 Hello everyone, great to see you! As you're probably aware, Canada just legalized cannabis. As residents of this country, the Spirit Science crew felt that there was no better time for us to open up and talk about cannabis and its influence in our lives and the world. Truth is, for a really long time I found it difficult to discuss cannabis and other types of psychoactive plants, because they're illegal! So I often kept the conversation on the down low, choosing to focus on other things with Spirit Science. However, it's such an important conversation, because cannabis can serve as a powerful bridge between spirituality and science, or experience and measurement. Now there is a brilliant man named David Schmader, who recently did a TED talk called Stoner's Coming Out, which sets the stage for this conversation in a really articulate way. Have you ever really looked at your hand? I tell that joke because according to lore, people high on marijuana are amazed by their limbs, often while slow-motion, speed-eating Doritos in their parents' basement. I hate this joke because it invokes a stereotype that is reductive at best, and supports a system of diabolical lies at worst. But I'm getting ahead of myself. My name is David Schmader, and I am a pothead. By this I mean that when it comes time to enjoy an adult intoxicant, I will forego beer, wine and spirits in favor of marijuana, which for me offers a world of nuanced delight and inspiration beyond the more crude effects of booze. But I am not here to proselytize, and for a long time I kept quiet about my own enjoyment of weed. It was illegal for most of the time I was enjoying it, and why make myself vulnerable as an out-and-proud lawbreaker if I didn't have to. I also dreaded being saddled with the stoner stereotype of having my every move interpreted through the lens of pothead. So what if I used weed not to escape, but to engage with art and ideas and food and dogs and hilariously terrible movies? I was but one man, and I couldn't reconfigure society's image of the pothead all by myself. This talk is relevant for several reasons. The first is that now that cannabis is becoming legalized, we have to change and evolve our stereotypes and our understanding of what it is, which is one of the purposes of this very Spirit Science episode. The other thing he mentioned, though, about using cannabis to engage with art and ideas and what have you, is something I want to bring our focus to. This concept I recently heard elsewhere, but in an entirely different way. It was the scientist Dr. Alan Leitman who said something very similar in a debate that he had with Richard Dawkins. This will probably seem unrelated at first, but I promise we'll bring it back around. And I lay down in the boat and looked up at the sky. And after a few minutes, I felt that I had dissolved into that star littered sky. I felt like I was falling into infinity. I felt like I was becoming part of the stars. My body disappeared, the boat disappeared. And the vast expanse of time from the long-distant past, long before I was born, to the long-distant future, long after I would be dead, that vast expanse of time seemed compressed to a dot. I felt like I was connected not only to the stars, but to all of nature and the entire cosmos. I felt emerging with something much bigger than myself. And after a while, I sat up and started the engine again. Well, I would imagine that many of you have had similar experiences. And I'll call it the transcendent experience. The transcendent experience cannot be understood quantitatively or logically. Only not in the manner in which a physicist can calculate how many seconds it will take a ball to hit the floor when dropped from a height of two meters. When I was lying in that boat and Maine looking up at the sky at night, you could have hooked up every one of my hundred billion neurons to a vast computer and gotten the electrical readout on every single one of them. And you still would not have remotely understood the feeling that I had. Ah, thank you, Alan. That was beautiful. Now, this had absolutely nothing to do with cannabis. I choose to share this with you today, though, because I believe it explains a beautiful phenomenon of life, a sense of quantum conscious engagement, where you experience something beyond yourself in a profound way. To bridge the spirit and the science, all we have to do is look to Dr. Carl Sagan. Most people don't know this, but this famous scientist was actually a closeted advocate for cannabis and its legalization, and spoke on it as something which helped him to better understand himself, art, music, and love making. This is how what Dr. Leitman said is relative to the cannabis conversation, because cannabis, while not really a psychedelic in the traditional sense, does offer an experience which can be deeply moving and powerfully healing, if used properly. Cannabis, in my view, is another of the great and powerful teacher plants. We cannot really argue that cannabis is a psychedelic, although at high dosages, particularly with individuals who are not experienced with cannabis, the experience is pretty close to a full on psychedelic experience. It can be. The natural world has been bounteous to us. It has provided us with, well, of course, all our food and clothing and everything comes out of nature, and has provided us with these substances that alter consciousness as well, which humanity has had a long relationship with. As a young patchling, the first time I ever used cannabis, it allowed me to fully relax and wind down, which really helped me during a time when I had a lot of built up anger from bullying and repression. Later on in life, cannabis was really the medicine I needed to have my first real transcendental experience, which to me felt exactly like the story that Alan Lightman just described. Ultimately, this experience is what eventually led to the creation of spirit science. Today, my heart sings with joy that we're socially allowed to talk about this out in the open without it feeling weird. It's a breath of fresh air. Let this video be the beginning of a thesis towards an examination of transcendental experiences, science, psychedelics, medicine, consciousness, and love. Throughout history, cannabis has been used in a multitude of ways in our lives. It produces food, fabric, clothing, paper, cosmetics, paints, biofuels, and building materials, and that's not even counting its variety of uses as a medicine or its value as a spiritual tool. The use of cannabis goes back thousands of years and is one of the oldest plant medicines in recorded history, with evidence of it being used in 8,000 BCE and signs that we grew it as a crop as early as 5,000 BCE. Many theorists, Carl Sagan included, used this to suggest that it might have been the original plant we ever started growing at the birth of agriculture. The use of cannabis can basically be followed by the spread of Indo-European language, and we're talking about the root language of French, German, English, Sanskrit, wherever it goes. As soon as it's there, it starts taking on new names, the Giver of Delights, the End of Sorrow, the Gift, the Secret, all these different names start coming into play. In ancient China, a non-psychoactive strain of cannabis sativa, also known as industrial hemp, was grown for its medicinal and practical properties. In ancient India, cannabis indica was grown and written about for its transcendent effects. It made its way through Egypt, and it was grown throughout the rise of Europe. In fact, when European settlers came to the Americas, it was grown for the conquest and expansion of the American Empire. Even George Washington grew it, like it was so important to the developing United States that they actually put it on their $10 bill. That stuff they're farming? That's cannabis sativa! So how did it become illegal? In a word, racism. In a few words, racism and control. In the early 1900s, an influx of Mexican immigrants came to the US. With them came the practice of smoking cannabis recreationally, and it took off. Many early prejudices against cannabis were really just thinly veiled racist fears of its smokers, often made worse by reactionary newspapers such as those owned by the Hearst chain. The African American community also began to pick up on cannabis, so that reinforced this racial fear, feeding into the stereotype that was used to make it illegal in the 1930s. Now, this is where our story gets interesting, and even a bit scandalous. To be clear, many cannabis historians have written about this, but it is a historical theory, as there are some parts which are difficult to prove. The story goes that in the early 1900s, there was a large industry that was rapidly emerging in America, cars. This industry required a lot of different parts to produce, metals, fabrics, rubbers, etc. Now, enter a man named Andrew Mellon. He was the US Secretary of Treasury, who also happened to be the head of Mellon Bank. It is believed that Mellon Bank had a large investment in Dupont Petrochemical, and helped them to acquire General Motors, the makers of cars. At that time, Dupont was also involved with the development of nylon, a synthetic fiber made from fossil fuels. The story says that Andrew Mellon saw an opportunity for his monopoly to grow, but also saw that cannabis hemp, being so useful, could take business away from Dupont, making a lot of different materials needed for these cars. So he got a job for his nephew-in-law, Harry Anzlinger, who took the lead position of the Department of Prohibition in Washington, D.C. in 1929. However, the prohibition of alcohol was a disaster, ending only 13 years after it began. Anzlinger then found himself in charge of a huge government department that had nothing to do. Up until that point, he had said that cannabis didn't harm people or make people violent. But then, suddenly, when his department needed a new purpose, Anzlinger announced that he had changed his mind. Keep in mind, a lot of people in power back then were deeply racist people. The government began putting out outrageous, racist, and derogatory claims, such as that cannabis made men of color try to solicit sex from white women, and that it caused you to fall into a delirious rage, eventually making you go insane. They called it marijuana, the weed with roots in hell. This created tremendous fear and hate towards both cannabis and ethnic minorities. Cannabis was made illegal, and it remained this way for a very long time. Now, right around the time that this whole thing happened, DuPont filed its patent on nylon, and this synthetic fiber took over a large part of the textile and cordage markets that otherwise would have gone to the hemp industry. More than half the American cars on the road were built by GM, which DuPont had massive shares in at the time, and they began producing all of the products, varnishes, plastics, and rubbers for these cars, all of which could have been made by hemp. For the record, yes, hemp, plastic, and hemp rubber are very real and very useful. In fact, Henry Ford made an entire car out of hemp. And finally, all GM cars would subsequently be designed to use tetraethyl- leaded fuel exclusively, which contained additives that DuPont manufactured. It's interesting because the original diesel engine was designed to run off of vegetable and seed oils, and hemp was at the top of that list. Now, I ask that we look at the story with speculation and scrutiny, because there's probably a ton of information that we don't yet have, and there are also those who claim that this is all just a fanciful story and nothing more. Now, regardless of whether there's an actual conspiracy or not, the amount of racist hatred from back then seems to be an undercurrent of the entire thing, fueling almost a century of misinformation, lies, and restrictive control. Stigma around cannabis only got worse from there. In the 1970s, the Controlled Substances Act was established, which put cannabis into the most restrictive category, Schedule 1, which is said to be highly addictive with no medicinal value. There was a bipartisan commission in 1973 to decriminalize cannabis, but Richard Nixon denied the bill and started the war on drugs instead, essentially to bully political enemies and continue the discrimination. John Ehrlichman, the White House domestic affairs advisor between 1969 and 1973, is quoted as saying, We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black. But by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did. Ahhhh. Fast forward to today. One of the biggest reasons for cannabis finally returning to legalized status is largely thanks to the influence of the internet and its ability to spread information swiftly around the world. An overwhelming quantity and quality of medical studies have now reached the minds of millions. These studies have demonstrated that cannabis has tremendous medicinal value and is significantly less harmful and addictive than other legal substances such as alcohol and tobacco. Unlike alcohol and tobacco, which have death tolls of roughly 88,000 and 480,000 people per year, cannabis has actually never killed anyone. However, it's important to know that the studies have also found that when smoked heavily every single day, you're more likely to have a poor verbal memory compared to those who smoke less, or not at all. Much like tobacco, inhaling any smoke is carcinogenic, and cannabis smoke is no different. This smoke, especially in large quantities, can lead to lung health problems throughout one's life. Ultimately, overuse or abuse of cannabis or anything can lead to negative outcomes. When participating in something that changes your mental state, there is the potential that you might think or behave differently than you normally do, which could be fun or not. Anyways, getting into the medicine. Beginning in 1974, researchers at the Medical College of Virginia learned that medical cannabis was able to shrink brain tumors in rats. This study was very much overlooked by the Nixon administration, and since then, the world has seen more and more studies coming out showing the benefits of cannabis. Here are just a few quotes from a scientific publication called The Health Effects of Cannabis and Cannabinoids, written in 2017. There is substantial evidence that cannabis is an effective treatment for chronic pain in adults. There is conclusive evidence that oral cannabinoids are effective antiemetics in the treatment of chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting. There is substantial evidence that oral cannabinoids are an effective treatment for improving patient-reported multiple sclerosis spasticity symptoms. The Cannabome Medical Clinic has cited that the 10 most common conditions that medical cannabis is prescribed for are multiple sclerosis, spinal cord injury, spinal cord disease, cancer, HIV and AIDS, arthritis, epilepsy, inflammatory bowel disease, end of life care, and insomnia. The United Patients Group, a company dedicated to offering education about and supporting medical cannabis use, has listed over 150 different diseases and illnesses that have been effectively treated with medical cannabis. Now, this company does say, though, not to self-diagnose, but instead recommends speaking with an open-minded physician to see if cannabis is a good fit to improve the specific condition that you're dealing with. Now, if cannabis can really help with all of these diseases and illnesses, what exactly is it in the plant that has such healing properties? In the composition of cannabis, there are hundreds of chemical compounds that act upon the various receptors throughout the brain and body. At least 100 of these compounds are called cannabinoids, and two of the most commonly discussed ones are CBD and THC. Interestingly enough, our own bodies actually produce their own cannabinoids through our endocannabinoid system, which is why we have receptors for them in the first place. CBD, short for cannabidiol, is one of the leading reasons for the healing effects of cannabis. CBD does not get you high, but instead causes therapeutic actions through more indirect means in the body by influencing the body to use its own endocannabinoid system more effectively. Because of this, it is known to be a promising potential therapy for many different things, including epilepsy, MS, ALS, Parkinson's, Acne, diabetes, ADHD, and so much more. Personal trainer and podcast host Ben Greenfield has been using this plant to aid in his highly competitive sports lifestyle. And I initially found cannabis, and frankly, CBD, not even THC, to be useful for that. I began microdosing with smaller amounts prior to workouts. CBD is an interesting molecule in that there's a host of research now on not just the relaxation and the anti-inflammatory effects, but also the beneficial hormonal effects, the beneficial effects on muscle response to training, the beneficial effects on everything from testosterone to a slight increase in fat mobilization to all sorts of things that serve an athlete well. When you look at something like off-season use of cannabis, I began to realize that THC, a more psychoactive component, is actually something that served me quite well for writing and for creativity. And so I would say that from a creative production standpoint, I've found that both micro and admittedly, macro dosing with THC has been something that's been really helpful in that regard. Cannabis, in my opinion, can be used as a performance enhancing drug. It tends to help me elicit flow states more readily, kind of calms my mind, helps me relax, but the mental clarity that really comes from it is probably why I microdose anything is for that mental clarity, really getting out of my own way, stopping the self-judgment, stopping the self-criticism. Those are really my biggest barriers. Flow states are spoken about intensively from Steven Kotler and Jamie Weill's books, The Rise of Superman and Stealing Fire. They are typified by the zone that athletes, dancers, musicians, and even meditators find themselves in when the task they're performing becomes effortless, time slows down, analysis goes quiet, and intuition guides each decision. And though these flow states can be brought on simply through mental discipline or breathing techniques, another reliable way is through microdosing psychedelic plants. Many of the medical benefits of cannabis are attributed to CBD. And while CBD does relieve certain negative symptoms, what scientists are now discovering is that another characteristic of cannabis also contributes to the healing properties of this plant. This characteristic is called the entourage effect, a phenomenon where the multitude of compounds inside of cannabis synergistically work together to create a healing effect throughout the body. In other words, it's the sum of its parts that makes cannabis so effective. Now, as mentioned, the other most common cannabinoid is THC, which stands for tetrahydrocannabinol. This is the chemical responsible for most of the easily noticeable effects of cannabis, including that euphoric high. THC resembles another cannabinoid which is naturally produced in our bodies called anandamide, which regulates mood, sleep, memory, and appetite. THC and anandamide bind to the receptors in our brains. In the natural sense, once the receptors in our brains fire, they take a rest before firing again. But when THC binds to our neural receptors, it allows our neurons to turn on and remain that way, for usually between two to eight hours, depending on the method of ingestion. The most common way of consuming cannabis is by smoking it. However, it is often vaporized or made into edible treats. The benefit that people like about this neuronic effect is that it opens up your ability to think very expansive and deep thoughts. This can bring about epiphanies, moving experiences, and ultimately a magnification of whatever is going on within and around you, as it's happening in real time. The experience is also affected by the type of cannabis that you consume, sativa or indica. Sativas are grown in tropical climates, are very tall, and have thinner leaves. These plants generally have more THC content, giving you a cerebral head buzz, more alertness, and creative flow. Indicas, on the other hand, are grown in subtropical climates, are not as tall, and have wider leaves. These plants generally have a higher CBD ratio and provide you with help relaxing your muscles, aiding in pain relief, and all around reducing stress. But it's not all sun shines and rainbows because in large quantities, cannabis can affect one's psyche negatively. Cannabis has been known to affect memory in the brain and can also make you potentially more lazy, especially when used in large quantities. Further, you may on occasion find yourself magnifying into something that's uncomfortable or strange, and this can cause you to feel paranoia, anxiety, and potentially nausea. Cannabis does not make you go insane, but, well, Kerskisacht explains it really well. A study from Britain found that while marijuana use has risen significantly between 1996 and 2005, the number of schizophrenia cases, a type of psychosis, remained stable. The risk of marijuana-induced psychosis remains the highest for people who already have a high risk of psychosis to begin with. For them, it seems more likely that marijuana speeds up the development of their condition rather than causing it, as far as we know right now. To go back to what Alan Lightman said in the beginning about measurement and experience, I believe that this concept directly applies here as well. See, you can actively measure what happens in the brain and body when high on cannabis, and yet, the quantitative data won't really come close to describing the qualitative experience. Further, the experience elicited from cannabis will be affected by the setting in which it's ingested, and the intention of why a person is ingesting it to begin with. When using cannabis with the intention of having a transcendent experience, we can effectively use cannabis to facilitate states of higher cognitive function, deeper understanding, spiritual development, and a more open connection with others. Remember, though, simply smoking cannabis does not necessarily cause one to have a transcendent experience. Instead, your consciousness has to direct the focus and let go in order for this to occur. Let me be very clear, though. Cannabis is not a requirement in order to have a transcendent experience. It's simply one of a multitude of ways by which this can happen. The best way to use cannabis in this way is to combine it with meditation, yoga, or being in nature. Intention is one of the biggest things that I believe can help us bridge the gap between science and spiritual or transcendent experiences, because these cosmic experiences we have in life are essentially exclusive to us. We can share what we've learned and evolve our personalities and values from these experiences, but that's what they are, personal experiences. Sure, we can measure the brain scans with graphs and charts, but we personally measure them by how meaningful they were to us inside. Cannabis is much more, in my opinion, about sensual experience, about realizing the full potential of our sensuality. And when I say sensuality, I don't only mean sex, I'm also talking about appreciation of food, appreciation of music, stuff that our ears and our eyes have been shut off to. Suddenly it comes in and we realize what majesty we live amongst. The World Drug Report in 2014 said that cannabis is, on average, used by one in seven Americans regularly. As cannabis becomes more and more available and socially acceptable in the world, it's up to all of us to be mindful and practice responsible use. Daniel McQueen founded Medisimal Mindfulness, which specializes in the spiritual and therapeutic application of psychedelics or breathing techniques in the Boulder, Colorado area. Well, in regards to set and setting with cannabis, we bring in a gratitude prayer when we imbibe the medicine and we sit in a circle. And we're calling in energies and ways of being that support psychedelic journey work. And this is far from, like, the exact opposite extreme of recreational use or unconscious use or habitual use. And we're not just sitting there feeling stoned or blissed out, that there's some real significant psychological, spiritual and energetically healing and life-transforming occurrences happening in the psyche and in the body. And we turn towards those experiences instead of using the medicine to check out from those experiences. By creating a healing intention or a safe space to enter deeply mystical realms, circles such as these are dismantling the negative stereotypes and calling in a revival of ancient ceremonial use of this plant. We can consider that example as one of the higher levels of what cannabis can be used for, but let's be real. There is a wide variety of ways that humanity does things here on Earth and cannabis culture also has some bigger concerns we have to face. One of the biggest discussions is actually about how it affects kids, one of the largest groups of people smoking cannabis today. As we know, cannabis affects memory and learning. So how does this affect developing brains? Researchers in this field are finding that younger people should be careful and mindful about cannabis. Long-term characteristics of heavy cannabis use include finding it harder to learn and remember new information. It can also lead to a reduced ability to focus one's attention, be organized and make decisions. Cannabis can also lead to a loss of motivation, which is where that stoner stereotype comes from. These effects can become more permanent if heavy cannabis use takes place while the brain is still developing. There is also a lot of concern in society about cannabis as it relates to poverty and addiction. Now, the good news about the conversation is that cannabis itself is not the cause of poverty or addiction. But the downside here is that it does have the potential to be treated as an addictive drug and there are people who use it this way. This can create a dependence if we don't regulate our use. I think the biggest lesson here is that we need to learn to take care of each other and solve the core reasons for poverty and addiction in the first place, which has to do with our connection to each other and building societal systems to make life better for everyone. Speaking of which, there's another aspect of cannabis that simply must be addressed. And if recreational marijuana is ever to be a truly guilt-free pleasure, we need to rectify our nation's potlots and do right by those whose lives were ruined by draconian war on drugs sentencing. Moving forward through the darker side of cannabis, earlier we mentioned that paranoia and anxiety is an aspect of cannabis. Though we should be clear that it's not really the plant's fault, cannabis magnifies something within or around you that causes you to experience these uncomfortable thoughts and feelings. So the environment and your own inner wellbeing also play a part in your cannabis experience. Further, the quantity and quality of cannabis that you consume will also affect the experience that you have. On the topic of quality, there is another aspect of cannabis that we need to be aware of, which is something that happened in Colorado when they legalized cannabis. In fact, I was recently talking to a buddy who had just left a job at a commercial grow operation because he was so concerned with the chemicals that he was being asked to interact with. Some of his fellow employees were actually encouraged to wear hazmat suits while they were spraying their chemical cocktails on the plants. With that kind of manipulation, the products that are being sold today can contain above 30% THC. And our concentrates, our concentrates can actually contain above 95% THC, a far cry from the natural plant. If you've ever set foot inside one of the thousands of dispensaries that have sprung up in recent years, you know that what we're really selling in them is THC. All of the weed that you buy commercially lists exactly how much THC it contains, as do our other much more popular products like vape pens, coffee, ice cream, condiments, granola, gum, candy, baked goods, suppositories, pretty much anything that you can imagine introducing into the human body. The vast majority of cannabis that's being sold today, it isn't really cannabis. It's THC in either a pure form or in an extremely high in unnatural concentration. To say that we have legalized weed as subtly misleading, we have commercialized THC. Remember, in order to truly get all of the benefits of cannabis, you need the entire entourage effect, not just one cannabinoid, no matter how high it gets you. Further, the use of pesticides while growing cannabis and all of our food really is a problem. You probably don't wanna be smoking those chemicals. If you don't know specifically where and how your cannabis has grown, it's probably recommended that you grow your own. Hey, then you could even trade your buds with your buds. Huh, kind of as if they were Pokemon. Ultimately, the legalization of cannabis in Canada is only the beginning of a huge global conversation about consciousness, mind, and reality. We know very well the damaging effects of substances like heroin and meth, and now we are starting to realize that not all methods of altering one's perception has to be scary if we're willing to take the time to understand them, address the risk, and use them properly. If we can learn to use the plants of the earth with love and to the benefit of mankind, they will continue to support us in our conscious evolution. Thank you so very much for watching, and we'll see you again real soon. Hey, if you liked this video, please consider dropping a like or a sub. Super special thanks to David Schmader, Alan Lightman, and Ben Court for the astounding presentations that they gave. We'd also love to thank Adam Ruins Everything, Chris Gissog, and Gaia for producing incredible videos about these subjects that helped us with our research. If you're curious to learn more about other psychedelic plants, we especially recommend watching Gaia's entire Psychedelica series, which covers this information with incredible depth. We highly recommend watching the full-length videos of everything we've shared clips from, and you'll find links in the author comments below. There's tons of information about this subject right now, more than ever. So please do your own research and share what you find in the comments below. As well as a mega special thanks to all of the other sources we've listed throughout this video. As a final word, Solar Plexus Spirit Shirts are now available on the Spirit Science Central Shop. These are organic, handmade, crystal-infused chakra shirts made with love just for you. New batches are produced monthly, so if we don't have your size in stock, we'll custom print you a shirt and send it to you the moment it's ready.