Joe Rogan Experience #1964 - Rick Doblin

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.

• 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.
  00:36:35
• 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.
  00:54:14
• 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.
  01:13:56
• A Johns Hopkins study claiming MDMA causes Parkinson's was retracted after researchers discovered they had dosed primates with methamphetamine, not MDMA.
  01:21:48
• Doblin debunked Timothy Leary's celebrated Concord Prison psilocybin study as statistical fraud, comparing 30-month recidivism data against 10-month data.
  01:57:16
• MAPS is at a crossroads: stay nonprofit-owned or go public and take investors to raise roughly $75M needed for FDA approval.
  02:08:38
• 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.
  02:23:46
• The FDA agreed to let MAPS use inactive placebo because the double-blind rarely works for psychedelics, making approval legally likely if data holds.
  02:33:35

• Jimmy Carter pardoned all draft resistors on his first day in office in 1977.
  00:03:37
• 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.
  00:09:53
• Around 800 Navy SEALs have traveled to Mexico for ibogaine to treat PTSD, depression, traumatic brain injury, and addiction.
  00:23:26
• Chemist Sasha Shulgin invented hundreds of psychedelics and tested new drugs with people at Bohemian Grove.
  00:31:14
• Nixon aide John Ehrlichman admitted the drug war was designed to target Black civil-rights activists and anti-war hippies by exaggerating drug risks.
  00:45:24
• Bill W, founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, first got sober via a belladonna experience and later experimented with LSD.
  01:29:05
• Stan Grof gave obsessive-compulsive patients over 1,000 micrograms of LSD and they could still play chess.
  01:43:47
• Non-psychedelic bromo-LSD treated cluster headaches ('suicide headaches') even better than LSD or psilocybin because it can be dosed in grams.
  02:19:38
• Doblin offered each of his three kids MDMA or marijuana at age 13; all refused, which he calls the best anti-drug strategy.
  02:40:30
• MAPS's stated long-term vision is 'net zero trauma by 2070.'
  01:02:01

Books, products and media the guest or host genuinely endorsed here — with the buy link.

Affiliate link — we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.