History 101 (2020) s02e04 Episode Script

1
[electronic beeping, buzzing]
[indistinct chatter]
[cheering]
[metal music plays]
[narrator] After retiring
from the NHL in 2015,
34-year-old Daniel Carcillo
believes his career
as the Chicago Blackhawks enforcer
has left him with traumatic brain injury.
[pensive electronic music plays]
I was dealing with impulse-control issues,
insomnia, slurred speech,
anxiety, depression.
[narrator] When conventional medicine
doesn't seem to help,
in 2019,
he turns to a controversial therapy,
psilocybin from psychedelic mushrooms.
And for him, it seems to work.
It helped to reset my brain.
It helped to break a bunch
of the destructive thought patterns
that I was stuck in.
Everything started to get better.
[narrator] Carcillo's story is one of many
that are challenging
society's long-held opinions
about psychedelic drugs.
[psychedelic music plays]
In America,
psychedelics, including LSD,
psilocybin, and MDMA
are classified as Schedule I drugs
and face the strictest regulations.
But over 30 million Americans
claim to have tried psychedelics
of one kind or another.
A clinical trial
for people suffering from PTSD
revealed that MDMA-assisted therapy helped
67% of participants with their problems.
And in one survey,
85% of mental-health professionals
believed the use
of psychedelics in therapy
deserves more research.
Still, though the drugs themselves
aren't as addictive as cocaine or opioids,
they can be confusing and overwhelming.
[music distorts]
With growing evidence that psychedelics
may help treat brain injury
and psychological problems
and even improve creativity,
is it time they got a second chance?
[upbeat music plays]
In the 2010s,
a new word gains widespread attention.
Microdosing.
Taking tiny doses of psychedelics
in an effort to become
more productive and creative.
[woman] They're not hippies.
They're tech bros, artists, investors,
even entrepreneurs.
These are the people,
um, influencing the world.
These are the companies
that are reaching far and wide all over.
[narrator] And it's not just
young professionals
turning back on to these drugs.
Psychedelics, like MDMA,
are undergoing clinical trials
to see
if they might help military veterans
with post-traumatic stress disorder.
After those three MDMA sessions,
I haven't had a nightmare
about the war since.
[narrator] But psychedelics
are still illegal and highly controversial
and have been for half a century.
How did we get here?
Well, it's been quite a trip.
Humans have been using psychedelics
for thousands of years.
The story of modern psychedelics
begins in 1943
with Swiss chemist Dr. Albert Hofmann.
As he's working on a new drug
for respiratory problems,
he notices something very unusual
about its effect on the human body.
One day in the lab,
a small amount gets on his fingers
and makes its way into his bloodstream,
putting him into a dreamlike state.
Curious, Hofmann swallows 250 micrograms,
a gargantuan dose,
and sets out for home on his bicycle.
[bike bell dings]
Hofmann's trip is disorientating at first.
He feels possessed by a demon
[echoing evil laughter]
and sees a witch.
[witch cackles]
But after the trip,
he experiences a profound sensation
of oneness with the natural world.
The drug is named after
its chemical structure,
lysergic acid diethylamide,
aka LSD.
By the 1950s,
psychologists are experimenting
with the new drug,
with one Canadian clinic
treating alcoholics with psychotherapy
and a dose of LSD.
They report a 50% success rate.
Doctors take notice.
This could be a huge asset
in the treatment
of many serious mental-health conditions.
When properly qualified physicians use it,
I do not consider it a drug
that's any more dangerous
than any other drug used in medicine.
But LSD's psychological effects
are unpredictable at best.
Here's what we do know.
LSD's impact on the brain
has to do with serotonin,
a chemical messenger in the body
thought to regulate our mood.
The brain has at least 14 known types
of serotonin receptors
that process the chemical,
moderating our emotions and perceptions.
LSD molecules latch onto
one of these serotonin receptors,
influencing not only our mood
but what we see and hear
[distant cats meow]
even distorting our sense
of the passage of time.
This is the trip.
It can be positive,
but it can also be terrible.
It seems to depend
on the individual's state of mind
and the environment they're in
when they take the trip.
[psychedelic music plays]
LSD isn't the only drug
with these effects.
In 1960, Harvard professor of psychology
Timothy Leary
is on a research trip in Mexico,
where he ingests mushrooms
that contain a chemical called psilocybin.
The first experience I had was
with seven little mushrooms in Mexico.
For the five hours
after I ate these mushrooms,
I learned more about psychology
than I had in the preceding 16 years
as a psychologist.
Since that time, I've done almost nothing
but attempt to study,
to learn more about
how these experiences are produced
and how they can be used
for man's benefit.
[narrator] Hopeful
that this natural psychedelic
might prove useful in psychotherapy,
in 1961,
Leary and his team of therapists
launch what they call
the Concord Prison Experiment.
- [trap beat plays]
- [sirens wail]
They work with 32 prisoners,
putting them
under the influence of psilocybin.
Then, the therapists ask the prisoners
to describe
their often traumatic life histories
and hopes for the future
to help them confront
the root of their criminality.
Leary theorizes that this
should make them less likely to re-offend.
It seems to work.
Usually, within six months
of being paroled,
64% of them would commit
a new crime or break parole.
The study claims
that this treatment reduces
the likelihood of returning to prison
by almost two-thirds.
[upbeat synth music plays]
Leary seems to be on the verge
of proving that psychedelics
have real value in psychotherapy,
but his experimental methods
are questioned
and word gets out
that some of the research team
are taking the drug as well.
The Harvard administration fires Leary.
His academic career may be over,
but Leary will be
a psychedelic icon for decades to come.
Meanwhile, in California,
over in the Bay Area,
another group is experimenting with LSD
to see if it might be useful
for mind control
or as a truth serum.
The CIA.
One of their test subjects,
novelist Ken Kesey
- [vocalizing]
- [laughter]
The CIA brought LSD
into the USA. [chuckles]
It was the government.
The government's giving us drugs.
It's bound to be good stuff.
It was, the best stuff of all.
[narrator] Kesey is so inspired
by the drug's creative
and spiritual potential,
he steals some to share with his friends.
They call it acid.
[Kesey] What you have here
is the gathering of the tribe.
Well, the acid tribe.
Everyone here has been
through the whole scene.
[jam rock music plays]
[narrator] By 1965,
they begin making their own LSD,
sharing it at parties in the Bay Area.
Kesey's house band, The Warlocks,
begin drawing larger and larger crowds
and change their name
to the Grateful Dead.
[reporter] The Grateful Dead themselves
acknowledge they have used LSD.
[narrator] The band and the crowd
take acid not just to have fun
but to liberate their consciousness.
We would all like to be able
to live an uncluttered life,
a simple life, a good life, you know,
and, like, think about moving
the whole human race ahead a step.
And one of the ways
of achieving that being is drugs.
- [man] Through expanding your
- Consciousness.
[man] Consciousness.
[narrator] Kesey and his entourage
even head out across the US
in an old school bus,
spreading the news about LSD.
By the mid '60s,
psychedelics are on their way
to the heart of pop culture,
and by 1967, even the biggest band
in the world is doing it.
[man] Paul, how often have you taken LSD?
About four times.
[narrator] It's no surprise musicians
and artists are intrigued by the stuff.
Psychedelics affect how we see and hear,
similar to a neurological phenomenon
found in some highly creative individuals,
synesthesia.
Synesthesia is where one sense stimulation
blends with another sense in the brain.
Like when colors are heard
as well as seen
[high-pitched tones play]
or music is seen as well as heard.
[music overlapping with tones]
LSD users can experience
similar phenomena,
like seeing shifting patterns of color
when listening to music.
And in one experiment,
when a blind person on LSD
listened to Bach,
he felt liquid cascade over him,
as if he were standing under a waterfall.
A state of mind
thought only to be available
to those born with synesthesia.
[jam rock music plays]
Inspired by LSD activists
like Leary and Kesey,
more and more young people
are starting to turn on, tune in,
and drop out.
[reporter] These people are hippies.
They represent
a new form of social rebellion.
[narrator] Nearly 100,000 young people
flock to San Francisco's
Haight-Ashbury neighborhood
for the Summer of Love.
A communal celebration of hippie music,
free love, the anti-war movement,
and LSD.
A backlash is almost inevitable.
[ominous music plays]
[reporter] Their diversions
might seem to be harmless enough
were it not for one thing.
The drug is extremely dangerous.
[narrator] America's fears
about the hippies and their favorite drug
are stoked by sensational news stories.
[sirens wail]
[reporter] There is a steady flow
into San Francisco hospitals
of young people who have "freaked out"
and been picked up by the police
in a state of desperate terror.
[sirens wail]
[narrator] 1968 is a violent year
in America.
Civil unrest erupts over the Vietnam War,
and tragic assassinations
traumatize the nation.
That November,
Richard Nixon wins the presidency
on a platform of law and order
with an electoral mandate
to put the psychedelic-loving hippies
in their place.
Despite LSD still being used
in clinical research into the late 1960s,
the writing is on the wall
for psychedelics.
America's public enemy number one
in the United States
is drug abuse.
In order to fight and defeat this enemy,
it is necessary
to wage a new all-out offensive.
[narrator] In 1970,
the Nixon Administration
adds LSD and psilocybin
to the most restricted
list of Schedule I drugs,
alongside heroin,
slamming the brakes
on psychedelic research in the US.
The next year,
the United Nations
extends restrictions across the globe
with their Convention
on Psychotropic Substances.
For scientists around the world
trying to understand
whether psychedelic therapy
can help treat mental illness,
this is a major setback.
[upbeat music plays]
With LSD off-limits
for use in psychotherapy,
scientists are on the lookout
for a legal alternative
so they can continue their research.
And in the late 1970s,
a drug-enforcement-agency-approved chemist
finds what they're looking for.
Federal officials call it
an underground drug
that's going nationwide.
[man] The LSD of the '80s.
[dance music plays]
[narrator] MDMA was originally created
in 1912 to control bleeding.
Although not
a classic psychedelic like LSD,
it does have psychedelic effects,
but it also creates
intense feelings of empathy
and even euphoria.
By the mid-'80s,
up to 150 American therapists
find it useful in psychotherapy sessions.
If you're dealing with couples or groups
who have emotional bonds,
this is a way of deepening.
It creates a state
of what I call high empathy.
[narrator] But as with
previous psychedelics,
the temptation to use MDMA
as a recreational drug is hard to resist,
especially on the dance floors
of the 1980s,
where it's known as ecstasy.
[woman] It's instant love.
It's like bein' on a cloud.
It's indescribable. You have to be there.
It's just really ecstasy.
Investigators say the use of ecstasy
is growing at an alarming rate
on college campuses across the country.
[narrator] Just as with LSD,
officials look on the new psychedelic
as a public-health threat.
We have enough cocaine and heroin
and marijuana out there, and LSD and PCP
and abuse of legitimate drugs.
We don't need another drug out there.
[narrator] In 1985, the US outlaws MDMA,
adding it to Schedule I,
alongside LSD and psilocybin,
as well as marijuana and quaaludes.
And the following year,
MDMA is heavily prohibited
by the UN around the world.
And just as with LSD,
further research
on MDMA's benefits for psychotherapy
is put on the back burner.
[electronic dance music plays
From the mid-'80s into the '90s,
psychedelics may be underground,
but they're still popular.
As of 1997,
one in 16 American high schoolers
claims to have tried ecstasy,
but their illegality
still makes scientific research
practically impossible.
Then, in the late 1990s,
the birthplace of the Summer of Love
bears witness to a new revolution.
The titans of technology,
Apple and Microsoft,
are flourishing
in what's known as Silicon Valley.
[rock music plays]
It's a golden age of tech innovation,
where creative, out-of-the-box thinking
defines success.
In an interview in 2005,
Apple's CEO Steve Jobs
reveals that taking LSD in his youth
was one of the most important things
he'd done in his life.
A new generation asks the big question.
Could psychedelics
like LSD and psilocybin be useful,
not as party drugs, but as smart drugs?
Normally, neurons, the cells used
for communication within the brain,
fire in predictable patterns of activity.
In particular,
visual information is processed
in the back of the brain,
in an area called the visual cortex.
But if a person takes
a psychedelic like LSD,
something unusual happens.
Visual information
now appears to be processed
in additional areas of the brain
which suggests
that psychedelics enable communication
between parts of the brain
that don't usually connect,
allowing the brain to work more freely.
Psychedelics could fuel
a coder's great new idea,
but there's a very real downside to them.
They can be a real problem
if taken in too large an amount.
In 2011,
psychologist James Fadiman
proposes a radical idea.
What if these beneficial effects
of psychedelics could be harnessed
without the drawbacks?
The idea is simple,
reduce the dose of the psychedelic
to one-tenth of the usual amount
so that your brain
receives the benefits of the drug
without the hallucinations.
He calls it microdosing.
Microdosing, it turns out,
makes you feel better.
People basically have improved work,
amount, discrimination, flow, quality.
Also I have a couple of notes that say,
"Boy, if people knew
what it did for your libido,
you would have a product!"
[man laughs]
[narratorBy 2015, a growing number
of Silicon Valley professionals
are microdosing psychedelics
like psilocybin,
LSD, and other drugs.
About 45 minutes after I microdose,
I notice just a general mood enhancement.
It's a little bit easier to smile.
I'm a little bit more extroverted.
I'm less in my head
and more engaged in my outer world,
so generally, it just
it kinda smooths things out.
[narrator] Because psychedelics
are illegal,
it's hard to study these effects
and others scientifically.
But in the 2010s,
as the combative policies
of the War on Drugs
start to face serious opposition
from doctors,
social-justice advocates,
and the general public,
scientists start taking a fresh look
at the benefits of psychedelics.
Up to one in five military veterans
suffers from PTSD,
a leading cause of suicide
among former service members.
I stabbed myself in the neck
and the wrist with a knife.
I just wanted the pain to stop.
[narrator] Many,
like ex-US Marine Scott Ostrom,
have suffered suicidal thoughts
and uncontrollable anger
since they left the war zone.
And conventional therapy
doesn't always work.
The standard treatments for PTSD
tend not to really solve the problem
for most people.
[narrator] In a new clinical trial,
combining therapy with doses of MDMA,
Ostrom finds himself better able
to face his traumatic memories
so he can work through them verbally.
It really did change my life.
In a short period of time, in six months.
[narrator] Ostrom becomes
one of the 67% of the trial's participants
whose PTSD is successfully treated.
The results from the latest Phase 3 trial
of MDMA were just astounding.
I would absolutely call this
a breakthrough.
[narrator] Across the US and Europe,
psychedelic research projects
on LSD, psilocybin, and MDMA
are increasing in number.
We hear patients saying,
"I've seen the light.
I can see my problems in a new light."
[narrator] And this growth in research
is accompanied by changing laws
across the US.
In 2019,
Denver, Colorado, decriminalizes
psychedelic mushrooms for personal use,
followed a month later
by the city of Oakland, California.
Then in 2020,
Oregon becomes the first state
to legalize psilocybin for therapeutic use
and decriminalizes possession
of small amounts of LSD,
MDMA, and psilocybin,
alongside other drugs.
And they likely won't be the last.
The road to full approval
for psychedelic-assisted therapy
may prove long,
but while humanity may not be ready
for another outbreak of hippie mania,
future historians may well
look upon the coming decades
as a new age of psychedelics.
[psychedelic music plays]