This transcript was generated by computer software and may contain errors, omissions, or minor inaccuracies. Please refer to the audio recording for the most accurate version of the conversation.

Joe Moore (00:12): Here we are, Psychedelics Today. We’ve got Megan Bowers, executive director of the Shulgin Foundation, and Mikayla Hellwich, the executive director of DanceSafe. Thank you both for joining me today. Staying cool?

Mikayla Hellwich (00:24): Yes. Thank you for having us.

Megan Bowers (00:29): Yeah, thanks for doing this with us.

Mikayla Hellwich (00:32): Really excited to be here.

Joe Moore (00:32): Yeah, this is going to be fun. So you two have a joint project underway. I was hoping, let’s start by high level. What is this project? And then we can kind of dig into each of you, your orgs, and the kind of shared project and how it came about.

Megan Bowers (00:52): Sounds good. Mikayla, do you want to take that one?

Mikayla Hellwich (00:52): Sure. So we have a fundraiser and art sale going on right now: the Shulgin Glass Project. A couple of years ago, our former executive director, Mitchell, came into possession of a box of glass from the Shulgin Laboratory in Lafayette, California. DanceSafe has gone through some big challenges recently, and on the other side of that, we still had possession of this box of glass. I thought, okay, this is really exciting. Having gone through a period of financial challenge, a fundraiser like this is so important to us. I cannot take credit for the idea; this was, I believe, Mitchell’s idea. It is essentially turning the glass from the lab into pieces of artwork.

So we have relationships with all of these glass artists and other multimedia artists, not just glass, but artists across the country who were excited about the Shulgins’ work and really excited about the Shulgin Foundation and about DanceSafe and have generously donated their time to transform these pieces of glass into beautiful works of art and we’ve released several batches of them so far and they’re currently on our website a lot of them have sold already um I think we’ve made over seventeen thousand dollars in sales as of today and uh it’s just it’s it’s so so so exciting to see uh to see this come together after after going through such a difficult period having having some success like this is just so meaningful to everyone. And a lot of the art hasn’t even been released. We still have over a dozen artists whose work hasn’t been put up yet.

So that’s gonna be rolling out in the next month and then possibly on like an ongoing basis through the rest of the year. And yeah, I think I’ll just pause there and ask if Megan wants to add anything.

Megan Bowers (03:06): Um yeah so you know when Wendy handed off the bin full of you know glass shards it was you know broken pipettes and ampoules and some of the um uh you know some of the alembics I mean there’s just a really interesting variety and it’s all like etched you know because it’s been used so many times and a lot of the um yeah just a lot of the psychedelic processes when you know producing those substances etched the glass so the glass itself has you know been handled copiously by Sasha and probably Ann and even Paul Daley and um and then also kind of had this uh essence or um you know patina So it was really interesting to look at photos. Wendy Tucker, Ann’s daughter, has this really cute photo of herself with the bin of glass, kind of excited to pass it along.

And when we heard from DanceSafe really in this past year about this project that they wanted to pursue it, for us at the foundation, we’re always excited to share pieces of Ann and Sasha’s work as broadly as we can. And I think the enthusiasm that it’s being embraced, with which it’s being embraced, is also just really exciting to see. People still are really, they really care about, you know, Sasha’s work. They are still, they’re aware of it. The awareness is building. And on top of that, getting to work with DanceSafe as an organization, which has been such an incredible staple in the, you know, rave community and keeping people safe and informing people. For me, it’s just like a huge win to get to work together. And I’m really excited to see how it progresses. The artists have been making some really incredible pieces.

Joe Moore (04:47): Well, thank you both for sharing. That’s great. And I’m curious, Mikayla, what is DanceSafe?

Mikayla Hellwich (05:11): DanceSafe is a public health organization that serves music and nightlife communities. We’ve been around since nineteen ninety eight and we provide culturally responsive, resonant education around how to party safer. We teach people how to party safer, better and longer. If you’ve ever met somebody who’s running a DanceSafe chapter, they’re so good at having fun. I can’t even tell you like how amazing they are at having a good time. Because when we create safer containers, we can have a better time. And I, I’m really, really proud and excited of all of the chapters who have stuck around through this challenging period that we’ve been through. We still have ten active chapters who have stayed through funding cuts and uncertainty and confusion and leadership changes and everything, and they are really the most relentlessly dedicated people I’ve ever met.

Um it’s it’s such a privilege to be to be in this role um which happened um by accident it was I was not um I was not I did not apply for this job I fell into it and um Yeah, and to just see how this organization is capable of evolving into meeting the changing needs of nightlife in the different regions that it operates, I think is really powerful too, because if you go to a music festival in SoCal, it is not the same as going to a music festival It’s not the same as going to a music festival in Ohio or New York. Like these things are very regional. The communities are very regional. The needs, the drug market is very different. And we are one of the, we were one of the first providers of drug checking tools in the country and we are still one of the largest providers of drug checking tools.

So if you go to our website, you can find fentanyl test strips, xylazine test strips, other immunoassay test strips that test for the presence of certain substances in chemical composition. You can also purchase chemical reagents that provide presumptive information about the presence of certain substances within a sample. Unless you have a relationship with a lab, you can send in for more detailed analysis. And according to a survey, a recent survey by the National Association for City and County Health Officials, we are one of the top two sought after reliable trusted resources for drug checking information in the United States. So cool.

Joe Moore (07:40): Well thank you for all that effort it’s a lot but it goes a long way I always go back on drug checking to a conversation or presentation I saw Horizons a while ago by some folks in the UK called The Loop and they showed up um and were able to do on-site drug checking at a festival and I think year over year, just by offering this anonymous drug checking, reduced ambulance rides by eighty percent from the festival. So amazing, important, essential, and let’s keep getting louder and saving more lives. So thank you, Mikayla.

Mikayla Hellwich (08:23): Thank you. Thanks, Joe.

Joe Moore (08:26): For sure. Megan, can you tell us a bit about the Shulgin Foundation?

Megan Bowers (08:29): Sure yeah and when Mikayla and I were chatting ahead I was like I remember I won’t say what age I was but being at a music and nightlife event um may or may not have been legal but as a very young person and seeing the DanceSafe um the DanceSafe booth and eventually my curiosity got the better of me and I just remember feeling like so safe and held by the fact that this was a service and there were these adults and, you know, older young people who wanted to help and care for this community and keep it safe and help it be strong. I think it’s just continued. Anyway, so thank you DanceSafe.

Um so the Shulgin Foundation um is a foundation that um Wendy Tucker and Peter Batali started back in two thousand twenty three um Ann and Sasha Shulgin were um if you’re not familiar with who they are look them up they were absolute pioneers in the psychedelic field Sasha was a biochemist and he developed hundreds of psychoactive chemicals. He worked in phenethylamines and tryptamines and all, I mean, all over the map, truly. But he had a DEA Schedule I research lab here at the farm. By the way, I’m here at the farm right now. I’m in Sasha’s office. Yes, these cabinets are absolutely chock full of his notes, handwritten and sarcastic commentary and literary expertise. But anyway, there’s a lab here that he worked in. He did the majority of his work here.

And um you know the property itself because he had a research license he was a first of all he tested all these um substances on himself and he made incredibly detailed notes on everything notes that are still informing psychedelic science today and um they they invited a research group that would come and test these compounds with them and Ann would be here and Ann became a leader and major support of the psychedelic psychotherapy community and the farm became this hub not only of psychedelic scientists also psychedelic therapists and in addition like anyone who wanted to know anything about psychedelics or was working in the field they were essentially the elders of the field and they mentored hundreds and hundreds of people who came through the farm and um so yeah they’re really at the root of this psychedelic movement especially on the west coast here um we’re in Lafayette California which is really adjacent to Berkeley so it’s essentially this like academic center of the psychedelic movement on in the California coast the foundation was was formed to preserve the property because it is really a I mean it’s a treasure especially in the field it’s completely unique in that this is a place where all of this incredible relevant psychedelic history happened it has impacted my elders your elders they were here it has impacted psychedelic psychotherapeutic training all over the world and the science all over the world and it’s still here and it’s still intact and so preserving it as kind of a museum quality experience for the house and the lab although the lab is still in operation with you know Paul Daley is one part and then the other thing that we’re doing is um we’re you know renovating some of the buildings on property to create an education center I’ll pause there.

So there’s lots of big work that’s happening around the foundation right now.

Joe Moore (12:24): That’s outstanding. Yeah, and essential to preserve some of these places, right? There’s a lot of history at Esalen. I think they’ve got it from here. But places like the farm really deserve preservation, recognition, and it’s kind of just… You know really heartening to go be part of history and get to go touch it and feel it poke around like I think I got to record a podcast with Wendy in that same chair you’re in right now nice that’s slightly that’s true

Mikayla Hellwich (13:11): What you described of like touching this piece of history. So I went to Denver in February to meet with our Wendy, our board secretary, to sort the glass for this project into batches that would then be sold or not sold, sent to the artists. and um and so we’re you know we’re wearing gloves and we’re trying not to cut ourselves because we’re we’re sorting through this box of glass shards and we’re sorting into little piles and and we’re both just dumbfounded by by kind of the magic of this this moment that we were sharing together um neither of us sliced any of our fingers open

Megan Bowers (13:55): Um yeah it has that effect it has the effect of being able to put your feet on the ground and touch and be in a space where history happened you know and um as the field continues to develop and you know we’re all in remote work and everyone is kind of all over the place it’s really special and unique to have a place where you can go be and so

Mikayla Hellwich (14:20): And I’m glad that I appreciate that you like felt that while handling the glass too it’s it’s wasn’t it yeah it’s really powerful um I’m a social worker and a therapist by trade so so also having that layer of connection to to Ann and Sasha’s work is really meaningful to to me personally and to like people to like participate in this is is really um humbling honestly

Joe Moore (14:20): Right. I think I was considering recently was this kind of ability to have memories associated with things and objects in your environment. And so when you get to go touch those things, kind of builds the potency of that memory. I don’t know about either of you, but I’m of the opinion that Sasha is like top two or three psychedelic minds of all time. And I don’t, I don’t, like a lot of people talk about Sasha. Not too many people read their work, like, you know, PiHKAL and TiHKAL are, you know, lovely, but the nature of drugs, It’s unbelievable. These lectures from UC Berkeley he was giving, and it’s an amazing way to, you know, they’re publishers, Transform Press, like transform your understanding of what drugs are and how should we be thinking about these substances in this strange psychedelic ecosystem? Because there’s so many unruly opinions out there about what’s the right way.

And then there’s some of us you know uh say retired ravers that have different kinds of experiences with what drugs aren’t what the right way to do these things are uh you know Sasha was very advanced in his thinking and you know the everybody should go read that go buy a copy from Transform Press nature of drugs please

Megan Bowers (16:01): Yeah, that’s right. It was from a recording of these lectures that he gave. And again, it’s like one of those moments of, thank God those recordings were preserved and they didn’t get lost. The archive here is insane. I mean, I can’t really see. This is just, this is the office. All these cabinets, every single one of them top to bottom is like stuffed.

Full of notes they’re all filed some of them have hilarious titles like one one of there’s this one vital file kind of tucked in among all these other files that reads um crap written by illiterates you know and then right behind it is a file that’s like a an exhaustive file on fentanyl and then behind that is you know another file that has a pithy title it’s like the voluminous academic study of every single I mean these all of these are either full of correspondence or they’re full of studies of different substances plus everything else he was interested in it’s amazing um really the spectrum of study that he did and I can’t even show you the shelves over here they’re all full of the same um

Joe Moore (17:20): So that’s just one of many rooms, right? Like, there’s a handful of other zones with deep archives as well?

Megan Bowers (17:20): Yeah. Um the living room is also full of books um some first edition aldous huxley’s and all kinds of interesting um uh titles and topics and then in the barn which is going to be the site of our major renovation um there are I want to say you know there’s like three aisles of shelving full of archival material.

And what’s interesting about the archive is that know there’s uh there’s use for it now right someone there’s an author who’s um doing a book on MDMA and she wants to come research Sasha’s MDMA papers which are extensive um and so that’s great it’s useful now but the other piece is really for for the future right when people are studying the arc of how different psychedelic substances were discovered put to use like there are date books that detail Every single visit that ever happened here because you know Sasha and Ann were just they were open doors someone would call and say hey I’d love to come talk to you about this you know project we’re working on they say great come for lunch it might be someone they knew it might be someone they hadn’t met a college student or a scientist that happened to be visiting the states who wanted to come sit with them and their date books are full of all those that information and um as maria mangini who’s one of our board members is want to say it’ll be fascinating in a hundred years when someone is looking back at how this arc developed they’ll be able to see who came to visit Ann and Sasha and then how it you know like the changes in their work once they went home

Joe Moore (19:33): Wow. So there’s it. It really is like an incredible historical treasure, the archive and something that we’re pretending carefully and seeking the right home for. Shout out to UC Berkeley. It sounds like they really understood the the. The potency of what they had stumbled upon and what they were exploring to keep those kinds of detailed records just shows how astute they were in understanding like how important these would end up being.

Megan Bowers (20:08): Yeah. And it’s also like, so for example, we just did this huge exhibit on the, like the history of MDMA throughout, through the Shulgin Archive lens, right? And we found this document that was a letter from a CDC manager who was managing the Haight-Ashbury Clinic. And it was like, dear Dr. Shulgin, can you please take a look at these flyers we’ve developed? We’re hoping to influence the music and nightlife community by creating these harm reduction flyers. And each flyer kind of had a message about safe sex or about consent or about drinking enough water or whatever. And they sent it to Sasha asking for his opinion.

And there’s this kind of mythos out there that even though Sasha was instrumental in seeding MDMA back into the world that he that they hated the rave scene and they really just you know the reality was they they were sad to see MDMA become adulterated but in this letter Sasha kind of pours it out he’s like these are fantastic you know people need this kind of information all these young people are out there exploring their consciousness and they should be you know supported and kept safe while they’re doing it and it was it was a really interesting statement um that you know I think even though if you sat down and asked them they’d say wait till you’re in your twenties um but at the same time they were not you know, they weren’t trying to force anybody into molds. They just recognized the importance of keeping people safe while they explored.

And so there’s all kinds of pieces like that that really kind of reveal the nuance of how they felt and, you know, navigated all that complexity. It must have been so challenging to for them to be

Mikayla Hellwich (22:02): Witnessing this unfolding of MDMA and to watch it be emergency scheduled and then fully scheduled and to see I don’t know. I’m just like trying to put myself in their shoes for a moment and think about how, how difficult it must be for them or it must have been for them to, um, be trying to spread this medicine and then, and then for it to, um, and then for the government to get involved in all of the wrong ways. Um, and I don’t know. Yeah. I went, I was wondering if you could speak to that part, like, like for them to see, to see that piece happen.

Joe Moore (22:41): Right, it’s like watching your baby go sideways.

Megan Bowers (22:45): Yeah, I think that while there were many people working in psychedelic psychotherapy, Ann and Sasha were really dedicated to bringing these medicines into the therapeutic practice. And so even though they were very close to San Francisco, like their work in producing or his work really in producing psychedelics really was geared towards the therapeutic community. That was where the MDMA would go. And so they were laser focused on that really. And I think that, you know, just from all the different stories that I’ve been told that they became very active. Like once it became known to them that the DEA was planning on a scheduling session, they became very active, activated a number of people in their community.

Um and you know as the story was told to me um they activated this woman named Elise Agar who um was like a community organizer and like a connector and they said you know this is going to go sideways Michael Clegg is producing ecstasy he’s doing it you know um mil like thousands tens of thousands of doses per month were going out And Michael Clegg, when he met with Sasha, said, you know, essentially, like, I’m the biggest producer of ecstasy in the world, and I have no intention of stopping. And the alarm bells went off for the Shulgins. And they said, oh, my God, this is kind of the mechanism that the DEA is going to latch onto. And sure enough, that’s what happened. So when they activated Elise Agar, they said, we need help. We need energy. We need passion. We need to fight this. We need to fight this criminalization effort.

And so Elise called Debbie Harlow, and Debbie Harlow said, there’s this guy I just treated with MDMA for the first time. He’s got a ton of energy. We should ask him. His name’s Rick Doblin. And the three of them formed the Earth Metabolic Design Lab, and that was the precursor to MAPS. And so that effort, also ARUPA, there’s all these groups of people that were closely following these hearings, trying to impact them, training psychiatrists to go on for them in these hearings, to actually sue. And in the end, you know, they watched the criminalization happen and knowing that Michael Clegg, you know, Mr. Texas and the Texas group, and there was another organization too, that they were just going to make boatloads of money. And that, so that’s, you know, and that’s what they were going to continue doing. So they like watched the credibility of MDMA grow.

You know, be degraded while watching the rise of kind of adulterated pressies. And yeah, it made them sad, you know, for the therapeutic community at minimum. It’s a really interesting bit of the history around the Stark Club in Dallas, where kind of like ecstasy hit America in a large part. And

Joe Moore (25:55): You know, everybody was there and, you know, there’s still ripples from that today in the funding ecosystems and advocacy work and beyond. Right. So it’s, you know, we never know what you’re going to get, even if it goes wild in Texas. But yeah, absolutely. It’s it’s fascinating and I can’t wait to read more about that history I hope I hope this author does a kind of more of a historical Sasha perspective Sasha and perspective that’d be fun um yeah so I guess let’s let’s kind of name that part we didn’t really um talk about it MDMA Sasha Or what’s, how do you all talk about it over there? Like what was Sasha and Ant’s role in the MDMA revival?

Megan Bowers (26:53): Okay. Well, yeah. So thinking about it, you know, through the timeline, you know, Sasha synthesized. So, you know, it was invented by Merck in nineteen twelve. You know, they were looking for a solution for blood clotting. And so, you know, they they isolated it, they tested it and were like, no, not what we’re looking for and shelved it. And, you know, there are some like whisperings and not a lot of documentation about it potentially having been used between that time and. When it started becoming more popularized. Or more known, I think, in these niche communities is probably a better way of describing it. But Sasha, one of Sasha’s students said, hey, you should really look at this. And so he resynthesized it and then also shelved it. He was like it was nineteen sixty five or six and he he he synthesized it and then put it on the shelf. It just wasn’t what he was looking for.

But it came back around. And in nineteen seventy five or six, he was inspired by a student again to resynthesize it and to heavily test it against the other substances he had already been creating for a decade and a half.

Joe Moore (28:18): Wait, can I pause you for a second? I’m curious, did he consume it when he first synthesized it in, what was it, sixty-five? Or did he just like, he synthesized it and was like, I don’t need to put this in my body and then put it on a shelf as I was considering that he was, you know, he was already he was already in the process of synthesizing all these other substances. So you just wonder if he made the note and he’s like, come back later. But he was distracted by 2C-B and busy. Right. It’s like too many other psychedelics.

Megan Bowers (28:46): Right. Exactly. And, you know, they were working with all kinds of stuff, not just the stuff that he was, you know, that he was developing. And in the notebooks, you can see the detailed accounts of, like, this is MDA plus LSD at these levels. And here are, you know, here’s the trip report sequence, essentially. And at this level, at this level, at this level. So it’s really fascinating stuff. But anyway, so…

To your point about the, about kind of how they got involved, in seventy-six, he resynthesizes it, he tries it, and he’s like, whoa, this is important, right, this is really important, particularly if you think about the, you know, the climate around psychedelics at that time, and um the substance like you know LSD being so prolific and um so controversial and this was a different experience altogether and so at that point it’s a little it gets a little foggy because um just you know Leo Zeff is a person who’s cloaked in a lot of secrecy his students don’t talk about him even now. There’s hardly any photos of him. He’s kind of like this very undercover but known figure. Leo Zeff was a psychiatrist who’d been working with psychedelic substances for a few decades at this point, like in the underground and training people.

And he’d been working with MDA and LSD, but it only took him so far and he was ready to retire. He’d trained so many people already. But Sasha said, try this. And Leo tried it and realized that this was the next, like this was, this was it. This was going to transform psychotherapy. And so at that point, Leo decided not to retire and he took MDMA on the road and started teaching people all over the country how to incorporate it into their therapeutic practice.

And the number of people I want to say, and like, you know, teachers and like, when you look around at psychedelic psychotherapeutic programs around the country and even the world, if you know, you know, and you can see the people who are trained by Seth, you can see the people who later became part of the Shulgin’s like, you know, therapeutic community that would congregate here and talk about their various practices and really start to codify what were the best practices for these therapeutic approaches. And so, yeah, that’s kind of like where they, that’s where Sasha kind of launched it. And then there’s this story that Wendy told us, and I know I can share it now because we were able to put it in our MDMA molecule to movement film short that we did for the exhibit.

But there’s this story about how, you know, Sasha would make MDMA for the purposes of sharing it with the therapeutic community, the underground community. And he would take that MDMA in a bag or whatever the receptacle was, and they would carve out the middle of a loaf of bread, like these like, you know, kind of home baked breads and put the bag inside and cap it and then wrap it up in a, in a, in a, you know, cute cozy bag. Put it in a basket or some, you know, some sort of like cute little lady transport device and then Ann would take it to tea. And would trade loaves of bread with the person who was going to take it to the community. And I think one of the really important things, like Sasha was really, like ethics were really important to him.

Like he, and so while he would at times accept money for his time, he never charged, it was not like, you know, some sort of major operation they didn’t, They didn’t make money, but he was paid for his time. And so these loaves of bread would be exchanged and the other loaf would have some money in it and that would get carried back and hopefully the bread got eaten. But it was this like very sweet, kind of like the most kind of innocent exchange of elements that you can imagine. And, you know, I think this went on for a little while.

Mikayla Hellwich (33:07): When Megan and I met last week and she told me that, I was like, that is the most wholesome thing I have ever heard. Also, can you imagine being Leo Zeff on the verge of retirement and then suddenly MDMA comes to him? Oh my gosh.

Megan Bowers (33:21): Yeah. I mean, he trained hundreds of people after that, right? Ann estimated that there were over four hundred therapists that he trained directly after MDMA came in and he had already trained so many people. And then those people essentially kind of like seeded the movement, you know. When we talk about underground practitioners, you know, for a few years I was working with a practitioner organization and it was like you’ve got psychiatrists and psychotherapists and then you have the underground practitioners. Reality is that underground practitioners span a lot of a lot of professions especially then most of them were really well trained um people so these you know it wasn’t just going to people who wanted to do whatever they wanted it was like these were actively like psychotherapists, analysts, psychiatrists, people who just knew it was really important and valuable.

And so, yeah, it’s kind of a sweet story and it’s interesting counterpoint for the seventies when you think about like Hippy Hill in San Francisco and Grateful DEAd and everything else that was happening. Kind of in in the psychedelic lsc driven ecosphere and yet um this was like this very academic and like sweet um you know ethical approach over here it’s pretty cool nice juxtaposition

Joe Moore (34:45): It seems like an interesting extension almost, in a way, that kind of East Coast, West Coast Ken Kesey Leary situation, in a way, with the East Coast just keeping it in hospitals, seemingly, up until prohibition. But that was post-Controlled Substances Act of, what was that, six, seven or eight, something like that?

Megan Bowers (35:14): Yes.

Joe Moore (35:17): Yeah, so it is fascinating to think about all this and the different streams. Mikayla, go for it.

Mikayla Hellwich (35:17): Oh, no, that was an accident.

Joe Moore (35:31): It’s all good.

Megan Bowers (35:33): Yeah, and if people want to know more about Leo Zeff, that’s in the book, The Secret Chief. He kind of does a tell-all of sorts.

Joe Moore (35:42): And Megan, it’s fascinating to me that people still are wanting to keep secrets far beyond statute of limitations. And I’ve only really ever encountered it out there in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Megan Bowers (35:59): You know, I think it has to do with, I think it’s also a generational thing, right? So for us, like our generation, I’m kind of guessing we’re all nearest the same age range, right? It’s like, it it’s been illicit but it was never like it was then right and like the consequences and the jail time and the like the fear and secrecy that people in the psychedelic field endured I mean I have this moment this is how I know I’ve kind of like really landed in Shulgin lexicon because um the psychedelic renaissance as a phrase here is like the elders are like excuse me It never died. It went underground and it was held by your psychedelic elders the entire time. It’s just resurfacing. It’s like it’s just just so you know, this is not a new thing. This is something we’ve been holding for you all along the way. And so it’s a really interesting perspective, a historical perspective.

But those people, because they were operating in secrecy during the war on drugs, um which got so intense and intensified they’re ingrained like secrecy and safety is ingrained in them and so um you know releasing information especially for someone who from someone who passed who you were sworn to secrecy to protect I can imagine I can imagine why the loyalty remains and the habit remains as well

Joe Moore (37:34): Let’s be clear. We’re still during the war on drugs. It’s fine. It was the first iteration of it. Somebody, a whole organization here in Colorado just became incarcerated. It was probably eight of them. One guy’s looking, you know, they weren’t operating very cleanly. He’s looking at least twelve years in the psychedelic-ish ecosystem.

Mikayla Hellwich (38:03): Yeah, I’ve had friends very close to being incarcerated for well over a decade in the past handful of years.

Joe Moore (38:10): And Colorado, because of prohibition, just had a death in an underground space, not the one you saw in the headlines, but like a kind of dodgy facilitator org. And that kind of thing only can persist because of prohibition. And so we’re kind of, you know, Who is it? Jared Polis gives us a little bit of a pass that we can kind of talk about this more loudly. But realistically, we’re going to have to keep fighting this thing. And Sasha was an ardent advocate for fighting the drug war. He thought it made zero sense. He thought drugs were the thing that were going to help us through climate, nuclear catastrophe, et cetera, which was very alive in the seventies.

The Cold War looked a lot scarier than climate did uh I don’t know let’s say then climate did in um and then um you know it’s me trying to make it snarky and softer I don’t know um no to your to your to your point I

Mikayla Hellwich (39:14): Or that it’s circumvent some sort of loophole um and it’s created a climate where people are consuming substances that they believe are regulated for their safety but they’re not

Joe Moore (41:58): Yeah, the whole drug war is bonkers, obviously, and Sasha and Ann spoke very eloquently about it. DanceSafe, you all have been at it for a long time. And you know I’ve learned a ton both from Shulgin and dance save so this is like fun to have you all together um and you know just I don’t I don’t know of other organizations in the states that really have a cogent kind of conversation about transforming drug policy like there’s SSDP that’s a student org yeah you know MAPS MAPS in the last bit of time is kind of jumping on the train which is lovely um but you know UK has transform drug policy um but Mikayla am I wrong is there is there other are there other like amazing kind of drug policy orgs that are actually working to end prohibition and save lives?

Mikayla Hellwich (43:10): There’s a drug policy alliance. Yeah.

Joe Moore (43:13): I forgot about Ethan. Sorry, Ethan. He’s not there anymore. It’s been a while. Yeah, I actually haven’t checked in with DPA in a while. Are they HQ’d in New York? Do you know?

Mikayla Hellwich (43:20): I know that one of their offices is in New York. Yeah. They’re very much involved in like a lot of state level program, sorry, state level like policy initiatives for like expanding access to harm reduction services, for example, like expanding access to syringe service programs and, you know, decriminalizing paraphernalia and, um, gosh, even just like decriminalizing all drugs for like in, in Maryland. Um, we’ve had, um,

Joe Moore (44:05): You just have to keep reintroducing it until they cave.

Mikayla Hellwich (44:09): But they’re absolutely involved in decriminalization efforts, which, again, is this kind of double-edged sword. And I haven’t tapped into the policy side in a while. I’ve been tapped out of the policy side for a couple of years. But, you know, to sort of… No, I zoomed into micro work. Now I’m like mopping up the ocean with supporting people as a therapist. The…

Megan Bowers (44:41): Yeah I think it’s interesting too I mean so from our perspective like we’re not a like we’re not a we are 501(c)(3) but we’re not you know we can’t be out there lobbying candidates and there’s you know we have limits on what we can do um politically but um I think that one of the key things that’s for me I feel is a real gap and it’s something that we’re focused on right now developing is just public education. And public education that’s not focused around selling you a product, right? Because there’s a lot of influencers out there, God bless them. Some of them more informed than others, some of them more humble than others. And there are educational organizations like yours. I mean, Psychedelics Today has been in this industry educating people for a long time. And I think there just needs to be more of that where, you know, we’re like, hey, this is education for education’s sake.

This is, you know, these are pros, cons. These are risks, harms. These are benefits. This is, you know, this is what this substance is. This is the, you know, we’ve started doing these substance spotlights in our newsletters because we feel like it’s important that people understand the history of a substance, what it does.

The risks of it um what’s what is being studied for right now because a lot of the Shulgin chemicals um are being studied um for a very at various stages of FDA either you know getting them into studies working towards uh approvals or they’re just being studied for what are their effects and some of them are like so random I mean we’re like they like isolate your hearing and so they can be used to study hearing loss right it’s you don’t get you don’t get a physical high but like you you know it it works with your hearing in different ways and so there’s a lot of different ways And so even just that level of education is important, but there’s so much in the news and there’s so much really technical stuff out there.

I mean, if you’re reading executive orders, if you’re reading, you’re trying to like look things up and find a good source and you’re finding these technical scientific white papers and studies being published, you might not have any idea about what half of that language means. Even sometimes just in the news or you hear an expert talk about psychedelics and some of the, even just some of the words they’re using are, you know, kind of opaque if you don’t know. And so for us, we’re looking at, we’re kind of like studying this case about how to begin educating people with vocabulary, you know, And then, you know, this is where that science meets psychedelics. Like so that, you know, that’s another program. Like this is where it happened. This is why it happened. This is why it’s important now. And then kind of moving into these expert level discussions.

But by building these vocabularies for people and helping them and giving them a resource that is not, you know, I’m not trying to sell them a product. I’m not trying to do anything except, you know, give you information. We’re hoping that, you know, building on Ann and Sasha’s work of like free distribution of information, sharing, always sharing knowledge, encouraging people to study more, and giving people the basics and when they’re engaged in you know whether or not they’re going to support drug policy and how they’re going to support drug policy like we’re essentially building an educated readership so that they know what to call their policymakers about they know what when they look at something they you know they just start paying closer attention And, you know, we’re working with SSDP on a program on site that’ll be geared towards students and bringing them in to say, like, how can I get involved with this fight?

I want to be a researcher. I want to work in harm reduction. I want to work in policy. And so providing an opportunity for people to connect with leaders in that space and build the inspiration and, you know, build the awareness. I’m like I think about that grassroots approach where we’re just we’re trying to touch hearts and minds and educate people and like hit the inspiration button for them so that they can grow and become who they’re supposed to be in the movement

Joe Moore (49:00): So brilliant.

Megan Bowers (49:01): Yeah, thank you.

Joe Moore (49:02): And that’s the name of the game is education, right? Like DanceSafe does this. Yes. And we’ve been at it for a bit. Like one of our starting points was let’s educate undergrads who are probably going to, not probably, more prone than others to get kind of lost in the sauce for a little while and make it easier and better and less headlines. You know, the better drug policy we can develop.

And yeah, I want to bring up another Sasha-ism, well, like train of thought was this whole, Federal Analogue Act conversation around what does it mean if something is, so if folks don’t know this one, which probably many of you do not, Federal Analogue Act was a federal law put in place that made substances that were quote unquote substantially similar to federally scheduled substances illicit, and let’s be really clear, illegal to possess, um manufacturer etc transfer um but what does that really mean what does it mean to be substantially similar and Sasha in court in a major way challenged that and I You can find a lot of recordings of him discussing that. I think it’s a really important conversation because what does that mean? Does it actually hold up in Supreme Court? It doesn’t mean you should sell LSD analogs on Twitter and think you can get away with it. You’re not endorsing that right now, FYI. What was that?

Mikayla Hellwich (50:38): We’re not endorsing that at all, FYI.

Joe Moore (50:52): Please don’t buy acid on the internet, everybody. Please do not do it, especially on social media. I know it’s tempting. Don’t buy your acid on Twitter. Don’t buy the Microsoft stuff, please.

Mikayla Hellwich (51:05): It’s also arbitrary. I was making some content on TikTok for a little while. It was a drug education geared towards parents whose teenagers are using drugs. And some of my content was getting flagged. Some of it was getting taken down. And I opened up my Facebook app and they’re selling mushrooms on Facebook. And then on TikTok, there’s kids filming themselves using drugs and glorifying it and being super unsafe. And I’m just looking at this like, oh, no. They are blocking all of the wrong things. They’re blocking harm reduction. I know. And so the policy scheme and the arbitrariness of all of that has its tentacles in everything else. The way that everything else ends up getting regulated or regulated being a misnomer, the way that it gets policed effectively is also incredibly arbitrary and has nothing to do with the science. In fact, many times just ignores it completely. Yeah.

Megan Bowers (52:14): And I mean, I think the Analogue Act is a really interesting example of just like, it’s like, we’re just going to like blanketly say that anything that comes up that looks even remotely like this is going to be in the same category.

Um and you know I think like the analogs law probably was like single-handedly most responsible for the black market on you know all those kinds of substances and it was related it is interesting um you know it was related to Sasha’s work actually because as a DEA Schedule I research lab they could come and inspect any time right I mean there was like a very consistent flow of information and so while Sasha was out there discovering and doing it legally at the same time like very quickly different substances that he discovered within a year or two would become you know added to these very different these different laws and be like swept into analogs and and so that’s interesting but at the same time it’s also interesting because there was you know the fentanyl epidemic as we know it today was actually happening then as well and so while there was the psychedelic analogs that were being impacted by this there was also this effort to stymie the inflow of fentanyl and all the fentanyl analogs that kept slipping through that um to my knowledge were coming over from china that’s like where it was based and so there was like multiple things happening at the same time and I think it actually speaks to drug policy in general and the war on drugs where it’s like you have some really really um you know dangerous substances that are highly addictive um and are really really dangerous right and so trying in trying to kind of like regulate those everything gets swept into the same pile and that’s the I think that’s the distinction it was I think um michael I think you were mentioning the like it’s it’s still happening even in psychedelics right there’s like oh well this is from plants so therefore it’s acceptable right uh this is synthetically made in a lab therefore it’s drugs right and this is medicine and this is drugs So it’s an interesting internalization of the stigma, even within the psychedelic field, because as I was speaking to one of our really incredible supporters today, and they were talking about how This is the kind of medicine they do underground.

These are the ways that it works for them. And we were just commenting on what an incredible, sacred experience it is still because of the work that you do internally, the way that you’re held, the experience that you cultivate. And while I know that there are plenty of arguments to the contrary, you know, my hypothesis is that psychedelics are sacred and can be sacred even if they come from a lab and those experiences can be transformative and sacred. But it is, it’s kind of reminiscent of these like big drug sweeps, these big law sweeps that attempted to just capture everything and anything that alters your mind all at once with indiscriminately. And yeah, I keep trying to like tease that line with people, you know, speaking to in some of the wonderful indigenous practitioners I know. And I’m like, what is it? You know, like, how is this seen?

Like, how is this talked about amongst, you know, you and your peers and people? And there’s a, there is a variety of opinions of how, you know, like what’s the impact of everyone using plant medicine? Are there enough plants to support everyone with, right? There aren’t, there’s not enough cacti in the world for everyone to do peyote medicine. Or even a smidgen of people. And those plants need to be protected. They really do. And, you know, there are historical norms that make them important to different communities and those should be, that should be protected too and honored. So why then are we, why do we harsh on synthetics? You know, like in that case, it’s synthetic or synthetically derived substances. Why is that?

You know, and so I’m trying to, we’re kind of like formulating this conversation, hoping that we’ll be able to have it more often because I think there’s a really broad opening around, you know, people using ketamine responsibly and like all kinds of different legal pieces and different kinds of substances in studies at the same time. And there’s a lot of interesting work that’s being done out there and I want to get it out of the stigma. I’m a mushrooms only person. Just kidding. Just kidding.

Mikayla Hellwich (57:16): Yeah, I love that. I love that this conversation led here because it’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot just in terms of like the I don’t know, in the context of movement theory, how do we rally people and get people mobilized around this thing that’s really important? And the way that I’ve been kind of conceptualizing this piece of the conversation is that any drug can be medicine. Not that any drug is medicine or that every drug is medicine for every person, but any drug can potentially be a medicine for a person. And to get ourselves outside of the like plant medicine exceptionalism and get us outside of the psychedelic exceptionalism and say that, okay, in what way is this substance potentially useful for a person? And then creating pathways for safer access for people.

And I do think it’s intellectually dishonest to say that psychedelics are not somehow exceptional in some way, but that doesn’t mean that the people who use them are exceptional or that the people who use them deserve more freedom or that the people who use them are more enlightened. Or any of that. I mean, there’s, you know, some of the most egregious abuse I’ve ever seen happened in psychedelic spaces. And so I think we need to be really, really honest with ourselves and with each other about the totality of what we’re actually talking about. Like, we’re talking about legalizing medicine. We’re not talking about legalizing drugs. We’re talking about legalizing medicine. And I hope to, like, advance that conversation more. This goes beyond recreation because also, again, recreation can also be a healing experience.

Recreation can be just experiencing joy and fun and lightheartedness can be a profoundly positive connecting experience that produces for an individual and a community a sense of wholeness. And our society is sick. Our society is so, so very sick and needs spaces where people can can experience collective joy without worrying about their freedom or worrying about their safety.

Joe Moore (59:34): Well said. I had to delete a segment of a podcast once at a guest’s request because she said, attached to some veterans group, so it was touchy. But it was about how people coming back from really intense traumatic experiences They’re trying to find the quickest thing they can. Sometimes it’s alcohol, sometimes it’s opioids, sometimes it’s other things. Who’s to say that’s right or wrong? The system wasn’t there to catch them when they needed something. And sometimes addictive patterns can slip in. I like to say this on the air. I’ve had a lot of success with fentanyl. In my life. You know, I’ve had too many surgeries from being crazy. But yeah, Mikayla, sorry, go ahead.

Mikayla Hellwich (1:00:22): Oh, that’s okay. I just I have this image in my mind of, of like a house fire, and call for help, because you’ve got a house fire. And the person putting out the fire is pointing the hose at the fire, the fires put out, but they keep pointing the hose at the fire that’s no longer there. They’re just pouring water on something that’s already extinguished, creating a gigantic mess that’s maybe just as bad as if no one had ever called the fire department in the first place. And that’s an exaggerated visual image, but that’s kind of how I’m thinking about the difference between like medicines that immediately alleviate symptoms. Sometimes you need a medicine that immediately alleviates your symptoms and doesn’t ask you to go inward because that’s too overwhelming. Sometimes you need a medicine that provides immediate pain relief.

Joe Moore (1:01:18): You know, I’m really glad they gave me fentanyl in the ambulance and not LSD. Right. Yeah.

Mikayla Hellwich (1:01:25): I broke my arm snowboarding years ago and I’m really, really glad they didn’t give me a psychedelic in the ambulance. Yeah.

Joe Moore (1:01:32): That would be interesting, but I wouldn’t be there for it. I’m not signing up for that ambulance. No, it was not a good time. No. And, you know, yeah, Where do we need to catch people so that we can kind of have better conversations? And I think, Megan, to your point, it’s like, let’s build a grammar and vocabulary that allows us to have nuanced, careful conversations here. And, you know, sure, yes, there is a problem around fentanyl. What are y’all doing to address it? Like, are you just putting more people in jail and criminalizing people post-mortem? Or are you saying like, oh, let’s actually make it easier for you to test these things and stay safe? Um, maybe there’s some sort of safe supply pathway, which, you know, New York just even shut down, uh, at least this time around the, uh, kind of safe supply for mushrooms, um, which was, which was going to be interesting.

It was going to be kind of a Leary style pilot’s license model initially. I don’t know what it evolved to in this later additions, but very fascinating. Um, and yeah, then we need to figure out this, this more molecular lab conversation because I’m You know, some people are going to tell us within the next twelve months that the only OK way to access MDMA is in a seven thousand dollar clinical environment. Yeah. And, you know, it’s not like they can make these things all that more illegal anyway. So, you know, they’ll try. They’ll try. But yeah, it’s going to be fascinating to see how this whole thing plays out.

Megan Bowers (1:03:14): Yeah, I think what I’m so, you know, I started at the Shulgin Foundation about ten months ago now, and it’s been like this incredible ride of working with really passionate people and, you know, like zipping on the wheels and finally starting to, you know, gain movement. In fact, by the way, we just announced that we’ve received this amazing grant towards the purchase of the property and renovation. So we’re raising capital to purchase and restore the property, the farm. And purchasing it from the heirs is important. Restoring it, very important. And then renovating it so that it can really house our true mission, which is education, on-site experiential education and events. But we just received an incredible grant from Chris Larson. Chris Larson, thank you so much, of eight hundred thousand dollars towards our almost three million dollar goal. So that’s very, very exciting and really strong movement.

And of course, I just had to put a plug in there because we are, you know, what we’re working toward is the coalition of people who really get it, really understand what we’re trying to do here.

Um and people are really starting to show up um in these bigger substantial ways there’s been many people along the way a huge shout out to our Seed Crystal Stewards and all of our donors but um anyway so in the last ten months it’s been this amazing moment to be able to say realize that like the Shulgin Foundation has this like kind of unique place I think where we have this academic therapeutic background and we also are really focused on cognitive liberty and we get to kind of straddle right we get to be able to say okay like we believe in both ends of this stick and everything in between and we’re here to support you know lifting everybody up through education or events or you know making connections or whatever it is but I’m I’m personally like so grateful to be in this position because I get to just be my full self with the full range of my beliefs about psychedelic medicine because the idea that medicalization is going to be the only way I think first of all it’s just a fallacy we’ve already we already know that right I mean we’ve been watching that I mean DanceSafe came to be to literally support the fact that it was, you know, already wildly on the other side of that stick.

So, you know, I think for those of us that have seen this, you know, as long as we have, and then our elders who are telling us all the other stories, we already know that it’s not gonna just be one way. And I think if we can keep this narrative moving so that we are in a place of being able to support the broader acceptance. I don’t think it will end with just these medicalized models because it just won’t, right? The black market is already so, so strong, you know, to think that everything will get shut down. It won’t. So why not? Okay, sure, start with these medicalized models, but then continue to open these doors so that people can really explore with their cognitive liberty and they can choose whether to safely engage on their own or they can choose to engage with a therapist because that’s what they need, you know.

And so, yeah, that’s, I love that we get to speak across the spectrum here because I think as we all kind of know, the black market’s just not going away. It’s just, it’s just not a thing.

Mikayla Hellwich (1:06:53): And people just want to use drugs in all kinds of different places that don’t have anything to do with their, you know, their therapist or their… Yeah, I mean, there’s so many different… And context that people want to be able to use substances in. And as far as I’m concerned, we should make all of them safer, every single one of them, like, and just, and not, and not try to create any kind of, you know, with, with, Obviously, we shouldn’t be, you know, this is, like, the go-to, but nobody should be getting high and then driving. But, like, you know, we don’t want to be limiting people’s access to having safer, more positive experiences that are happening inside of containers that can be made safer.

Joe Moore (1:07:45): Right. So true. Cool. So let’s bring it back around again to the project, and we can work towards closing. Okay. Mitchell, I’ve got access to all sorts of broken glass. He was pitching this to me a while ago. By the way, I was like, what are you saying? It’s crazy. All sorts of lab glass from the Shulgin Farm. And his story, his story is about having to clean that glass when he received it before it could be moved along. I think he spent a while cleaning it with some double gloves and I think it was just dusty. But what he’s, what he said is that there was like, you know, should I lick my finger or no, no, don’t lick the finger. No, no. Yeah. And yeah, let’s pitch it one more time. So Mikayla,

Joe Moore (1:08:40): What is this whole glass thing?

Mikayla Hellwich (1:08:40): So the glass project is a joint fundraiser. DanceSafe and the Shulgin Foundation split all the proceeds right down the middle. And we are selling beautiful pieces of art that incorporate laboratory glass from Sasha Shulgin’s laboratory. And there’s over… I don’t even remember how many artists we have involved. Sixteen, eighteen artists. And we have released two batches so far. And then another third batch will be released in August. You can find it at dancesafe.org/shulginglass, where you can navigate to the different artists’ profiles, read about the artists and their inspiration, watch videos, and see photos of what people have created. A lot of it has already sold, and we have had an incredibly warm reception.

We have had a incredibly warm reception we are asking folks to submit a brief statement of interest which I’m really glad that we’ve done because I think it really helps to make sure that people are um that these like are not impulse purchases that are really going to going to good homes and as a result of that we’re also having such a wonderful opportunity to connect with people um who have a really deep personal connection to Sasha’s work um I’ve heard from you know for example like one of the one of the pen there’s several several pendants that are little glass clear capsules that have shards of glass in it. And they’re stamped with a number and stamped with MDMA on the outside. So it looks like a clear capsule with MDMA inside, but it’s all glass.

I heard from a woman whose marriage was saved by MDMA and she wanted to buy this pendant for her husband as an anniversary gift. Heard from another person who purchased, I think it’s Taylor’s piece called Use Your Imagination. Yeah, it’s just, it was, again, that piece was also purchased for, as like an important gift for a loved one. And so we were also just experiencing the joy of connecting this art with people. And that’s absolutely amazing, heartwarming. It’s so much fun. I’m having so much fun with this.

Megan Bowers (1:10:59): Yeah, and I just want to say how it’s been really wonderful to work with you, Mikayla, and all of the people we’ve worked with on this at DanceSafe over the last year, the passion for the project and your dedication to excellence and just really, you know, really working the problem and working with the artists and I loved hearing your story of how like just you felt inspired again by getting to like handle the glass itself and so it’s been wonderful working with you and thank you so much for all of the work that you’ve done to organize this fundraiser and for honoring the family in the way that you have and such a generous share of profits as well I mean I really just want to say thank you and honor you for all your hard work

Mikayla Hellwich (1:11:46): Thank you. I really appreciate that. Especially after the challenges that we’ve been through, getting to deliver on something that we’re really proud of is so meaningful to us right now. Thanks so much, Megan.

Megan Bowers (1:11:46): You’re nailing it.

Mikayla Hellwich (1:12:01): I’m doing my best.

Joe Moore (1:12:03): Doing my best. Yeah. This conversation is going to take us a really long time. It seems like we’re all here for it. So… You can learn more, everybody, dancesafe.org/shulginglass. Always check out dancesafe.org. You’ll get some more test kits, everybody. Megan, is it shulginfoundation.org?

Megan Bowers (1:12:29): That’s right. That’s right. Yeah. You can learn more about the foundation. We have a volunteer application, which you just let us know if and how you’d like to volunteer. And we have events all the time. And some of them are digital. Some of them are in person. Um we have projects that people can work on the archives is an ongoing project of organization and study and um you know we’re also connected with the Alexander Shulgin Research Institute big shout out to Paul Daley I can’t tell you how many times we get emails where it’s like, I’m a chemist and I have this question. And I’m like, let me direct you to Paul. But we love for people to reach out to us at info@shulginfoundation.org. And you can learn more about our events and volunteering opportunities on our website. Oh, lastly, I’m just going to quick plug that we also just opened up a position for a development manager.

This is a person to be kind of our one of our key fundraisers and so I’m just going to see this here if you’re in the San Francisco Bay Area and you would be interested in working with us on that you can find that information also on our website at shulginfoundation.org

Joe Moore (1:13:27): Right. Well, thank you both so much. I am excited to see where this goes. I am excited to actually look at the art finally.

Mikayla Hellwich (1:13:56): Yes, take a look.

Joe Moore (1:13:58): Yeah, Mitchell told me all about it in Aspen recently. I’m like, wait, how have I not dug into this yet? So I’m excited about that and looking forward to hearing from you both in the future.

Joe Moore (1:14:11): Thank you again for sharing all this fun stuff with us.

Megan Bowers (1:14:11): Yeah, thank you so much, Joe. So much for having us and all the work you’re doing and you and Kyle. It’s just really great to be here with you guys.

Mikayla Hellwich (1:14:23): Thanks, Joe. Thanks so much for having us. Great to see you, Megan.

Megan Bowers and Mikayla Hellwich (1:14:26): You too. Yeah. Bye.