242.
Interview with filmmaker Oliver Hockenhull about the resurgence of
psychedelics as medicine, and his film Neurons to Nirvana.
Join Skeptiko host Alex Tsakiris for an interview with
Oliver Hockenhull, director of,
Neurons to Nirvana. During the
interview Hockenhull explores the links between psychedelics and
consciousness:
Alex Tsakiris: So status quo scientists, mind=brain scientists would
have expected that if you ingest psilocybin it’s going to go fire off your brain
like crazy and that’s why you’re going to have these amazing experiences and
these emotions attached to it. And then Dr. David Nutt does this work and he
gives people psilocybin and they go into the fMRI and they see that just the
opposite is happening. The brain isn’t firing, these areas are dampened and
suppressed, which completely supports this other model that this consciousness
is flowing in and what the brain is doing is kind of regulating it. If you turn
that regulator down you get a full dose of this consciousness and that’s what it
means to be tripping on psilocybin, right?
Oliver Hockenhull: Well yeah, I think this also comes back to Aldous
Huxley’s proposition that the mind or the brain is a dampening device. Now, it
is basically designed for survival usage so that you can’t be open to everything
when you have to make sure that you can catch a particular fish or whatever it
may be. So you’re not open to the buzz and confusion, the endless amount of
information that is accessible to you because it wouldn’t be of survival
benefit. At the same time, these peak experiences of experiencing all, if you
will, or the mystical experience, is also extremely important for our survival
in terms of erasing the importance and the intoxication of the individual as
compared to the group. So if we become more associated with group consciousness,
with the consciousness of all our relations, as the native people say, that
we’re all connected to the plants, to the water, to the animals, to each other.
Then we see each other as brothers. So it is a mystical experience. We are
talking about an experience that places us within an associative web of life
itself.
_____________
Neurons to Nirvana Website
Play It
Listen Now:
Download
MP3 (35 min.)
Read It
Alex Tsakiris: Today we welcome Oliver Hockenhull to Skeptiko. Oliver
is a documentary filmmaker who has created Neurons to Nirvana: Understanding
Psychedelic Medicines, a movie about the use of and issues surrounding using
psychedelics as medicine. Oliver, this ought to be a very interesting dialogue.
Thanks so much for joining me on Skeptiko.
Oliver Hockenhull: Well, thank you very much, Alex, for inviting me. I
just want to introduce the film by suggesting that, or by letting people know,
that when you make a film that there are a lot of people involved. So I can’t
take full responsibility for it. I mean, I do take full responsibility for the
film but there are so many talents that were involved with making this,
including the musicians, the cinematographer, the executive producers, and so
on. So it’s a long process to make a film like this, three or four years, with
numerous people and people that I forget about and then I remember and go, ‘Wow,
that person contributed quite a bit to it.’ It’s just endless really, it’s quite
a process.
Alex Tsakiris: Great, well I’m glad you got that out there and I think
folks will appreciate that even more if they watch the film, more so because it
kind of speaks to the quality of the film a bit. There are a lot of people out
there, especially nowadays who make “documentary films” and some of them are
okay – they are kind of one-man band kind of things, and they look like it. This
is just the opposite in terms of its look. It looks like a very well made film,
and it is. It is engaging, it is entertaining, and the content for anyone who is
even remotely interested in these topics, that is psychedelics and the edgy use
of psychedelic medicine and how it fits into society, what it might need in a
broader sense, I can’t recommend the movie highly enough. It’s just really well
done. So congratulations on that and tell us a little bit more about this film –
really three to four years in the making, what drove you to make it?
Oliver Hockenhull: Well it began when I was talking to Mark Achbar.
Mark is the director of The Corporation, probably a film that many of your
listeners might know about – a very successful documentary. And we talked about
what would be the next film that we could get involved with. And I felt that the
issue of psychedelic medicine, since that’s what we’re dealing with, these
substances as medicines, would be the most viable film in terms of releasing
suffering and in terms of addressing suffering in the world. Because of the
development in current research that is taking place with psychedelics we felt
that these things really needed to come out more. We really felt that the
research, the science, the medicine that is taking place now and that took place
very heavily in the ‘60s as well needed to be revisited.
Alex Tsakiris: Great, well once again it is a really great movie. But
as we talked about in our email exchange my interest for the most part lies, if
you will, on the topics that lie just on the other side of where that movie
leaves off. And that’s not quite accurate because your movie does dip into and
touch on some of these issues of consciousness, extended human consciousness,
where that might lead, how this might challenge some of the paradigms that we
have. But it really stays true to the title and it focuses on the medical,
pharmalogical issues around the use of this. So the approach I really want to
take in this interview, and I hope you’re okay with it and from our email
exchange I think you are – it is really honing in on two questions. What do
psychedelics tell us about consciousness? And number two, what are the social
and political implications of question number one? That is, how might we explain
this war on drugs issue that you kind of touch on in the film? We do come to a
different understanding about consciousness.
So let me back up there and start with question one. What does Neurons to
Nirvana tell us? What are your conclusions about the nature of consciousness?
What do we know about it from our understanding of how psychedelics work?
Oliver Hockenhull: This is of course the key question and even though
you’re very much correct, that this is an underlying stream, if you will, or the
hidden stream that’s involved in the peace and dealing with consciousness
itself. So what psychedelics do, from my understanding of what some of the
researchers have come up with, both in terms of these experiential experiences
of the people who take psychedelics as well as the neurological research. And
we’re talking about people from Johns Hopkins, people from Purdue University –
well-known, well-established, accomplished neuropsychopharmacologists, people
who have been working in the field for 30, 40 years. And they’re telling me that
what these things can do is allow for the perception of our unity with all of
life.
Alex Tsakiris: But let’s hone in on that for a minute. Because as you
have mentioned, the film features some very top notch researchers who are
talking about peer-reviewed research that has been done under the best controls,
published in top journals and all that stuff. Talk about David Nutt, if you will
a little bit. He is featured in the film, very highly regarded. What is he, a
psychologist? Or he is really an MD in the UK.
Oliver Hockenhull: Yeah, David is a neurophysiologist, a
neuropsychopharmacologist. Again, he is very well-established. He was a head of
the UK drug research institute. I can’t remember the exact title of it as a
physician. But anyway, highly regarded individual. In his work with
understanding psilocybin under MRI conditions revealed that certain areas of the
brain dealing with identity issues -
Alex Tsakiris: Let me jump in there, and tell me if I’m wrong, but
what’s amazing about his research is it’s completely counterintuitive in that
there are two sides to this debate about what consciousness is. One is this idea
that consciousness is purely a product of the brain and your brain produces
consciousness, and it just kind of secretes it out and there you go. And there’s
this other model that’s less popular but really has some intellectual force
behind it. It’s as though conscious is more like something that’s out there and
your brain is this transceiver that brings it in. So people would have expected
the kind of status quo, mind equals brain, scientists would have expected hey,
if you ingest psilocybin it’s going to go fire off your brain like crazy and
that’s why you’re going to have these amazing experiences and these emotions
attached to it. We know what that’s like, that’s a brain that’s just firing off
like crazy. And Nutt does this work and he gives people psilocybin and they go
into the fMRI and they see just the opposite is happening. The brain isn’t
firing, these areas are dampened and suppressed, which completely supports this
other model that this consciousness is flowing in and what the brain is doing is
kind of regulating it. If you turn that regulator down you get a full dose of
this consciousness and that’s what it means to be tripping on psilocybin. Now, I
don’t know which side is right but that’s kind of where the debate has wound up,
right?
Oliver Hockenhull: Well yeah, I think this also comes back to our
reveals or refreshes – Aldous Huxley’s proposition that the mind or the brain is
a dampening device. Now, it is basically designed for survival usage so that you
can’t be open to everything when you have to make sure that you can catch a
particular fish or whatever it may be. So you’re not open to the buzz and
confusion, the endless amount of information that is accessible to you because
it wouldn’t be of survival benefit. At the same time, these peak experiences of
experiencing all, if you will, or the mystical experience, is also extremely
important for our survival in terms of erasing the importance and the
intoxication of the individual as compared to the group. So if we become more
associated with group consciousness, with the consciousness of all our
relations, as the native people say, that we’re all connected to the plants, to
the water, to the animals, to each other. Then we see each other as brothers. So
it is a mystical experience. We are talking about an experience that places us
within an associative web of life itself.
Alex Tsakiris: Fascinating. That’s really interesting, I hadn’t quite
thought of it in exactly that way. Tell me this – from your work and from what
we find in the movie, how would you say the researchers you talk to are divided
on this issue? You said something there that’s really kind of neat and I can
really kind of wrap my arms around it – your movie doesn’t come across as being
that much in the camp of the expanded view of consciousness. And that’s not a
negative, it just says you’re kind of just reporting the research and it’s kind
of coming through as hey, we’re not sure this is it but we definitely need to
use this as medicine. Tell me how you suss that out in your own way, this step
that we take initially to say okay, there are some therapeutic medical
advantages to this we must seize right away and then this broader implication
kind of idea that you have.
Oliver Hockenhull: I approach this film in terms of relieving my own
suffering and to attempt to assist in the relieving of the suffering of others.
Now, in some ways as an example when we talk about something like MDMA, it is
being abused by many, many people. At the same time, it can be used very
potently within a therapeutic setting that would allow people to touch into
their own heart. Now, how does it do that? Scientifically it is revealed, as an
example, that it relieves certain kinds of tension within the amygdala, which is
a center in the brain that deals with emotional trauma, right? That area in the
brain has that and it will be marked in terms of post-traumatic stress disorder.
And in some ways if you really look at our society you can see that all of us
have suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. When I was growing up nuclear
bombs were about to drop all the time, right? I lived through the cold war. So
there is a kind of continuum of trauma that we have all experienced and there
are medicines out there that will connect us profoundly to who we are, to the
heart within us, relieve fear. Fear in the Indian tradition is when there is a
quote or a line in the Hindu scriptures that suggests that when there is
another, that is when fear begins. And I think that is something that in our
society promotes so importantly the idea of the individual as compared to our
relationships and the importance of our care for one another is quite prominent
in our society.
Alex Tsakiris: Great, so what I hear you saying Oliver and this then
syncs up with what I saw in the movie is you can be agnostic, if you will, about
this issue of consciousness and still approach and say gee, there’s all these
people who are suffering – for example, in the United States. There are so many
people who are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder after their tours
in Iraq and Afghanistan and all these other “wars.” And we can purely approach
it if we want from a materialistic, brain-based standpoint and say here’s this
drug, MDMA, ecstasy, and they are given in the proper controlled clinical
therapeutic environment. It just seems to be efficacious for the result that
we’ve been trying to get for these people all along in that we want to help them
move on with their life and integrate in these traumas that they have had. And
we don’t have to go any further than to just look at doesn’t that work and
shouldn’t we make that available to people.
Oliver Hockenhull: Yeah, absolutely. It is that practical. It is a
practical film in that way and I am very happy that it is in that direction. At
the same time there are moments within the film that either through visuals or
through narration explicate this issue of consciousness and where it is
heading.
Alex Tsakiris: Well let’s jump from there then to question number two
because I feel the little dialogue we have had so far kind of plays out this
story and in my mind it is a fascinating issue. It was like okay, so we don’t
have to go there in order to see that some of the laws and regulations we have
surrounding the use of these important medicines are antiquated, are really
injuring people or not helping people that could be helped. So we can get there
through your film. But then don’t we have to ask the second part of that
question, which is why is it like that? Is there another reason that we have to
consider the maybe why these laws are the way they are? Why this culture of war
on drugs and your consciousness needs to be controlled, and all the rest of
that? Why we have gone down that path. I am sure you have thought about that a
lot personally. I don’t know that your film addresses it directly but I would be
really curious as to what you think about that. Do you think there is an
underlying motive, either directly or indirectly, in our culture’s war on
drugs?
Oliver Hockenhull: Well, I appreciate what you’re saying here and I
agree with you. I do think that it is mostly indirected and it has to do with
fear again. It has to do with fear of one’s own mind. And even if we were to
look at this idea of the conservative brain and the liberal brain, there has
been some discussion and research in that direction. And it suggests that
certain brain structures are not willing to take any risk in their own lives.
They are not willing to expand outside of their framework, so the more creative
– and clearly as a society we need to be more creative and we need to embrace
each other and our own creativity – these substances again, positioned properly
within a cultural tradition that respects what these states of mind are about,
and what they can give to us, and what they mean, these things can be powerful
allies. Now, what’s happened in the past and what’s happening now is that this
war on drugs relates to a kind of oppression and suppression of the
possibilities of consciousness itself. People in power, people who it’s a bad
thing to allow the kids to have all the colors and have all the colored pencils
in front of them. It is a way of control, it’s a way of disallowing the
possibilities of one’s own mind.
At the same time I understand why that has happened in the past because
people can abuse these things, and it’s true they can, but they can abuse
anything. They are very powerful medicines. We should be looking to cultures as
examples of Native American culture, who have been using peyote for 5,000 years.
When they do it in ceremony it is very much a gathering that is very sacred,
that respects everyone, that deals with these issues but in a very elegant and
complete manner. So how do you deal with these ultimate states of consciousness?
If you do it without respect then you’re just entertaining yourself. And people
do that too, which is kind of unfortunate. Because even though I think that it’s
fine to engage occasionally in a less-than-ceremonial setting, I think if you’re
going to fully benefit from the experience it should be within community and
within a support structure that recognizes the potential, the symbols, the
metaphors, the mythic level of consciousness that one gets into with these
substances and navigates all of that.
Alex Tsakiris: I agree with that. At the same time what I appreciated
about your movie is your movie doesn’t say that as much, or doesn’t say that
directly. Instead, it says something I think very powerful in that let’s start
with the therapeutic model as a way of understanding how we might integrate that
in and then we have therapists who come out and say, “The use of this drug is
all about setting, it’s all about context, as well as it’s about the biochemical
reaction. And I think that speaks to some of the issues that you are talking
about and does it in a really pragmatic medical way that everyone can understand
and feel comfortable with.
Oliver Hockenhull: Great, yes. I think that is true. I think that we
have managed to do that. And again, I really want to emphasize the importance of
all the people that were involved with the film and give them thanks and
gratitude.
Alex Tsakiris: Let me circle back, if I can Oliver, to a little bit
more on the political side and social side because I think we’re kind of coming
at this from a very similar way and you kind of crept up there and said, “Hey,
if you really were interested in controlling large masses of people and you were
interested in controlling them for the reason that you wanted to protect them
and at the same time protect your own interests, then it is not really in your
interests to have people run out there and explore their individual or group
consciousness. You would really prefer to have them kind of more in this
fear-based, consumer-based mode. That’s much more malleable. And at the same
time what you would do – again, I would suggest it was exactly what we’ve seen.
You would want to take those medicines yourself and explore how to use those,
how to weaponize those. And you might want to do something like project MK Ultra
and give them to people under the worst conditions and the worst context and try
and really warp the brain and twist the brain and see what you want to do. I
mean, don’t we have to face that it what we would expect a government to do, a
controlling entity to do, and that’s the best evidence we have for exactly what
has happened.
Oliver Hockenhull: Yeah, I think some of your listeners may be
interested in Jay Stevens LSD and the American Dream, and it’s called Storming
Heaven. It’s an excellent book about psychedelics during the ‘60s and the
involvement of the CIA and so on. It’s a fascinating read and I do believe yes,
that some aspects of what you’re saying I certainly agree with. I think at the
same time it’s important for us to not be too conspiratorial about this, in my
opinion. There is such a flexibility as an example with maleability in this
whole world, if you will. So even though I do believe that there is a number of
people that were involved with LSD in the CIA, who became a little bit different
than the rest of their fellow workers because of their experiences. So I don’t
have any examples in front of me, but they got turned on and probably dropped
out as well. It’s not all black and white.
Alex Tsakiris: Sure, certainly. And again, your movie is evidence of
that in that you see all these folks who have a sincere interest in helping
people. As you said, we’re leaving suffering and I think that’s just a wonderful
place to start because we can certainly build consensus around that and build
consensus around the medical use of these drugs. Which one of these drugs, these
substances, did you learn the most about in terms of making this movie and the
medical uses of it?
Oliver Hockenhull: That’s a difficult question. It’s actually
impossible to answer because they are each unique in their own way and at the
same time one of substances that I didn’t examine in the film because it is
positioned within the Native American community is peyote. I just wanted to pay
homage, if you will, to that community because they have been traumatized to
such an extent and at the same time it’s such an amazing community and such an
amazing culture. If we really look at what it means to be, or at least to know,
of that beauty of the Native American culture. And they were involved with
peyote for 5,700 years. So we’re talking about a long history of medicinal use,
sacred use of a plant.
Alex Tsakiris: We should at least touch on the substances that you do
cover in the movie, and each of these is covered in depth in terms of its
medical uses and some of the issues surrounding them legally – LSD, psilocybin,
MDMA (also known as ecstasy), ayahuasca, and cannabis of course. Cannabis was
the one that kind of surprised me the most. I guess I learned some things about
the medical uses of cannabis and marijuana that I wasn’t aware of.
Oliver Hockenhull: I found it really interesting because I think that
the war on drugs from the ‘60s and ‘70s and today as well, of course – but the
beginning of it was related a lot to the youth movement of the ‘60s. So when
people were starting to smoke marijuana it was kind of like a refusal of the gin
and tonic and the scotch and water. You could tell a lot about a culture by the
drugs it approves. And the youth embracing marijuana was related to – first of
all, it’s a lot easier on the body than alcohol. It gets you into a state of
mind that is much more compatible to being at ease in the world. And it
definitely can be medicinal. So at that moment, the youth movement in the ‘60s
against the war, against the Vietnam war, which is covered somewhat in the film,
was related to the use of something like marijuana. And I think that the youth
embraced these drugs because they wanted to and they realized there was
something wrong with our society, deadly wrong with it. And they wanted to have
conscious experiences that were definitely outside of the box of daddy’s liquor
cabinet. We’re still dealing with that. We’re still dealing with the choices
that are made about where you want your brain to go, where you want your
consciousness to go. And some people still obviously are frightened about a
certain kind of ease as compared to the harshness that is often attached – I
mean you rarely hear about someone hurting someone under the use of cannabis,
while alcohol obviously is both a depressant and seems to encourage violent
activity from a certain group of people.
Alex Tsakiris: I have one final question for you, Oliver. Let me kind
of take it out there a little bit, but this is a topic that has been touched on
by several different folks when I had Rick Strassman, who of course wrote the
spirit molecule into his research into DMT. But also in the book by Graham
Hancock lately, and that is this idea that there are spirit entities associated
with these substances. Now, that may sound way out there for some folks but we
have to realize that the conversation that we’ve had is really a precursor to
that. If we free ourselves from this materialistic explanation that
consciousness is purely a product of the brain and we just follow the data, like
the data you have in your movie to get there, and we say, “Wow, that really
seems to be it,” then we might have to be open for this spirit world and we
might have to take seriously at least into consideration whether there are
spirits associated with these substances. Do you have any opinion or thoughts on
that or even how to approach a question like that?
Oliver Hockenhull: Thank you, I think that’s a really important
question. I think that if you appreciate as an example the ideas of Joseph
Campbell, if you appreciate the ideas of someone like Wade Davis, these are
anthropologists and story researchers, people who have studied mythology and so
on. What we can ascertain and what I have personally ascertained is that there
are levels of consciousness that reveal to us that we are not alone, these
entities that are much larger than us. As an example, water itself. I mean, if
you really thought about it what the hell is water? If you can set yourself in
what would be called in the western mind the poetic frame of mind, you will see
that the world is a magical, full place, full of entities and full of powers.
And again if you want to go further in that idea, and you want to go wilder, it
doesn’t really make sense to me that an advanced civilization would be rocketing
from one place to another. That seems like it would be an archaic way of getting
around when you could do it through the mind. And in my opinion, this world is
full of who knows what. I think that it’s so interconnected, and I think all the
universe is so interconnected, that the aliens are us. And by approaching it
that way, when it’s not relying on a fear-based oh my God, there are scary
things out there, you are approaching it like oh, I am one of these scary
things. I am one of these aliens. I am an entity. And it gives you power too,
and I think that is a good thing.
Alex Tsakiris: That is a good thing. Again, the movie is Neurons to
Nirvana: Understanding Psychedelic Medicines. Oliver, tell folks where they can
find the movie, how the movie is going?
Oliver Hockenhull: It’s screening all over the world. There are a
number of places, including tonight in San Francisco at Landmark Theater, and I
think about 3 days ago it was in Chicago at the Landmark. We have got screenings
happening in Helsinki, Ibiza, London – it’s really getting out there. You can
also go neuronstonirvana.com, where you can download the whole movie or you can
order a DVD at the same URL.
Alex Tsakiris: Great. Well, again it’s a film that I think anyone who
has even a slight interest in this topic will really find interesting and I do
hope they check it out. Oliver, best of luck with it and again thank you so much
for joining me on Skeptiko.
Oliver Hockenhull: It’s been a real pleasure, thank you.
[End of Audio]
