because they're aware that they have so much enormous trauma. So a couple months ago, the Ukrainian government put out draft legislation to change the law. And so the training that we did was for 55 psychiatrists and therapists from throughout Ukraine. We did it in the western part of Ukraine, Lviv, which is not really a dangerous area, but even while we were there, there were multiple air raid sirens. But then they look at their phone and they see the area that the air raid sirens are supposedly about, and they could be like 100 miles square, something like that. So nobody seemed to care. Nobody moved to shelters, and we just ignored these air raid sirens and heard nothing. But it's just, it was so emotionally moving because we went to the cemetery in Lviv, and they have these in cities all over Ukraine.

And they have something that I've never seen before, is that they have just enormous numbers of graves, terrible. They've lost about 250,000 people. But the graves all have flags for Ukraine, but they have the pictures of the person that's dead, that's the person that's buried there. And I've never seen that anywhere else, is you just, it has even more of an emotional impact, because you're actually not just thinking all these people are dead, but you're seeing their pictures. And most of them are younger and tragically interrupted their lives, a fair number of women. And so, and they put them in the center of the cities. They're having to build new grave sites all over. And this was next to a really large old historic cemetery. Yeah. And so it feels to me like what I'm trying to do is to really go to where people, I think, have lots of trauma but don't understand some of these new technologies, meaning psychedelic therapies.

Joe Rogan (3:27)

Hardly new.

Rick Doblin (3:29)

Well, new to them. So they've been very much a conservative society. They don't have legal marijuana. They don't have marijuana.

Joe Rogan (3:38)

How dare you.

Rick Doblin (3:39)

Sorry.

Yeah, so it was very moving to be there for just the fact that we were there, that people felt that we were willing to come to the country and be there with them, even though it's in this more safe part of the country. And so the thought that we would, the next steps would all be philanthropy. So, I should say that I'm here representing myself. I'm not talking on behalf of MAPS, and I'm not talking on behalf of Lykos, the pharmaceutical company that MAPS helped start a while ago. So I'm just talking for myself personally. But what we're trying to do is really respond to where the trauma is. And next week, I'm going to Beirut, which is something I never thought I would be going to. But I've been invited to speak at the American University of Beirut and also a YPO sort of business group. And there's the possibility of potentially at least starting research with MDMA therapy in Lebanon as well.