 So who here has dreams for the future of floating? Who here thinks we should shoot for the stars? Well, let me tell you a little story about shooting for the stars. It's a true story, and it starts about 1,500 years ago. A prehistoric Polynesian navigator living near Tahiti had a dream one night. It gave him the vision to follow a very specific star in the night sky called Arcturus, and to just keep following the star until he reached land. So he set sail with his canoe, and he kept on rowing, and rowing, and rowing, until eventually, after over two months of rowing, he made it to land. And he landed as the first human on a place called Hawaii. Now, take a look at this blue dot on the map. That's Hawaii. It's more than 2,500 miles north of Tahiti, and it's one of the most far-removed and isolated places on Earth. I mean, think how easy it would be to get lost out at sea in the middle of the Pacific, a little to the left, and the canoe winds up in the North Pole, a little to the right, and he's hitting Alaska. Well, this dream that this sailor had turned out to be correct. Out of the billions of stars, he chose the right one. Arcturus is the zenest star of the Hawaiian Islands, which means that when it's at its highest point in the night sky, it's hovering right over Hawaii. And for all the courageous Polynesians who made this arduous voyage, Arcturus was their North Star. By the time the European sailors like Captain Cook arrived to Hawaii in the late 1700s, there were nearly a million native Hawaiians living on the islands. And to this day, the Hawaiians call Arcturus Hokulea, which translates to the Star of Joy. So what is our North Star? Where is our Hokulea? You know, as a scientist, I could never understand how the Hawaiians did that, how they had the courage and the blind faith to just keep sailing north in the hope of finding land. You see, for me, the North Star is data. I need proof in the form of evidence to help guide the way. And when I started this journey into researching and studying float therapy, I honestly didn't know if it would work. I didn't know if it would help those with clinical anxiety. So let me take you through what we know to date about floating and the reduction of anxiety. So to begin, replication is the bedrock of science. And before you can replicate, you first need to find an effect. And the way most clinical trials define the magnitude of an effect is they use a term called Cohen's D. It's a measure of effect size that's really an indication of the magnitude of change. And any values of Cohen D above a 0.8 signify a large effect. So for our first study, take a look at what we had. Cohen's D of 2.15, we hit it out of the park. We selected 50 of the most severely anxious patients we could find in a database maintained at the Lloyd Institute for Brain Research. They're spanning the whole spectrum of anxiety. We had post-traumatic stress disorder. We had generalized anxiety disorder, sociophobia, panic disorder, agoraphobia, the whole spectrum. All of them also had comorbid major depression. And all of them showed a drop in anxiety. On average, a 14-point drop on the Spielberger State Anxiety Inventory. In our next study, we did a randomized controlled trial. And we also found a very high effect size. And in fact, the same exact 14-point average drop on the Spielberger State Anxiety Inventory. Now, how about the first NIH-funded float study? What did we find there? Well, yesterday you heard from McKenna, who presented data from that study, showing that floating was completely safe in this cohort of highly anxious and depressed individuals. But I'm just ecstatic over this new finding, which you haven't heard about yet. Take a look at what the effect size was for the NIH study. Still a very large effect size. But this time it was across six floats instead of a single float, like our initial studies. And guess what? The Spielberger State Anxiety Inventory, on average once again, a 14-point drop across this entire group of subjects. And it's not just anxiety disorders. We have other related disorders showing a similar effect. You just heard from Emily about anorexia nervosa. Well, the first study, once again, a large effect. And then what you just heard, it was now replicated in an inpatient sample, some of the most severely impaired patients in all of psychiatry. And the effect went even higher in that cohort of 45 anorexia nervosa in patients. And it's not just in our laboratory. This has now been replicated outside of our laboratory in Germany in a recent study that studied 25 chronic pain patients. So here we are, less than five years after the first study to show this effect. And it's now been replicated five different times. And these are inpatients with rather severe clinical issues. And no matter what the disorder, floating seems to provide a highly reliable reset for an anxious nervous system. And I should also mention, what's not on here is the other literature that has studied floating. And the other big finding in that literature is a similar reduction in pain in patients who have chronic pain conditions, as well as in athletes. So to me, this is really exciting for the first time. Not only do we have an effect, but we have a replicated effect. And this is the beginning. This is the beginning of something very important in medicine. So with these data in hand, I decided, let's start the float research collective. And we have a singular mission to establish worldwide acceptance for flotation rest as a treatment to relieve pain, stress, anxiety, and other related conditions. Now, in order to accomplish our mission, we have three primary aims. And for each aim, we have a committee that will focus on achieving this goal. So for example, our first aim is to establish flotation rest as an accepted treatment that can be reimbursed by insurance providers and prescribed by doctors and healthcare professionals. And in order to accomplish this, we have a medical approval committee that has representatives from all over the world. And we're going to be reaching out, knocking down the doors of major medical organizations like the World Health Organization, the NIH, Blue Cross Blue Shield, the VA hospital, nationalized healthcare systems. You know, it may turn out that the first domino to fall in terms of being approved as a treatment might be a socialized healthcare system, maybe in Britain, maybe Australia, New Zealand, or Canada. Maybe they'll be the first to implement floating at a national level. And remember, it's the clinical populations who stand to benefit the most from flotation rest. And they're also the patients who just so happened not to have the means to be able to afford floating. They're the ones who need this approval. And they're also the populations who are most likely to float on a regular basis. Our next aim is to raise funds for the continuation of clinical float research. And there's three different areas that we're looking to really invest heavily in. The first is the creation of a cloud-based platform that will enable the collection of publishable data from recreational float centers all over the world. And on the next slide, I'm going to tell you about a few of the things that we could do if we implemented this sort of system. The next is I want to construct a dedicated float clinic for the collective. And this will conduct clinical trials in patient populations, the sort of studies that cannot be done with this cloud-based system. And later today, I'm going to tell you about the first two clinical trials that I'm so excited to try to launch. And finally, I want to launch a pilot grant fund to further float research at universities and hospitals to start seeing replications all over the world. That's what it's going to take you guys. And finally, we need to serve as an educational resource for the float industry and an essential nexus for the dissemination of floatation risk across the world. So, those are our aims. Let's go over some initial study ideas for the cloud-based system. Now imagine, there's probably maybe close to a thousand float centers worldwide. And if we could just get, say, 10% of those centers to sign up for the cloud-based system, we could be collecting data points into the thousands. This is important. As you saw in those earlier studies, those were small-end studies. We need larger-end studies. So the first one, I think, is probably the lowest-hanging fruit, which is what are the various clinical indications people are using floating for on a regular basis. Think about it. Each of you has a membership plan where you have people paying to float every week, to float every month, right? Why? Why are these people floating on a regular basis? Well, we need to ask them. We need to ask them what it's helping them with. And we could get a large sample of floaters who are on membership plans, maybe over 10,000 people, and have a very clear picture of why are these people floating on a regular basis. Another question which any sort of medical treatment needs to answer is, are there side effects? Are there safety issues we need to be made aware of? Well, in our initial studies, we haven't seen any. It's one of the safest interventions we have ever seen on Earth, period, full stop. But those were in small samples. Why about collecting data in 50,000 different floaters, maybe first-time floaters, and really determine the issues that might be occurring at a base rate of say above 0.1%. We could do that in a cloud-based system. And then another question that I kind of like is, how many people think floating provided the most relaxing experience of their life? I was quite surprised that in my first study, 75% of the anxious sample answered this question, yes. So these are just a few of the sort of studies we can conduct with a cloud-based system in place. Now, let me turn to a major issue that I would like to address with the Float Research Collective. One million deaths in America alone. And I'm not talking about the COVID epidemic that we've all just lived through. No, I'm talking about a man-made epidemic, one of drug addiction, where over a million Americans have died since the turn of the millennium. And as you could see, it's getting worse. The COVID pandemic has escalated this. The introduction of synthetic opioids like fentanyl has taken off crazy over the past few years. And each one of these deaths, each one of these numbers on this graph, it's a real life. It's a real person. It's a real tragedy that reverberates throughout the whole community. Here's a kid sitting in the car while his parents had just overdosed on an opioid. And it's not just fentanyl. Prescription drugs like OxyCone and Xanax have caused thousands of overdoses. Over 10,000 deaths a year alone are from taking a combination of opioids and benzodiazepine together. In fact, that's how Tom Petty passed away. He just got back from his 40th anniversary tour. He traveled the world. He was tired. He was in pain. He was exhausted. He had a prescription for a benzo and an opioid. He took a little too much, and now he's dead. How many more Tom Petty's or Chris Cornell's or Taylor Hawkins do we have to lose to this scourge of drug addiction? How many more children have to lose their parents to this? Or have parents who lose their children to this? This is madness, you guys. But this is life right now, and this has got to change. The beginnings of this epidemic of addiction likely started in the 1960s. And in this case, I guess you could say that our society is David, and Goliath, well, he's mother's little helper. Let me tell you about this. It's a fascinating story. Approved by the FDA in 1963, Valium, a benzodiazepine, was the western world's most widely prescribed drug. At its peak in popularity in the late 70s, Americans consumed more than two billion tablets of Valium. Two billion. And who came up with this catchy ad that even the Rolling Stones sing about? Well, a man named Arthur Sackler. That's right. The same Sackler family that decades later would go on to make OxyContin and pay off the FDA, our government, not only to approve OxyContin, but to approve it with a label that says this is not addictive. I kid you not, you cannot make this stuff up. It's insane, you guys. And here we are, this drug epidemic in full steam years later. And it only got worse when Xanax was introduced and even shorter acting benzodiazepine. It just got worse and worse and worse. From 2003 to 2015, the percentage of benzodiazepine prescriptions doubled. And the worst part is this. The patients get handed this prescription, but they don't realize how quickly they could become physiologically addicted to this drug. Withdrawal symptoms for benzodiazepines are even worse and more dangerous than opioid withdrawal. This past year alone, one in eight American adults have used benzos and nearly 20% of them misused the drug in a way that's different than their doctor actually prescribed. So let's ask these people who are misusing. Why are you misusing? Well, of the 5 million people who misused benzos this past year, here's the main reasons why. About 46% said to relax or relieve tension. About 22% said to help with sleep. About 10% said to help with emotions. Can you guys think of anything else that might relax or relieve tension, help with sleep, help with emotions? That's right. We are onto something here. Most people when they take benzodiazepine are often opioids as well. They take it on a PRN basis, pro-renata. That means take as needed. They're popping the pill to try to get these same effects that floating so clearly provides. And this habit of treating mental distress by pill-popping has become the default approach of our current medical system. And it's time, you guys, for a new approach. So here we go. Get ready. Here's my proposal to take on Goliath. I want to do a dual head-to-head randomized control trial. This is the gold standard in medicine. But this time, we're not taking on some average control condition. No. I want to take on the behemoths. If we could take on the gold standard treatments for the short-term reduction of anxiety and pain and show that we are as good if not better, suddenly I think you're going to see this huge embrace of this novel intervention. So here's some of the details. I want to recruit at least 200 participants. Half of them will have clinical anxiety, things like generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, social anxiety. And the other half will have chronic back pain. And they'll be naive to floating and they're not currently going to be taking any benzos or opioids. And we're going to conduct what's called a non-inferiority trial. We're going to measure changes from pre to post-float or pre to post-pill and then follow out for about 48 more hours. So this is kind of what it's going to look like. You're either going to have a single float session or a single dose of a benzodiazepine like Xanax. And we're going to look at the short-term relief of anxiety. And every subject is going to do both conditions. So one day, they'll get randomized and maybe come in and do their float and then they'll come back a week or two later and then they'll take the pill. So every person is going to go head to head floating versus the drug. In the other study, it will be a single float session versus a single dose of an opioid like oxycodone for the short-term relief of pain. Same exact design. Every person with chronic back pain will get both conditions. It's called a within subjects crossover design. The most powerful clinical trials you could conduct. And because these pills are often taken on a PRN basis, you only need a single dose to show the effect, to prove the point. And listen, we're going to be measuring things for 48 hours. I have data now to show that the anti-anxiety effects of floating persevere for 48 hours. Well, when you pop his annex, guess what? Four to eight hours later, you see this reemergence of anxiety. Because we're measuring things out for 48 hours, I think we're actually going to win this battle. 48 hours later, I think the people who floated are still going to feel the anxiety and pain reduction. And the people who took the pill, guess what? They're going to be ready for their next pill way before then. Come on, are you guys excited about this? Could you imagine? Could you imagine? Just for a second. If the clinical trial bears out the way we think it will, what an impact that would have. So how are we going to do this? How are we going to go up against Goliath here? Pharmaceutical companies who spend hundreds of million dollars to do a phase three clinical trial. Just this year alone in 2022, the pharmaceutical industry has lobbied Congress and federal agencies with over 140 million dollars just for their lobbying efforts. How are we as this sort of burgeoning float industry going to take on Goliath? Well, we got a fundraise. And I have three primary targets. Here's the first one. For a million dollars, we could establish the float research collective. We could create and implement the cloud-based platform. We could build the dedicated float clinic. And we could launch the pilot grant fund. The penultimate goal would be then to conduct a dual single-site randomized controlled trial at the FRC float clinic. And we would look at floating versus benzos for the short-term reduction of anxiety and floating versus opioids for the short-term reduction of pain. But ultimately, what you got to understand is for science and medicine to take this seriously, they want to see it replicate at multiple locations. They would want to see a multi-site study and that's exactly what I'm proposing for our ultimate goal of 10 million dollars. We could conduct dual multi-site randomized controlled trials directly comparing floating to benzos and floating to opioids. And relatively speaking, you guys, compared to the hundreds of millions of dollars that Big Pharma spends on their clinical trials, I don't think this is that much money. I think we could actually reach this. Maybe we could just get to that first goal of a million dollars and that would be enough to get things rolling and maybe a wealthy philanthropist. Maybe somebody who's sick of the scourge of drug addiction will help get us to the finish line. That's my hope. So we need help, you guys. We need a lot of help. This is a major monumental effort and we're trying to launch really big. We are shooting for the stars. So please follow us on social media at Float Research. Help spread the word. Get the word out to as many people as possible. And the number one thing you can do to help right now is sign up for a team-based fundraiser. It's super easy. The website's right there and you have your own personalized campaign site that will be created so you could help us with this fundraising effort. So here we are, 2022. Just a little over five years after I started my effort into studying clinically anxious patients and floating. Will this mission I propose be hard? Absolutely. I have no doubt. Listen, no behavioral intervention has ever taken on benzos or opiates for the rapid reduction of anxiety and pain. But I'm ready for this challenge. I'm ready to take on this whole backwards mentality that the only way to quickly relieve suffering is by popping a pill. No. There's another way, guys, and it's called floating. Getting floating accepted as a medical modality is my life's mission now. And running the Float Research Collective is now my full-time job. I need your help. We're reaching for the stars in this one. We're searching for Hokulea. We're searching for our star of joy. And just like the Hawaiians did over a thousand years ago, we're going to find our island. And boy, when we get there, is it going to be beautiful. Thank you, guys.