Hi everyone, this is Charles Hoskinson broadcasting live from warm, sunny Colorado. Today is October 18th, 2023, and with a heavy heart, I'm making a RIP video, an obituary for a great man, Roland Griffiths, who many of you probably don't know. I wanted to do a little presentation here as I just found out that he passed away from metastatic colon cancer.
Roland was at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, where he was a professor of neuropharmacology and consciousness. He was one of the few professors in the world who took the time in the 1990s to study psychedelic substances and investigate whether they had real medicinal purposes. He published more than 400 papers and had been a researcher since the 1970s, truly a top-shelf guy. He started with substances like caffeine and smoking and eventually worked his way into the psychedelic side of the world.
This obituary is for a man who died at 77. David Nutt was the person who announced it. Dr. Griffiths' research portfolio encompassed a wide array of substances, including sedative hypnotics, caffeine, and mood-altering drugs. In 1999, this is where everyone on our side of the aisle knows him; he embarked on an ambitious research program delving into the effects of the classic psychedelic psilocybin, which is found in magic mushrooms. This initiative involved studies with healthy volunteers, individuals beginning their meditative journeys, and seasoned religious leaders. Notably, therapeutic studies explored psilocybin's potential in alleviating psychological distress in cancer patients, aiding in smoking cessation, and even treating major depression. Those studies showed that psilocybin is one of the most effective treatments for major depressive disorder.
Beyond psilocybin, Dr. Griffiths' investigations ventured into substances like salvinorin A, dextromethorphan, and ketamine, all of which induce altered states of consciousness and share certain similarities with psilocybin. His research also delved into the intricate domain of drug interactions and employed advanced brain imaging techniques such as fMRI and PET scans to dissect the pharmacological and neural mechanisms underlying these effects. For 24 years, he spent an enormous amount of time trying to understand if these substances, often maligned and hated by the U.S. government and others, are actually useful and beneficial or just as harmful as people claimed.
The research he conducted was top-notch, and there's a lovely book called "How to Change Your Mind" by Michael Pollan that discusses Griffiths' research at Johns Hopkins alongside other legacy figures like Timothy Leary and Albert Hofmann. Many of you know that I'm a big supporter of using psychedelics in the treatment of mental illness and helping people sort their lives out. For a long time, many cultures made it a priority to integrate psychedelics into rites of passage or enlightenment, whether in the Greek Mysteries or shamanic practices in Mexico and Central America, and through various ceremonies in Asia. This has been a mainstay of the human experience for thousands of years.
For some reason, in the 19th and 20th centuries, particularly the 20th, we decided in the Western world to make this a taboo. Even though there's scant evidence that these substances have enduring and permanent negative side effects, we chose to close ourselves off to enhancing our perception. You could be conspiratorial and say that perhaps this was done to control people, or you could be more forgiving and attribute it to ignorance. Regardless, many people decided that this was the wrong decision and invested the time to understand the boundaries of these incredibly powerful substances. Roland was a pioneer in this respect. He devoted two and a half decades to not only understanding them but also figuring out how to create protocols for physicians and clinicians to use in treating addiction, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and a litany of other psychological conditions that catastrophically harm people's lives and take joy from their existence.
What's magical about these substances is that once they work, typically you don't have to keep taking them. They can be curative rather than just a treatment. This is what Pollan outlines in his book, and these were the things that Griffiths and others like him were trying to figure out. We live in a society where tens of millions of Americans suffer from some form of mental illness, greatly diminishing their joy in life and interactions with others. This situation is not improving; it continues to get worse, exacerbated by our tools, technology, and societal structure. Globally, it manifests in bad leadership, sociopathic corporations, wars, and ultimately people living less than satisfying lives.
Any substance, technique, or ability we have to help people find enlightenment, clarity, and purpose in life is a good thing. It might not be for everybody, but it is a tool—a broader set of tools that people can use. Some people have faith traditions, some have deep-rooted philosophies, and some meditate every day. I don't particularly care about the tools people use; I just want to ensure that they are open and available to all. At the end of the day, we need to do better as a society. We are failing each other, and we have no one to blame but ourselves.
Every now and then, you have someone who is a beacon of hope, who not only does the hard work of figuring out how beneficial these tools are and when to use them but also tries to evangelize the understanding of them so that others know how to use them, passing this knowledge from generation to generation. We are greatly indebted to the hard research and work that Griffiths provided, and the movement to use psychedelics for therapeutic concerns has been greatly enhanced because of his pioneering research.
I’m very sad to see him go, and like a good friend, I will always remember him. I really hope that the research continues and that people pick up the flag and finish what he started. There will be a day when, in the United States, these substances get rescheduled. There are already discussions about MDMA and psilocybin being rescheduled from Schedule I to III, and it will likely happen within the next five to ten years. There will come a day when this becomes a standard technique that people use to help improve themselves and resolve their conditions.
I hope we can look back at the dark times of the 20th century and write it off as yet another failed experiment where it didn’t work out so well, and embrace what we started when we discovered these substances. Thank you for all you did, and my condolences to the family and all of his friends. We will remember the work and keep it going. Until next time, cheers.
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