Episode 99 - Psychedelic Neuroscientist Cody Gibbons exposes the “Huge Lie” about Happiness

“Oneness...Forgiveness...Happiness...Feeling fuzzy.” We have a narrow range of words to describe complex feelings. But this group of underground scientists are using psychedelics and cannabinoids to trace the pathways in the brain that create those intricate feelings. This podcast is the cutting edge of psychedelic neuroscience, and it is mind boggling! 

One of the great things about traveling in cannabis and psychedelic circles is that you meet all sorts of geniuses working away in their own corners trying to understand things like the biochemical basis of consciousness and other tiny, insubstantial matters. These men and women look like normal, everyday people but when they open their mouths you realize that their brains function quite literally, at a higher level than yours. This happens to small-brained people like me frequently.

Cody Gibbons is one such big-brained psychedelic neuroscientist who I met in the Bay Area over the summer. He has worked on cannabinoid research at companies including GW Pharmaceuticals, and is currently researching "psychedelics as tools to clarify the mind/body interface.”

I had to know more. 

For example, he told me, “You can make high doses of melatonin psychoactive with THC. This produces the feeling you get at nightfall or dusk, when the sun goes down and the body begins to relax. A shift occurs, sort of the way your iPhone goes dark at night. Typically, we don't feel that shift unless the sun going down, but you can actually induce it at dawn with this THC/melatonin combination. You get the clear feeling that the day is ending in the morning.” 

That’s pretty provocative. To some extent it explains why psychedelics open what Aldous Huxley called “the reducing valve of consciousness” and make us feel so expansive when we use them.

Rather than attempting to concentrate the many subjects this podcast covers into a few paragraphs, let me instead give you a few nuggets to chew on. I hope they will lead you to press the “Play” button and thereby expanding your own consciousness. 

“A lot of people understand “I feel fuzzy.” “Fuzzy” was a term coined by someone on psychedelics who felt soft on the inside. That’s an easy one. Our work is to understand the neural pathways of the more complex emotional states that most of us have.”

“There are two types of forgiveness and two corresponding receptor groups. There’s forgiveness of self vs. forgiveness of others. As anyone who has ever taken MDMA knows, you can induce forgiveness of others without feeling forgiveness of self.” 

“Analogs to LSD are not technically scheduled. You can buy them and even potentially distribute them legally. Put them in a baggie that says 'not for human consumption' and give them away.”

“I’ve realized that consciousness is something completely different than what anyone thought. There’s been a lot of focus on the anatomical structure of the brain. Of course that’s important, as it contributes to the function of our bodies. But the function of mind doesn’t stem from the anatomical structure, but more so from the receptor population patterns in the brain. We have all of these neurons, that each express different sets of receptors. These receptor populations stretch across different neurons and not others. Our consciousness is really a function of this super advanced biochemical computer — that’s not a surprise. The surprise is that it’s more biochemically based than electrically based.”

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