Commercial Psilocybin and the Entourage Effect with Dr. Darryl Hudson

0:11 You're listening to the mushroom revival podcast. I'm your host Alex Dore. If you're our new first time listener, welcome. If you are a longtime listener, welcome back. This podcast is all about diving into the wonderful, wacky world of mushrooms and fungi. We bring on experts and guests from all over the world to geek out with us. And today we have the pleasure to talk with Daryl. So how're you doing? 0:37 I'm doing great yourself. Good. Yeah. So who are you? 0:43 Thanks. 0:45 My name is Dr. Darrell Hudson, I have a PhD in molecular biology and genetics. And 0:51 you know, when I was going to school, I had always hoped to sort of study 0:57 cannabis and mushrooms and sort of these alternatives, medicines. 1:03 I was very fortunate in Canada that essentially right when I finished my, my postdoc, they, they created the legal cannabis program in Canada, the commercial program, and I was able to acquire the first license with a company up here. And that has sort of spawned a career in being able to study controlled substances and really just start to 1:29 start to bring light to the the amazing things that nature has to offer. 1:35 That's awesome. I actually didn't know that. You're the you're the first to get that license. And you're actually one of the first to get a license for psilocybin production in Canada, right? Yeah, well, my partner, Dr. Igor Kovalchuk, he was actually a professor of mine during my undergraduate. And it just so happened that after I got after I was working in the cannabis industry, I went back and visited my hometown, Lethbridge, Alberta, and, and talk to Igor. And at the time, he was actually studying opium poppies. So you can imagine the sort of licensing involved in having to do that, right. So the project that he was working on was kind of coming to an end, and that that spawned us converting that license into a cannabis research license. So, you know, with respect to health Canada and, 2:27 and regulations up here anyways, psilocybin is is viewed as, you know, the lesser of those evils, if you will. 2:37 But obviously, you know, getting that license has been pivotal for us to be able to start to study the mushrooms in a much more controlled laboratory setting. And, I'm sure we'll, we'll talk a bit about that, but, but it's been a really great experience to, 2:56 to, you know, to be able to provide the science to, to explain all these amazing things that we know are really helping so many people. So. 3:08 So first, we're into plants in cannabis. And what what was, was there a defining moment that kind of turned you to the dark side of mushrooms speak? Or were you always into mushrooms? Or was you know, that was just the next logical step after getting the cannabis license was to move towards other kind of natural modalities of psychedelic healing, so to speak? 3:34 I've always been into mushrooms. So, you know, to answer that question, I obviously was, 3:42 was exposed to psilocybin mushrooms as a teenager and it was a very pivotal experience in my life. But beyond that, I was very fortunate during my undergraduate to actually take mycology. And that's, that's kind of a rare thing, especially at some of the smaller schools in Canada. What actually happened was they hired an mycology expert from from agri food Canada, and they set up a mycology course. And it needed 10 students to be enrolled in it for it to run and we got eight students, and it was basically me and my buddies and a couple of people. And, and we, you know, petitioned the university to still do the class, right. So obviously, it was going to be like a one time only thing because there's only eight of us in the class. But that created the scenario where the professor made it probably the most interesting university course that I've ever taken, in that he made 50% of our grade based on mycology, identification. So our entire like, the majority of the class was us going out into the environment, just collecting spores, you know, basically going to the grocery store and rolling papayas on petri dishes and all sorts of crazy stuff, because your grade was based on you know how 5:00 difficult and rare the fungus word to identify, right? So, so we're all looking for these crazy rare and you know, potentially even new species as undergrads and and it created this, you know, this environment for learning where 5:17 I wasn't just being taught mycology but I was, you know becoming passionate about it every single day and that has not ended I mean I was I was just in my backyard I was able to walk out right before this and just have a smoke and you know find some Sylar SVCs, and fingers or something sick and up and, and there's always medical properties in these, you know, like Sylar, you're known as an anti microbial but I came back and just just went into Google Scholar and check some recent publications, right, and there was a publication saying it's an antifungal, so right away, I'm like, oh, let's extract this and sprayed on some cannabis, I've got some outdoor plants that might have a little pm on them. And let's check it out, see if it is antifungal, you know, so. So that is sort of the basis of, of what I do. It's, it's being able to take these amazing combinations of things that nature has made, and, and take them back to the lab and really sort of deconstruct them, and start to figure out what is responsible for the specific medical effects. And there's a lot of ways that we do that. But But first and foremost, really, what we do is try and do like a full spectrum extract, right. And so if you followed any anything in the cannabis space, there's all these ranges of extractions that you can do. And they have different purities, right. And a lot of times what we're seeing is this, this Rick Simpson oil, or basically like a very crude, isopropyl alcohol or like nap, the base extraction, that just pulls all of these molecules out of the cannabis plant and results in this Tari sludge was often showing enhanced medical properties over the cannabinoids that were in that same. So you know, if you put the THC and CBD on in the same ratio as as like a Rick Simpson oil, it wasn't performing as well. And so this is really like the scientific basis for studying what they call the entourage effect. But this is where you're seeing that combinations of molecules are working better than the isolated individual molecules with which we, you know, attribute the pharmacokinetic properties. And this has definitely been true, I would say across the board and cannabis, almost every single disease state, we've looked at 7:42 the inclusion of terpenes and, and some of the other molecules that might not actually be considered, you know, pharmacological, in their effects yet are still, you know, we know them to be effective as, as, as, you know, stimulants, like when you smell pining, you know, your lungs open up and you feel stimulated, right and things like that. So but it's not, not necessarily considered a medicine or it's ever been an applied as a medicine. And so this is where we really, we try and basically take an agnostic approach, and we look at these crude extracts. And we're very fortunate with modern technology to be able to do things quick in the lab. So you know, a lot of what we do is tissue culture based analysis, we can grow petri dishes of different disease states, you know, breast cancer, or we can grow different tissues, whether that's a kidney or a liver. And, and you can treat them different ways and, you know, causing inflammation or give them alcohol or whatever it is that you're that you're trying to study. And, and what we often try and do is just drop these extracts on those, those different cell lines and just see what happens, right? Not pretend that we know what's in there, even, that's going to cure cancer, but you know, drop it on some cancer cells, see which ones kill the cancer cells. And then when we find that sort of extract that's doing that, that's when we start to deconstruct it, and there's many ways to do that. 9:15 But mostly, we're not using complicated modern technology for that. It's a lot of like old school alchemy, Spudger lyrics and separations that you can do, 9:28 you know, just with like silica, or things like that, where, you know, now you've got this extract, and you can pull out different fractions of that extract and then reapply it to the same sort of tissue cells and see, oh, it's it's actually this little fraction here that has the molecules that we need in it. Right. And, and that's what's been super exciting about mycology, and not just psilocybin mycology, but there are so many molecules 10:00 For better on identified there are and yeah, it's It's wild. I mean, it's just like it's tip of the iceberg type stuff right. So so I've been, I've been curious and I don't know if you have an answer to this, but there are, it seems like in this space right now, people are only really talking about psilocybin and psilocybin. And we have identified some other compounds like biosystem, nor biosystem, nor psilocybin, etc. But I've been trying to ask people like, okay, what are those compounds do? And I haven't really gotten a good answer. And I've tried to look this up, and I haven't gotten much. And so do you think that we don't know? Or do you think that a lot of companies are key are, they do know, but they're keeping it hush hush to kind of have some sort of intellectual advantage in this growing space? 10:56 Mostly, I think we don't know, tell you the truth. And typically, companies are scared of the unknown, right. And so what you're seeing right now is, and we saw it in cannabis, too, was almost a patent more, essentially, starting where people are out there filing patents on every single thing, psilocybin, you know, every single analogue, the methods of creation of those analogs, extractions, extraction techniques, you know, you're even going to see genetic patents, you know, mostly on things that people have modified versus just discovered. But there's going to be a lot of patterns that happen here. Now, at the end of the day. 11:37 You know, what was? The biggest question for me is, are we making nature better? Right, and so that's what we're specifically studying at our company, I created good cat pharmaceuticals, out of necessity, really, because, you know, we ran a microdose retreat in Jamaica, and it was probably the first microdose only retreat, like we rarely did a macro dose, it was pretty much designed just for people to come and relax and have a good vacation. And out of that, what we saw was just amazing results, you know, people taking a microdose and it was changing their life. Right. And that, to me was, was something worth studying. But also, you know, when you think about the acceptance of psilocybin as a medicine, like, the more we can reduce the side effects, the more we're gonna get acceptance by the medical establishment. And so that became sort of goal number one for our company was was how do we reduce the potentially negative side effects associated with psilocybin consumption? And, um, you know, we can debate whether these are negative side effects or not, but I'm just coming at it from a doctor's perspective. Now, I'm a, you know, pretend I'm a, I'm an uptight, conservative doctor that that, you know, is 82 years old. 12:56 What are the chances I'm going to prescribe psilocybin right, and it's probably pretty low, but at the same time, psilocybin has been shown to have anti inflammatory properties. So this is where, you know, I'm coming at this from a very similar place as CBD in the in the cannabis world where, you know, THC was just seen as an intoxicant. It is not medicine. Everybody's just out getting high, right? And then all of a sudden, CVD hit the scene and things changed, you know, like doctors saw with their own eyes, seizures just being stopped. And they were like, Okay, maybe there's something to this. Right. And so, for me, that's, that's what we need to start. And that's what is so exciting about what our company is doing is we've basically taken and created full spectrum extracts from multiple different mushrooms. And we were fortunate to have, you know, tested those mushrooms on people in Jamaica, right, so we kind of knew which mushrooms were causing more hallucinations versus less hallucinations. And for me trying to create a medicine that is a low dose, daily anti inflammatory. I don't want any intoxication. You know, I don't want people having even peripheral distortions, I don't want people having loss of balance. 14:20 Now, I am not at all negating the benefits of the macro dose, especially when it comes to you know, dealing with things like PTSD and trauma. Obviously, there are situations that a microdose is not going to be helpful for but at the same time, I feel like 14:40 most of the drugs are not as effective as this amazing little mushroom that you only have to consume like a 10th of a gram of and you can feel a lot better. So we, you know, we studied a bunch of different species, and we picked one that was, I would say the least polluted 15:00 Inventory, right? So it even when you consume five grams or more, you don't get the, the same levels of, and this visual distortions of things, just to clarify this is different species of, of philosophy mushrooms, or they're all Salafi cubensis. But they're different cultivars or strains. Yeah, most of these would have been strains cubensis. Yeah, sure. 15:24 We probably tried a couple different species. There's some there is an interesting one in Jamaica for sure that we tried. 15:32 But that one was, to be honest, dark. And it seems like there might be testosterone in that mushroom, which is, you know, again, evidence that 15:45 that, like, all these other minor molecules in there that we're not even testing for, and perhaps don't even know exists, probably have medical benefits and effects. Right, and so, so now in the lab, we're able to extract those mushrooms and create basically like a full spectrum extract. So we've got all these different tryptamine peaks, and some of them, we don't even know what they are. And this is where now we go into tissue cultures and into animal studies. And we compare it side by side with psilocybin, and we say, is there a difference? You know, if there's any sort of differences in gene expression, or protein levels, we should see it. And that's validation, right there that? Well, number one, the mushrooms are probably better for some things may be worse for some things, you know, there may be instances where the pure psilocybin molecule is the best treatment for someone's condition. But, you know, a Reuben asin is definitely an interesting one. And you can, that's one that other companies have talked about, where 16:45 it seems to produce some positive benefits, they say, but really, I think it you know, it makes you trip a lot harder. Right, and so, so in the medications that we're designing, we're trying to eliminate certain molecules and retain other molecules, right, you've got these beta carbon liens, which are MAO inhibitors, and they probably help potentiate the effects and maybe extend them. And you've also got, you know, these courtesans are like, the molecules that are found in quarter steps have also been identified now and right side, which is quite amazing, because, you know, just quarter steps alone, we know has amazing benefits for mental health. So 17:27 you know, as it says, kind of tip of the iceberg, but like, we're, we're at the stage that we have the technology to deconstruct these things, and then and then reconstruct them with the isolated purified molecules, or even chemically synthesized molecules and see if there if there is a difference. Now, at the end of the day, I'm all about natural medicines. I really feel like nature has provided us an amazing toolbox that has been largely neglected due to, 17:57 you know, corporate interests over the last 5060 years. Right. 18:03 But before that, 18:05 I mean, most people were using natural substances when, when things went wrong, and they often weren't using one thing, it was often like, you know, a mixture of a whole bunch of things that tasted awful, but it worked. 18:19 So I've had this conversation with quite a few people recently, because I've been, I've been in microdose er of psilocybin for the last probably 10 years and huge advocate, I've tried every regimen that you could possibly imagine every dose mount that you could possibly imagine, and been a huge advocate and said it, you know, it's life changing XYZ. huge proponent. But recently, in the last like two years, I've read three studies that all their results are basically they did a double blind, placebo controlled study, human clinical trial, and it was just about the same as placebo. And I'm just curious on Well, first of all, no, I mean, 19:07 first of all, I'm going to rip those studies apart right now, because most of them did not control for the product. So when you read, there was one that came out two days ago, August 2, and it says, Then it's like the first micro dose placebo controlled study. But then you read it, and it's not a product controlled study, meaning that they controlled the placebo arm, but the products themselves were all different mushrooms that people got, and they sampled three of them in the lab, half a gram and got a 0.7 milligram average, like first of all, that's about you know, 10% of what we're producing most of the time in the lab. So a lot of these mushrooms must have been broken down like crazy by the time they tested them. And I don't know how you can do any I don't know how you can do a clinical trial at all and call that controlled when, you know, most of the time these studies are done in Hall 20:00 Right now or or, you know, the Paul Stamets studies are nice too that just came out with a great app that they created. But again, it's very hard to control what people are consuming. Because yeah, and it's not placebo control, and so 20:15 Exactly, so. So what we want to do is, is the real work, which is, you know, take psilocybin at one milligram, take an extracted full spectrum psilocybin at one milligram, give them not only to to different cohorts of people, but give them to the same people, and have them fill out the same surveys and see if they can actually tell a difference. Now, you know, you know what, I know that when you mix things with these molecules, it changes how they behave, and the pattern that that we filed, 20:50 is largely based on on that the potentiate the effects of other molecules. And 20:58 I mean, I can tell you for a fact that we were able to reduce the amount of psilocybin so much that you barely feel it, but you get this amazing glow when you start mixing some of these other things in. And, and I'm talking about, you know, simple molecules like capsaicin from hot pepper, right. And it's really interesting that the Nobel prize last year was actually given to the guys who used capsaicin to develop to identify the TRP receptors, and it's these TRP receptor. They're basically ion channels that exist all over your body, which are going to be, I believe, just a new panacea of treatments. 21:45 Really, what they do is they sense the environment. So they sense how you interact with things, heat, cold, right? Pain. 21:55 But as a result of that, also, like your microbial community, in your gut, right, like they're largely responsible for, 22:04 you know, signaling certain things that are going on, and, and they transmit these signals up the vagus nerve to the brain. So 22:13 it was really interesting when we started studying CBD actually, that 22:21 you can basically knock out the cannabinoid receptors and cell lines, and we were seeing all these amazing responses from CBD. Right. And so, obviously, CBD had to be interacting with other receptors. And they've shown now and published that CBD is actually acting through these TRP receptors. And a lot of the depression and anti anxiety activity is, is due to that activity, not the cannabinoid activity. So you know, what else 22:54 sanely in your guts. 22:59 They're all over the place. So these TRP receptors are in your brain, but they're also you know, they're distributed in different concentrations, it's a very large family, actually. And they're in different concentrations in different parts of your body. So some of them are highly concentrated in your eye, right. And those ones are often the ones that like signal light, whereas other ones are concentrated in your gut. 23:23 They're, they're really, 23:27 to be honest, they're just like, they're super cool, because they basically have this low level electrical signal that is kind of like the happy signal, like the homeostasis signal, things are good. And then they go into this exciting phase, and they're like, things are not good. And again, Capsaicin is the great example of that, because it's like you eat a little bit of spice that tastes next to actually, you know, for most people, it's, it's enjoyed you too much spice and it's not so nice, right? So, you know, that's a good example. But there's all these other molecules that do that, and I'm talking about like, you know, carvacrol from oil of oregano eugenol from clove, you know, just like all these really interested curcumin from, from tumeric, you know, interesting molecules. Often there's five to 10,000 papers published on their medical benefits. And yet, there's very rarely any pharmaceutical drugs that have the minute 24:30 eugenol is an interesting one that has been used in dentistry forever. I mean, clove has actually been it's a very analgesic molecule so you, you suck on it and almost make sure your lips numb and stuff like that, but you jaw 24:46 and carvacrol have actually both been shown in the last year to be anti COVID In order to directly prevent the inflammatory cytokines that are responsible for a lot of the negative activity of COVID 25:00 That's, that's exactly what we've been studying in the lab for last few years. It's just basically how these molecules interact with cells and, and more specifically how you can create formulations or combinations of them that work better. So that you can reduce the individual doses, reduce the toxicity, reduce any sort of side effects, and come up with these, these amazing natural medicines. And so that's really what we're trying to take into clinical trials now. And hopefully, and 25:30 know, depending on regulatory environments, and things like that, in the next few years, we'll have a brand new toolbox for doctors to prescribe. 25:41 That's awesome. And you just released a patent about about this of combining both HTT P to a receptors with these 25:53 CRP receptor antagonists. And, and so you're hoping that this combination will enhance the full on therapeutic effects of 26:06 psychedelics in general or psilocybin species specifically. 26:14 It's, it's very interesting, because the psychedelics in general, 26:21 seem to all hit very similar receptors, but they don't always have similar effects. And that's, that's somewhat baffling. And so on, right. 26:30 There was some great work done on the anti inflammatory properties of, of psychedelic molecules, and, you know, like, psilocybin and four ACO DMT, which is very similar and you know, selasa tin, 26:45 they have very strong anti inflammatory properties, but LSD didn't, you know, so it's, it's interesting that I believe that not only the combination of like, not only the the five HTT to a agonist and so that's your, your serotonin receptor that is responsible for the psychedelic effect, essentially, you know, I kind of call that like the superhero, right? So you've got this, this superhero molecule coming in, and some superheroes are like Batman, and some are like Superman, some are like spider man, right? And they all got different powers that they're gonna sort of imbibe upon you for a while. 27:25 Then these TRP molecules come along, and I call them like the sidekicks, right? So they kind of like, stimulate and alter the effect of the superhero. Right. And so, you know, I part of the reason that we put it was patent was so that it's public knowledge. You know, as a scientist, I can think you spend 100 years in a lab studying all these molecules and publishing a whole bunch of papers so that people had the information, but I can tell you, a lot of people don't read science. So. 27:57 So it was really I wish they did, it became an interesting. 28:02 It's hard, you know, sciences, like most of the scientific publications in peer reviewer are dreary, and, 28:09 you know, it takes a certain type to get through them. But, you know, we just put all these recipes out there that we were using in Jamaica, and we put them in the pot. And that doesn't necessarily mean that we believe that we're going to pad that recipe, and that that recipe will be a pharmaceutical, but what it does is it creates the sort of prior art of combining psilocybin with nutmeg, for instance. 28:33 Because again, if you go back to this pot war, you know, I've seen a patent now, for instance, on on methanol extraction of of psilocybin, and I don't find that that novel when, you know, there's forum boards on erode, going back to 1995 talking about it, right. So like, I don't know, maybe there's something very unique they did with acid base reaction to make it novel. But, you know, I don't think that they're going to be able to prevent everyone from doing methanol based extractions, when that's been out there. And so this is kind of the point to is, if these TRPs really do work well with five HT two A's, then then we'll be able to bring pharmaceutical drugs to market that are again, the deconstructed and reconstituted specific molecules that are responsible for a specific disease state. So you know, the molecules used for breast cancer, for instance, probably won't be the same for for prostate cancer, and they probably won't be the same ones for for depression or irritable bowel, for instance. But I really feel like combinations of psychedelic molecules with these natural ion channel stimulators can can help with a lot of different disease states based on the different combinations that are used and 29:54 and it's really interesting again, just we talked about TRP in the eyeball 30:00 Quick, but the TRP ma receptors is often highly concentrated there. And Bergamot is an interesting essential oil that we that we found. When we included it in in our recipes, people often said things like, light seemed brighter, or everything just seems to glow more, you know, these very interesting sort of light responsive comments that were coming from people through the addition of a sheet, you're not like three drops of bergamot oil and a whole batch of chocolates. Right? So, you know, we're not talking about about high concentrations of these things. And what's really interesting in the lab, as well as when we, when we do these studies, and we start to increase the concentration of those TRP molecules, you don't get an increased benefit, if often you lose the benefit, just like I was talking about with capsaicin, you know, at low dose, it's anti inflammatory, but at high dose, it's inflammatory, actually. So it's really about finding those those sweet spots of molecular ratios that that unlock, you know, the potential of the body to heal itself, really? 31:21 And were you telling people like, hey, this batch has Bergamot in it? Or were you just kind of like, having all these different experiments, and then be like, Hey, we got a new batch of chocolates for you. How did you feel? Yeah, exactly. It was so many years of having to keep our mouths shut, because we knew that we needed to figure this out. You know, even a year ago, we talked and I was like, just just wait till we get the stuff public. Because, you know, that was we'd already filed the patent by the end. So it wasn't really a concern about other people stealing it. But again, it's that I want to be able to talk about this stuff and in, in an open dialogue where, like, you know, people are micro dosing out there. And so I encourage them, you know, try some pepper, try some nutmeg, try all the things that that we put in our patent and try and see for yourself if they work because, you know, the more anecdotal data that comes from the public as well, the the more strong my cases for going to Health Canada and the FDA, and saying these are safe, effective medicines, don't hold them up with all the rigamarole. You know, like, like giving someone a tiny little bit of Tumeric with some psilocybin should not be a problem if psilocybin is already approved for that person, right. So that's, that's where I'm hoping to get with it. But right now, when we apply to Health Canada, or the FDA, and you include any new molecule, it's seen as a new chemical entity. So it doesn't matter that the safety has been done on tumeric. And that the safety has been done on psilocybin. Because I'm using a psilocybin extract, and a curcumin extract, I have to treat it as though it's a brand new drug. And that means I have to do all the animal tox studies and I have to do all this other, you know, sort of, in my opinion, crazy work, when we know these things are safe. You know, like we know, there's people out there consuming these these every day. So I'm very excited about other jurisdictions like Oregon, and places like that, that are hopefully opening up public access, because it really is, you know, everything that I do really is about access. It's about increasing the access to these much needed medicines, because I know they're going to change the world. 33:37 You Yeah, so right now, good cap is in Jamaica and Canada, I, I have a feeling that Canada is just going to flip the switch just like they did with cannabis of just, you know, country wide and not take this city by city state by state approach that the US seems to be doing with cannabis. And they're still. I mean, I'm in Texas right now. And we're, I mean, we technically have medical cannabis. But the restrictions are crazy right now. And it's very hard to get medical care. And but Canada is fully legal across the board. Do you feel like that's going to be the same thing with psilocybin as well? 34:19 Well, it's nice. Again, we're just we've got great timing here because only two days ago it was announced the public lawsuit that's been filed against the health minister here. And this is very reminiscent of 2000 in cannabis in Canada, where a group of medical patients got together and said, Now we have a right we have a constitutional right to access this medicine. 34:43 In Canada right now, we have three ways essentially that you could access psilocybin 34:50 The one is through entering a clinical trial where there are ongoing clinical trials. The other way is to get a section 56 exemption which are typically only 35:00 given for research, and then they just announced this special access program. But what happened over the past year was the last before our last election, the health minister in Canada gave out a bunch of section 56 exemptions for psilocybin. And she gave them not only to patients, but to doctors. And so that set a very interesting precedent in Canada, where you've given access to not sick people, even to this medicine, right, and, and now you're telling other sick people that they can't have it? Well, the Canadian Constitution is pretty clear on, 35:35 you know, equality. And he writes like that. So. 35:40 So now there's a lawsuit that's been filed against the new health minister, because he refuses to sign any of the section 56 exemptions, and they're pushing everyone towards this special access program. But the Special Access program still has flaws itself. So I think, in the end, it will probably follow a very similar trajectory in Canada in that 36:02 the government will lose this lawsuit, they'll appeal it, it will probably go to the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court will stand with the patients and then the government will be forced to put in a new program, which will be very similar to I think, the cannabis program that that I was participating in, in 2013. Where you know, you'll be able to grow your own, you'll be able to assign a designated grower or you'll be able to purchase it from an approved company. I do not think in Canada, you will see direct storefront sales of psilocybin like we're seeing with cannabis. 36:39 So it's, they're going to try and keep it much more medical. And, and I think, you know, by the time that happens, we will probably have legal access to at least one medication, it might be the compass pathways one, but there, there will probably be at least one psilocybin medication that's made it through clinical trials and there is access. 37:02 I don't know if that'll be micro dose, right. It'll probably be a macro dose. But that's, 37:07 that's what I'm hoping is that. 37:11 In a few years, you'll basically it'll be very similar to cannabis again, where you had Sativex and Marinol and a couple like, like cannabis based products, essentially, that had made it through the real regulatory environment, you could go to your doctor and get a prescription for or you could buy it out of your own pocket from one of these medical companies, which, you know, have mostly converted to rec now, but, but I don't see that conversion happening. Ever in psychedelics in Canada? 37:44 I think it was about a year or two ago. 37:48 I was talking to you or someone on your team about that day, you're going to have an inspection to get some sort of permit to be able to grow to cultivate philosophy, mushrooms. Did you ever get that permit? Or where are you just cultivating in Jamaica? Yeah, able to grow in, in Toronto, or other places in Canada? Well, to be honest, you know, COVID kind of killed our Jamaica operations, we just, we had to pull the plug travel was travel was too tough. But it was about the same time that we got the license in the lab. So that was very fortunate. Yes, we cultivate 38:26 in Canada on a university campus in you know, very clean and sterile conditions. It's not GMP, but as you know, most of the stuffs done pretty, pretty clean anyway, so otherwise, it just doesn't work. So we have very, you know, strict protocols that we've put in place to try and produce a standardized pharmaceutical grade product out of the mushrooms which 38:51 it's harder than then you think really because 38:55 there's a lot of variation in the mushrooms, you know, even as time harvests between the flashes, things like that there's, there's there's a bunch of stuff going on and and what we found was 39:05 you know, actually, the less you feed them was, it's kind of easier to stay in cannabis. Everybody's trying to crank the highest THC levels, right and things like that, but you're not really held to the pharmaceutical standard. So in mushrooms, it was almost the opposite. You know, the more you feed a mushroom, the more different metabolites maybe that you give it the the more potential changes you have in the outcome of that mushroom as well. So did you see the paper obviously don't use now or 39:39 did you see the paper that came out? I don't know how many years ago but it was about genetic engineering, E. coli to produce psilocybin in a bioreactor. 39:51 Oh, yeah, no, that's been done for sure. There's many publications on that now. You know, 39:58 it's it's interesting 40:00 because, you know, the cost of growing mushrooms isn't that much anyways, so like some molecules, it makes a lot of sense to use bio reactors. But like, you know, even the capex, like the amount of investment that you're gonna have to put into, like, all those bio reactors stuff, it's gonna be a long time before you can recoup that with psilocybin. And just because in a psilocybin is really not worth a lot, 40:26 it's not consumed a lot. 40:29 Like, and that's part of the beauty of it is, is most of most of the companies that are making money around psilocybin are making money on the therapy, they're not making money on the 40:40 you know, a research a gram of research grade, psilocybin may go for $5,000. US, but you sauna is also supplying it for $0 to, you know, to specific research trials. So you know, that gives you a bit of a range there of expectation. 40:59 I can't imagine that a one milligram micro dose 41:04 will be that expensive. At the end of the day, even with all of the you know, we went through the pharmaceutical trials and all the marketing and all these like crazy other expenses that really I have no idea about, because I've never done a pharma company before. 41:19 But we don't, we don't plan to do that, you know, we don't plan to market these drugs, there's people that do that. I can't see being nearly as expensive, even as some of the antidepressants that are out there. Now. You know, and that, for me is 41:33 this is what we what we want as a frontline therapy against 41:38 situational depression more than anything, there's absolutely nothing in a doctor's toolbox for when people just don't feel good. You know, 41:49 what major depressive disorder I'm talking about, you're having a bad week, or like, you know, you're at a certain time of your cycle, and your man's being an asshole or whatever, like, you know, you go to a doctor, they're going to give you an SSRI, they're going to prescribe it for three months, because it doesn't even start working for four weeks. And then, you know, you start to feel like a zombie, but you might feel a bit better. And don't get me wrong, SSRIs, or they've been a miracle for some people. But 42:16 there is no, there is nothing like psilocybin, which works right away. I'm talking like, you know, and I know, 90 minutes later, after some people take this, like, it's like a miracle. They're saying things like, I haven't felt like this since I was a kid or like, that I have reason to live again, you know, like, those, those sorts of comments are profound, and don't get 42:41 any other medication that's available. 42:45 And the cool thing is, like, you know, yeah, there's gonna be some crazy advancements, but at the end of the day, it's not going to be cost prohibitive for anyone, because anyone, even a brand new beginner can grow it under their bed. Really easy, super cheap. It's literally one of, if not the most easy mushroom to grow. And so people can do it at home, you know? 43:11 Yeah, they might not get the level of therapy and, you know, a white coat lab that, you know, some of these facilities are setting up. But if if people, if people are low income, and they they want access to this, they can for pennies, you know, and it's it's very easy, and I 43:34 it's not? 43:39 Yeah, and even if it's not for pennies, you know, I'm hoping that one day through the pharmaceutical establishment, it'll be for dollars, at least or some something reasonable. And, you know, you said cost prohibitive, and that's, that's the biggest issue with most of the psychedelic treatments that are out there right now, you know, you're looking at at 20 to 40 hours minimum required of psychotherapy, associated with that, that dose, right. And that is extremely prohibitive for most people not just cost prohibitive, but like who has that kind of time, even, you know, 44:16 most people that I know, again, that are not necessarily chronically depressed or have major depressive disorder, but just feel shitty sometimes, you know, they often turn to alcohol, right? Or some over other pseudo legal 44:35 substance to relieve whatever sort of depression or anxiety or bad feelings that they're having. And, and again, this is 44:46 people people can grow tobacco but they don't write but a lot of people still smoke tobacco even though it's not healthy, like this is healthy. Yeah. And it's good for you. 44:55 It's got to be available in the stores for people to you know, like a lot of people will try and grow it 45:00 under their vet, but you know, and I know that most people don't you know, we live in a very consumer based society. Yeah. And if it if it can be available, even just through prescription at the pharmacy, 45:13 we're going to change the world. Absolutely. Like I just, I know it, I get goosebumps thinking about that day when someone can go to a doctor and just say, my grandma died. I'm not feeling good this week, can you give me a seven day prescription for psilocybin? Right? Like, I don't need this forever. And if I need it again, I'll come back. Right. Like, to me, when we get to that day, we're gonna see massive changes in, 45:39 in our entire culture. 45:42 So, so I 45:46 I am curious, and maybe this is part of your discovery. You know, you were just talking about this before, if like, you don't know, if pure psilocybin? I mean, he would, I would assume that the entourage effect would be better. And this is what you're trying to explore of like, if the compounds are already in the mushroom? Or can we get them from other plants or whatever? Like what combination of things give the best results for for different ailments? And 46:18 it does make it it does make it tricky. And I do want to, I do want to ask as well. 46:26 I don't know if I want to go down that rabbit hole. So I'll switch gears a little bit. So you you studied and you worked with 46:32 plant genetics for, you know, your whole life pretty much and you got your PhD in genetics and molecular biology, you have two companies on your under your belt, where you are working on on with plant genetics. I'm curious, what are the similarities and also differences when it comes to 46:54 mushroom versus plant genetics? And then I know you're just talking about trying to limit the substrate trying to make it as bland as possible. But you're also talking about all the different cultivars and the strains that make all these differences. So what is the the second part of that question is like, nature versus nurture? What do you think is most important of changing the actual species or strain or cultivar? Or, or the substrate lighting pH? Or it's equally as important? And all all of these things need to be tweaked? 47:31 Yeah, a lot of questions there. i Sorry. I don't know about equally important, I'll go backwards a little bit through them. 47:40 It's, it's definitely, you know, the experiments can be done many different ways in the lab. So I can we can compare two different species that are grown on the exact same substrate and the exact same way. Or we can compare the same species grown on multiple different substrates and see, you know, and that's what's so cool is that like, then you can go backwards, and so to say, Oh, wow, when we grew it on horseman or versus elephant manure, like, it had way more anti cancer properties, right. And so this is not this is what's it's, it's just like, I'm getting, again, just bumps about it. Because it's, it's so fun, really to be able to unravel that puzzle. And it's not a puzzle that I can ever create myself out of pieces that I didn't know exist, right? It's nature that's giving me these puzzle pieces. And then, and then us just trying to decode it. And so that's what's that's what's the same about whether you work with plants, or, you know, or mushrooms is that, you know, if I'm working with a plant, I'm often for instance, taking the petals, and then taking the stem and then taking the leaves and then taking the routes and extracting them all different ways and extract them all the same way and then seeing what what sort of happens, right? And it's the same with mushrooms, where we extract the substrate, extract the caps, extract the gills, is there any difference between them? Who knows? Right? I'm not gonna make any assumptions. Let's go check it out. And that's, that's what really leads us down the path to creating better medicines. Now, when I said we sort of made it bland, that was out of necessity to get something to market. Yes, standard. So that doesn't necessarily mean that that that reduced compound extract is the best medicine that I'll ever make. But what it is, is, you know, it's not breaking down it's, it's not oxidizing, the same as a lot of the other ones were able to, you know, create an extraction technology that 49:50 that has stability, and that is that's a major factor for the pharmaceutical industry, right is your stability once you drop out of us 50:00 certain range of pharmaceutical molecule, you know, it's then your shelf life is toast. And that's why I don't think you'll see mushrooms, as a pharmaceutical, you'll see them as you'll see access to mushrooms through other sources, but it's going to be difficult to give them a long shelf life. Without let me preface that without some cool, maybe someone will be able to like Nano, apply something, they powderized the mushrooms, but really, once you polarize the mushrooms, you create a lot of oxidation because of the surface area. And and it's tough to maintain the integrity of those molecules. So so that was sort of like our first challenge to solve was how do we get any psilocybin product to market right now it's now it's at the stage that okay, we we figured out how to do the extraction and the formulation, and we can we could make a pill, let's say from, from penis envy today, and I could make a pill from Golden teacher, now we can, you know, put them in a mouse, show that at least they're both safe. Maybe in the mouse or rat model, we might not see a difference. But maybe that's a good thing. You know, maybe the fact that we compare it to psilocybin, and we don't see any differences means that it's safe for human consumption, right? And then you go into people and they say, 51:24 Holy shit, that golden teacher, I talked to God, and that the blue one, I had fractal patterns behind my eyes all afternoon, you know what I mean? Like, and that's the kind of stuff that That for me is like, so cool, because then we can go really like, does that hold up with other people? And if it does, then like, how do we deconstruct what's in there to, to make medicines that actually do what we want them to do? Because at the end of the day, like, I really do want people to like drugs. You know, I want people to not like 51:57 pharmacology has taken this maybe the last 100 years, I would say, 52:04 No, but but just the the idea of, of taking a drug like drugs are supposed to be medicine that help you right. And nowadays, like, you know, most of the time, 52:16 drugs are just like even pharmaceutical drugs, they're often sort of like a hush hush thing, you know? 52:25 Because you've got a problem, right? Where, like, I want people to be talking about the solutions. Really. Yeah. And saying like, you know, for instance, I had a peptic ulcer recently, and 10 days, 10 days of drinking cabbage juice clears that shit right up, I swear to God, by day seven, I was like, I'm gonna puke if I drink another cabbage. But by day 10, I had no more officers and and, you know, like, people should know this. Like, you're gonna go to the doctor and take all these pills and maybe have surgery when you can drink cabbage juice, like, come on? Yeah, no, there's, I feel like there's a lot of shame to and maybe this has to do with the social media effective, you know, we need the perfect filter profile picture. And similarly, it's like, if something's wrong with our mental or physical health, like that's something to be shameful of, rather than like, hell, yeah, I got this thing. And this is what I'm doing. And you know, we're all human going through it. And some days I feel shitty, and like, this is what I'm talking about it because, 53:25 yeah, let's talk about it. Because I don't think one size fits all. You know, there's not one, there's not one cannabis strain for everyone. Two people try the same thing. And one person likes it. And the next person is having an anxiety attack on the floor. Right? So this is where again, we can't, we can't just consider that one combination is going to be great for everyone. And this is why talking about it, like especially talking about combinations of things that people are using, and they're microdose. Like, I love Paul Stamets and the stack that he's created, but at the end of the day, you know, like I'm not into nice, you know, for me personally, like that's not an enjoyable microdose experience that I want to do all the time. Exactly. So So for me, it's, you know, some nutmeg, some clothes, some cayenne pepper and some tumeric, right, like you add those ones in, and there's this just this amazing balance that happens. And then you know, you can really start to tweak that with frankincense and myrrh, for instance, you know, like, these are actual medical molecules, there's a reason they brought them to Jesus, it was because they're medicine, not because they smell nice, right? So this is, uh, 54:34 this is the stuff that we get to study now with with modern molecular biology. And yes, there's drastic differences between the genomes of of different species even, but the way that we study them is largely largely the same and and the way that we analyze how they affect humans is largely the same and and, you know, like bioinformatics techniques 55:00 He has really just opened up a whole new world of being able to analyze large datasets rapidly. And so 55:10 we can get answers way quicker than we ever thought possible. And it's only getting us really funny that the last time we were hanging out with with Dennis McKenna on a fireside chat, and he's like, not a fan of extracting psilocybin mushrooms. 55:27 And his view is really funny. I mean, we brought him on the show. And he's like, they're already ready to go, just like pick them and pop them. And he's like, if you're not feeling it, just eat more, you know. And he's like, I hear all these people reaching out to me all the time with the this latest technology, and he's just like, they're already ready to go. But there's so much also more to explore. And that's a cool thing. 55:54 Yeah, 55:56 he's definitely right, though most people's extraction tech, I'll tell you right now, is, like, if you had any heat, you're really starting to convert some things. Yeah, or cold. So you know, like, 56:11 or cold even? Exactly. So. So it's, it's, um, most people's extractions are not preserving the molecules that are in the mushroom. So when you do that extract, if it's all been converted to silos, and for instance, right, you're not going to feel the same thing as if you ate the mushroom. And so I really, you know, Dennis is right in the mushrooms are pretty much good to go. But again, from a commercial and pharmaceutical perspective, they're not. Right, like, they need a lot of work, just like penicillin is not, you know, they're not selling green bread mold. Right. Like, there's a lot of work that had to go in to creating optimize penicillin molecules, and then the next version of them and you know, eventually they just tacked on all these chemicals for patent reasons. But at the end of the day, like, I think, you know, it won't be long before we find the next penicillin and the new fungi too, right. And that's gonna have to go through the same gambit of 10 plus years of pharmaceutical trials before it's available to the general public. But 57:16 yeah, there's this, that's the system. And you know, if you want to, there's this really good paper, all about, you know, the degradation of different tryptamines in psilocybin mushrooms, and you know, they're measuring the different percentages and the cap versus the stem or the SType. And also, like, you know, what temperature does these tryptamines start to degrade? And if you powder him, how long before the tryptamines start to degrade? And if you freeze them, and like, that was actually the most surprising thing that I learned about this paper? I'm forgetting the title of it, but they're like, yeah, if you put it in a freezer, that's has the fastest degradation of the tryptamines, which I know a lot of people that store their mushrooms in the freezer. And they're like, yeah, like, I'm preventing degradation of these, these tryptamines. And they're actually making it worse, or there's so many people making chocolates nowadays are micro dosing capsules, and they they powder, a big batch, and then they just throw them in capsules, and they might be six months old. And, you know, it's like, yeah, that's not very potent anymore. And I think it's something that should be 58:28 talked about more, because as more and more people get into it, it's a wild wild west. And, you know, it's like, at that point, it might be placebo, if it's all degraded six months later, so just just making sure that people know the best practices, I think, you know, that's how we evolve and, and that's how we move forward with with anything. 58:54 Yeah, it's 58:57 it's lots of fun. That's all I gotta say, I you know, I love my job. I love being able to, you know, go out in nature, as I said, and just explore and bring those things back into the lab and identify what they do. I mean, we've got some some other really amazing projects on the go, but can you talk about any of them? Are they when COVID Nice hit? 59:22 Yeah, no, I was. I was just gonna mention one because it's sort of past date. Now when COVID first hit. It was really interesting that I started digging through the literature of antivirals, and you know, porous, betcha Linus or former taka special Linus, right. 59:42 Birch polypore just stood out as this antiviral and sure enough, there's this class of molecules called Penta cyclic triterpenoids. And they are very powerful antivirals and all through COVID. You know, like, I tried to get funding to study this 1:00:00 So it was tough. It just kind of wasn't happening. But I can tell you right now, we've given birch polypore. Tea to many, many people with COVID. And it like, if you drink a glass of that tea every four hours, it wipes it right out, you're gonna get me kicked off. So podcast 1:00:19 the AI algorithms, we're gonna pick up on this, like, kick them off. 1:00:27 We did not say COVID. We said antiviral. If you get a viral infection, we didn't say anything. I don't know. 1:00:35 Let me know. 1:00:37 This episode is gonna be taking down of all platforms, one of those things where like, it's 1:00:45 yeah, it's 1:00:47 to be able to study that in the timeframe necessary to make a pharmaceutical out of it and get it out was was impossible, right. But at the same time, there's, there's absolutely nothing regulated about it. There's nothing illegal about collecting birch polypore. And making tea out of it. And again, you know, this is probably one of the oldest medicines known to man, like, you know, good see, the Iceman is carrying the shit around, probably because he's got viruses or worms in his intestine, right. So we're just now 1000 years later starting to study that. Right. So 1:01:26 that's very cool. That's a lot of fun. 1:01:30 Sweet. So if you were just wrapping up here. 1:01:36 If you could see anything done in this field, so if there were no bureaucratic loopholes, legal loopholes, that you had to jump through, or years that you had to wait, and you got to have limited funding unlimited team, what would you want to see happen? 1:01:57 To be honest, I still be going through the same clinical trial route that we're going and it's not because it's the easy one, it's because I believe it's the one that will provide the most access to the most people. At the end of the day, when people don't feel good, they usually still go to their doctor, and their doctor is the trusted resource for making them better. And 1:02:20 doctors 1:02:23 are facing a challenge with respect to prescribing this medication, not just because it was illegal, but because they don't know about it. And that for me is again, why we're going very much down a pharmaceutical clinical trial, traditional route, where we can demonstrate that these molecules have anti inflammatory potential, because I believe that most doctors, if pull today, about prescribing psychedelic medicines would say, No, they are not into that. They don't know enough about it. 1:03:00 Just out of the question, but, you know, anti inflammatories are prescribed every day. In fact, the number one drug on the planet is a Cox two inhibitor, and we have shown that psilocybin reduces Cox two. So this, for me is kind of again, like the back door for getting in with the establishment for demonstrating that there is medical benefits here. And for convincing doctors through an education platform that does not involve tripping out that these molecules should be prescribed to a large percentage of the population probably. So there's cross so yeah, I, I would still be doing what we're doing. It's a long road, we got to raise a lot more money and make a lot more partnerships in the end to make this happen. But, but I, I feel like we're up for the challenge, we've got a really good team. And we've really put a lot of work into the scientific background that's required to, to convince people that it works. So it just, it's important, you know, and then I go back and started a retreat in Jamaica again, because that was more fun than this tell you the truth. You know, it's actually seeing the effects of the medicine one on one and working with people is one of the most gratifying things that you can ever do. But, you know, again, we could only have 10 or 15 people at a retreat at a time and we need 10 or 1:04:26 15 million people 1:04:29 on this so cool, man, where can people follow your work and yeah, see what you're up to. 1:04:41 Yeah, I'm on LinkedIn. You can find me Darryl Hudson, good cap Pharmaceuticals is is the company that we're operating under now. 1:04:50 You know, I don't do a lot of social media stuff at the moment but 1:04:55 but maybe that'll change in the future. Get a lot of quests become a 1:05:00 and retreat center influencer 1:05:04 get all get all the Instagram followers. Well, even 1:05:10 even podcasts I've been putting them off for like probably two years now Alex and you're the second one I've done in the past week. 1:05:18 So it kind of feels like I'm coming out of the closet now so to speak. While I'm on here, yes back to our psychedelic endeavors. Cool. Well, for everybody listening, I'll I'll put some links in the show notes, including 1:05:33 the patent with all the different recipes that you can play with at home, if you want and we don't 1:05:41 recommend anyone breaking any laws and you know, check with your local laws where you're listening, we got listeners from all over the world where legality might shift. So yeah, don't recommend you breaking any laws, but check with your local ones first. And yeah, we don't have a Patreon or in any way to support our recipes in there that are not illegal. There you go. 1:06:04 Bada bing, bada boom. So check it out. The other there are recipes in there that are serotonin based. Awesome. Cool. Yeah, check it out. We got a cool probably the coolest cookbook that you could probably probably look at. And yeah, check out mushroom revival.com We get a bunch of functional mushroom products from non psychoactive so we got capsules, powders, gummies tinctures. And, yeah, tell your friends about about mushrooms. And if you got a straight edge uncle or cousin that is on the edge about psilocybin and you want to convert them, send them a bunch of information and, you know, send them the Netflix, the new Netflix documentary, how to change your mind. 1:06:51 You know, send him this podcast, whatever. We need more people with healthier alternatives to the problems in our world. So with that, thank you everyone for listening Transcribed by https://otter.ai