You want to hear about something crazy? >> Yeah, that I've [snorts] been getting really into and this is this is going to get into crazy town, but you know, we like getting into crazy town a little bit. So, dream engineering and anesthesia dreams. So, I've been going down this rabbit hole related to dream engineering. So, can you modify dream content? Can you, for instance, facilitate two-way communication between scientists and dreamers while they are dreaming? And this this is a long-standing interest of mine. I first read
Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming by someone named Stephen LaBerge the very very beginning of high school and became very interested in lucid dreaming, which is, just to define terms, where you train yourself, and there is a process for this, to induce lucidity while you're dreaming. That just means you become conscious of the fact that you're dreaming. And with exercises, you can get to the point where you're able to modify your own dream content. >> Mhm. >> And I used to, for instance, in high school,
when I was competing in wrestling, I would do additional training sessions at night in my dreams. I'm not making this up, and I felt like there was a direct translation to improve performance. Okay. But flash forward, I connected I ended up getting inter- introduced to Dr. Adam Haar Horowitz, who took research out of MIT and Harvard to make dream engineering a reality. So, he has a startup called Dust, D D U S T, and in full disclosure, I I am an investor in that. >> What
does it do? >> They're going to be helping people to modify dream content to address things like PTSD. >> way. >> Now, that's where the conversation started, and he knows that I have long-standing interest in psychedelic related therapies. But psychedelics have taken a backseat for me in the last handful of years because most people I shouldn't say most, many people will not be able to take psychedelics for whether it's health reasons, contraindications, they have psychiatric conditions like schizophrenia in their family that mean it would be
ill-advised to take them. >> Mhm. >> So I've been really focused as you know on neuromodulation, brain stimulation. And I still am super super bullish. >> How often are you doing that now? >> Uh I'm going to be doing it again probably in the next month. I would say every 3 to 4 months. >> Mhm. >> The update there, I did get involved with one company. And I thought very heavily about it called Ampa Health, A M P A Health. They have the smallest, most modular
option on the market. Very easy to use. And I think they're the company if I had to bet on one that's going to get to the point where you can actually power something off of an iPhone. >> Mhm. >> Uh They're doing some really really interesting work work just to touch on that. They're doing one-day protocols now. So instead of 5 days off of work >> costs 30 grand or something, you're doing one day of treatment accelerated with this [laughter] very small dose of antibiotic called
D-Cycloserine which induces plasticity in the brain much like certain psychedelics. So you basically let that dissolve in your mouth beforehand. And [snorts] from let's say a 1 to 10 in severity, let's say my OCD, generalized anxiety felt like an 8 or 9, it has taken it to like a a zero or a one. >> Holy [ __ ] >> One day. Now it gets crazier though because you can also use it Uh people can check out Ampa Health. >> Do they do it in LA as
well or no? Where where are people doing this? >> over the country. I mean I mean what I what I'm hoping is that people who are already administering things like ketamine or who are offering CBT or whatever will will just offer this as an add-on because most of the devices that are available now are like the size of a refrigerator. You have to sign like a quarter million dollar lease. The Ampa Health product for providers is like three grand a month. You can cancel anytime. >>
Mhm. >> I think that's still accurate and it can fit in like the trunk of a car. It's much easier to use. But what's also amazing and I did this recently when I was traveling metatechnician and did like two hours of I think it was stims every 30 minutes. Just for a handful of minutes each stimulation. >> are we talking about stimulation? Okay. >> Just for sleep. >> Different target area of the brain then? >> In this case it was the same target. It's a target
that they're not talking about super publicly yet. But very easy for our therapist like technicians to find. >> How do they find it? Are they just like measuring your head and [ __ ] and looking like >> It's all based on really really good science. They're looking at overlapping networks that are identified by looking at data from deep brain stimulation, data from lesion research. >> Mhm. >> But I mean when they sit down with you, like if you're going to go into this place >> Oh,
it's >> and they're like, "Hey, I got to find this region in your brain." >> of what makes how they do it interesting is they're finding targets that are more uniform person to person. So certain places like the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, certain areas on the front of this skull or front of the brain, front of the head, right? Are a little more variable. You have to be very precise. So they're finding ways to make it very effective, very fast and less likely to suffer from like
clinician error, right? Because if you really have to thread the needle sometimes you get no effect. That happened to me when I was using like earlier targets with other hardware. If they were off by like a half a centimeter, >> Wow. >> nothing. And you just wasted a week, right? And like 30 grand. So, >> And no downside? Like you're not getting headaches afterwards or anything weird? >> Mild headache. Mild headache for like a day. >> Does that not freak you out though? I mean, that's
the only reason I haven't tried any of this stuff. I'm like, I don't know. I would like it's like they're just putting magnets in your brain and [ __ ] >> I mean, >> [laughter] >> just to bust your balls. Before we started recording, you were talking about some drugs you were experimenting with. >> Yeah, but that's like just [laughter] that's just a good old time. It's a >> Yeah, I >> That's tried and true. >> Yeah, I I've >> [laughter] >> Here's the thing. >>
You've done it, too? >> I mean, look, yeah, I'm no stranger to farm- >> I love that if you're going to say it online, I'm going to >> stranger to pharmacology. I'm just saying. In this particular case, I personally found the [snorts] I think the risk-benefit ratio is much more attractive for the general population than psychedelics, which is why I'm spending so much time looking at it. I think it is much, much, much more attractive. >> Mhm. >> It's faster. And frankly, well, let me [snorts]
let me let me come back to these these crazy stories of dream engineering and anesthesia dreams. So, from uh you know, the startup Dust, right? And people can check out the Amp the Health. I encourage them to check it out. But, they're all over the country now. And >> the publicly traded company one or no? >> No, it's private. Private equity. So, Dust does the dream engineering. And [snorts] then he introduced me to some research at a Stanford. Here are some of the headlines of pieces
published by Stanford Medicine. Could anesthesia-induced dreams wipe away trauma? Another one. Could anesthesia dreams be a more palatable psychedelic therapy? All right. So, what does this actually mean? Let me re- read some of this stuff. Uh All right. >> What what dreams are >> Here here here's here's the dream protocol. >> Yeah, that's what I want to know. What's the protocol? >> I tried to convince I was getting an endoscopy recently just to look at my throat, you know. You You got to do that stuff,
the endoscopies, colonoscopies, yeah, that stuff. And I was trying to convince this doctor I'd never met to do this for me, and he was like, "Yeah, I don't think so." But the dreaming protocol is five steps. Number one, tell the patient they might dream under anesthesia. Number two, use propofol, right? >> Oh, that's just great. >> Uh yeah, very common. >> Well, it's what Michael Jackson did. >> Michael Jackson used that plus like six other things. >> Yeah. >> Uh I have a great story about
that, but >> should not DIY propofol, but using propofol as an anesthetic as the patient is emerging from anesthesia. So, here's the thing. If someone has surgery, they're not changing the anesthesia delivered for the surgery, they're basically using propofol to taper them out >> Mhm. >> and tune them to a very particular dose and let's call it radio station so they have pleasant dreams. Okay, but step number three is monitor brain activity, etc. with EEG, ensure at least 10 minutes of quiet undisturbed emergence. This is
really important. If you don't do that, then dream recall is shot. And then you have to ask them about dream recall. But the the point of this is like the what they're seeing, and this is not This is not really super speculative. I mean, it is at the edges now, but uh they're seeing people with long-standing complex PTSD. They have one of these dreams where they taper out on propofol, and they rehearse beforehand to basically imagine their traumatic event ending in a better way with some
kind of resolution. >> Mhm. >> And some of these people, 10 months later, still zero symptoms of complex PTSD. They go from severe to zero. The reason I find this so interesting and other people will find it interesting is that it underscores the possibility that and I've thought this for a very long time, but like the trip matters, right? Because in the world of psychedelic medicine and business right now, the name of the game if you to ramp up your market cap and have an exit
for $2 billion or whatever or launch something with an you know, an IPO and make tons of money is you say, "Okay, psychedelics broadly speaking, a whole lot of them hit the serotonin type 2A receptors. Let's create a drug that hits the same receptors but that doesn't cause the trip because the trip doesn't matter. The trip is a side effect." >> [ __ ] but yeah. >> Well, what's interesting is that I think it's both, but just to just to be clear, like you can hit
the serotonin type 2A receptor with no trip like an LSD variant and it can be very effective for things like cluster headaches. >> Sure. >> It does something. >> Yeah, but I'm talking about the emotional release that comes from it. >> but but but but I so I would say like also some of these psychedelics and not all of them are primarily hitting the type 2A receptor, but have potent anti-inflammatory effects, right? At sub-perceptual doses. So, also I think that could lead to anti-depression and stuff.
>> Right. >> Um however, if dream engineering like ala Dust, right? If dream if they can dream engineer people to have fewer nightmares, which they can. And that has psychedelic-like outcomes. Like, is it possible that even though there are millions of people for whom psychedelics will never be appropriate >> Mhm. >> like tripping balls for 4 to 6 hours. >> [snorts] >> And there are shorter-acting psychedelics and so on, methylone and so on. I get it. But there are plenty people who will never be able
to take take psychedelics. >> Is it possible that every night you have an opportunity to harness something similar? And if so, like who are the scientists who are going to figure out how to mold that and shape it and >> So, what did >> do the prep work? I I I think it's all touching the same stuff. >> Let me ask you a question. What does Dust do? Is it a coaching service? Like because I I have this app that By the way, I I have
no affiliation with this, but I You should check this out, too, Tim. I think you'd really like it. Before I go to bed, there's an app I use called Claria, c l a r i a, and it is the best hypnosis app that I found out there. >> For a variety It makes Claria. I may have I may have tried it. >> You'd recognize the scientists and the team behind it. It's amazing. It's expensive. It's 150 a year. So, it's not cheap, but I found it
to be a beautiful way to drift off to sleep, and I swear I feel better the next day. And there's a variety of different topics. It can be anxiety, it can be whatever. But anyway, my point is my question about Dust is, okay, what is the thing? Is it Is it Could you sit there in this propofol kind of state coming out >> to be clear, Dust isn't doing anything with propofol. That's totally separate. >> So, could you do this with hypnotherapy? >> That's a great
question. I don't know the answer. I also, just to be on the safe side, I don't know what they're disclosing publicly. So, people can check out the website and whatever it says, it says. But it's something I'm keeping an eye on. But broadly speaking, that ended up being the wedge in the door for me to get back into doing a deep dive on basically dream shaping, which is 100% possible. And it's already been demonstrated that you can have dreamers who achieve lucidity communicate with researchers while
they are provably in an REM state by memorizing eye movement patterns in advance, like Morse code, basically, like right, right, left, left, right, left, something like that, to indicate, like, I know that I'm dreaming, and I'm telling you I'm dreaming. >> It's [ __ ] crazy. >> Yeah. >> [laughter] >> Anesthesia's one of those things where we're like, yeah, it's just anesthesia. Anesthesia, when you start scratching the surface, is so incredibly strange. >> Mhm. >> They They really don't know how it works right? >> There
are many anesthetics people have no idea how it how they work. And I mean a few things, right? If you look at like Michael Pollan's new book, he talks about how anesthesia is effective on plants even though they have >> Mhm. >> obviously completely different nervous systems {slash} I should say more anatomy. But it would seem I mean how should I get into this without making a mess of things? Uh there are some hints of of quantum effects of anesthesia, but putting that aside because I'm
not I'm not credible enough to talk about that at length. Some of these anesthetics are inert. Like they shouldn't do anything. >> Mhm. >> Right? So what is happening? And it would seem that it might be physics and not chemistry. So it's not it's not within the realm of chemists say, "Oh, it's binding to this receptor and doing A, B, or C." Even though they might observe effects that mimic those things, that it's somehow affecting bioelectrical fields. And that's the limit of the extent of my
cursory understanding but it's just fascinating. There's so many things like this that we take for granted that we think are understood by the quote unquote experts. >> Right. >> And we have no idea what the mechanism of action is. >> Right.