Joe Rogan Experience #2002 - Amanda Feilding

Amanda Feilding recounts her unusual upbringing and lifelong fascination with mystical and altered states, and how she began taking psychedelics seriously in the 1960s. She lays out her core theory that psychedelics, cannabis, and even trepanation all work by increasing cerebral blood supply and energy, loosening the ego's grip via the brain's default mode network. She describes founding the Beckley Foundation to fund research while fighting to reform drug policy, including landmark psilocybin and microdosing studies. Much of the conversation covers microdosing LSD's dramatic potential for Alzheimer's, autism, Parkinson's, and end-of-life 'terminal lucidity.' She and Rogan also explore trepanation history, the role of altered states in human culture and creativity, and the criminal suppression of this research.

• Feilding performed self-trepanation, drilling a hole in her own skull in her 20s and filming it on a Super 8 camera.
  00:54:32
• Her central hypothesis: standing upright cost humans some brain blood supply, and psychedelics work by raising cerebral blood volume and energy.
  00:13:02
• Her first Beckley/Imperial study found psilocybin decreases blood flow to the default mode network, the brain's ego center, hyperactive in depression and addiction.
  00:30:20
• She lived on large daily doses of LSD in the legal 1960s, acting as her own doctor and patient while studying the brain.
  01:08:45
• She quit cigarettes with a single intentional LSD trip, later inspiring an 80%-success smoking-cessation study with Roland Griffiths.
  01:10:18
• She is researching LSD microdosing for Alzheimer's, citing a 97-year-old woman revived from vegetative apathy by a 10-microgram dose.
  00:33:29
• She likens microdosing's effect to 'terminal lucidity' and wants to build a care home, 'Beckley Harbor,' to treat dementia patients.
  02:06:30
• She admits she barely looks at the Beckley Foundation website and asks listeners to donate to fund more research.
  02:34:22

• She left school at 16 because the nuns refused to give her books on Buddhism.
  00:06:15
• She argues early church incense was cannabis and the original eucharist host was a psychedelic mushroom or ergot preparation.
  00:06:45
• She discusses Terence McKenna's stoned ape theory and that reindeer eat Amanita mushrooms while villagers drank the urine for a 'cleaned' dose.
  00:48:17
• Midwives ('witches') used ergot's vasoconstrictive properties in childbirth; ergot poisoning lay behind St. Vitus's dance and the Salem hysteria.
  01:33:59
• On LSD her Go handicap advantage jumped from three to six stones; psilocybin similarly improved her feel for angles in pool.
  01:59:13
• The famous 1960s spider-web-on-drugs study; she has spent six to eight years trying to get ethical approval to repeat it.
  02:02:18
• She learned trepanation technique by studying at Downs Brothers, a surgical-instrument shop off Harley Street in London.
  01:18:04
• Ayahuasca's active compound was nearly named 'telepathine' before scientists realized it had already been named harmine.
  02:18:33
• Rogan argues American car design peaked from 1965-1970 (e.g. the 1969 Mustang) and collapsed after the 1970 psychedelic ban.
  01:51:24
• Near-death experiences may resemble psychedelic states because the dying body endogenously releases compounds like DMT, oxytocin, and serotonin.
  02:09:34

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