Destigmatizing Psychedelic Medicine with Dustin Robinson

00:06
Hello and welcome to the VK podcast. I'm Ryan Alford, your co-host in the VK lounge in Miami is Mr. Chris Hansen. Chris, what's up today? How you doing my man? Happy Monday. Happy Monday, man. I'm pumped. Anytime we're gonna talk. Oh, Super Bowl Sunday was last night. It was a good game. We're all about wellness here at the VK podcast and VK in general.

00:32
And so you and I were in the gym this morning looking around. It was like ghost town. A little quiet. If maybe if everyone had. Don't like a low dose mushroom or something, instead of drank too much, they'd it's still been at the gym today. You can make those take a little vacay. Got your work heading. Yes. Speaking of which we've got a great guest today, CEO and founder of your investments, Mr. Psychedelic law, Mr. Cannabis law, Dustin Robinson. So Dustin.

01:03
Buddy we're doing great. Appreciate you guys having me on. Yeah, man Hey, we got some new roads. We could go down. Did your team win last night in the Super Bowl? I Didn't really have anyone else really I was going for the 49ers just for the hell of it But I was just looking for a good game and that's what we got So it was an exciting game came down to the very end. So I enjoyed it. Yeah, I agree It was a swift in to the 49ers goals. They hadn't even saving that one. It was just too easy

01:33
The, I was rooting for the 49ers too. I thought it was a good story. But it's hard to root against Patrick Mahomes. If you hate Patrick Mahomes and what they're doing, then you just don't appreciate greatness. And he's a G. They were, they had some commercials and stuff comparing him to Tom Brady. And some of the people at my Super Bowl party were like, it's too early for that. I'm like, he's starting to prove it. He's getting up there. The guy is humble. And in the game's different. He runs around. He's.

02:00
I don't know. It's not really fair. Every time period is different, but he's got some skillsets that I don't even think Tom had. They obviously are on the same plane as mental focus and drive and championship pedigree. Yeah. And the backstories I think are always the best. Even the 49ers quarterback, he was the last pick in the draft. If you look at that guy's whole history, he was always the underdog from.

02:25
time from getting recruited out of college to going to the NFL is the last picking around. He's like the third string had to earn his position. And now he's playing in the super bowl. So it's, that's pretty amazing to watch. It is. I was rooting for him. He held, I didn't think he didn't lose the game for them. That's for sure. I thought he played well enough for them to win. It's just that's like the knock on him is he's like a game manager. Like he ain't going to sling the ball, like my homes and make those big plays. He knows how to manage the clock, manage the team. And he's got a lot of talent around him. And

02:54
got them this far, but yeah, unfortunately I said when it was like 16 to 13, I looked at my brother and the 49 is we're up three. And I was just like, it just feels like the better quarterback is going to win this. I totally respect both quarterbacks. I'm just like my homes in a Superbowl like this, the better quarterbacks. I think everybody was sitting there. I was sitting there. That same thing. That same discussion. I was like, this is, they've left them in the game too much. Now the homes is going to be homes. And he was.

03:23
Too good. Hey man, let's set the table for our listeners. I know you call yourself a consciouspreneur. You've got your hands in a lot of things, but let's give everybody the old ones and twos on you, Dustin, and who you are, what you do, and then we'll go down whatever road we want to. Absolutely. Yeah. So by education, I'm an attorney, also licensed CPA and a licensed realtor. Have a few different companies that I founded. One is my law firm. My law firm.

03:52
It's pretty much full service for highly regulated industries. I also have a nonprofit that advocates for legal reform around psychedelic medicines. My investment fund is Eater Investments. That's where I focus most of my time. We invest in alternative solutions for mental and behavioral health. We're currently one of the largest investors in psychedelic research. And then I also have a venture studio called Nucleus where we launch digital media assets. Yeah, I got my hands full. I'm doing a lot of different stuff, but most of it is really around breaking.

04:22
false social constructs around us, breaking stigma, and really mental and behavioral health. I think right now when you look at society, I think the largest problem we're facing right now is the mental health crisis. Over a billion people globally are suffering with some sort of mental health indication. I actually think that's understated. I think it's more than that. And the current pharmaceuticals out there just aren't affected the way they need to be. The SSRIs and the Benzos that were developed decades ago, there's just been little to no innovation.

04:52
society is really ready for some alternative therapies and alternative solutions to address this enormous problem we have. We can pause right there if someone needs to turn their ringer off. Obviously this is not live so we can edit but if that's good okay Mr. Hanson.

05:12
Episode 400, your ringer is still going off. Anyway, no, that's great. I'll pick up right here. Dustin, that's awesome, man. You've got your hands on a lot of things. I'm going to go right at something because you're a smart guy. You're in the industry. And I guess if we all knew the answer to this, we probably would all be a lot better off. But I'm going to go at it anyway. Why is the stigma with...

05:41
psychedelic medicine and psychedelic as a whole. I understand, I am not the one, I, let me just say where I stand on these things. I am not, I grew up in South Carolina, I've lived everywhere, but I certainly probably lean towards the conservative profile, but I have some very liberal probably beliefs and tendencies as well. With that said, grew up very conservative.

06:08
but sometimes logic has to overtake tendencies or upbringing or ignorance. And why at this stage? I understand I don't want every drug the way they've done it in freaking, what, Oregon or wherever to be legal. I think that's ridiculous. There needs to be some regulation. But why in 2024, if there is potentially medication from the earth,

06:37
or wherever that might could help people with mental issues and other challenges. Why is it such a roadblock? Why, why would we get in our own way? Again, we don't want people tripping on every corner, but to use it for medicinal purposes is for mental health. Why the hell is it gotta be so hard to get these tests of these regulations taken care of?

07:07
Yeah, absolutely. I'm actually have a very similar background to you. I grew up my whole life. I actually never tried a drug up until three years ago. So it's ironic that I'm so focused on this space. So I grew up my whole life basically just believing what society told me. Go to accounting school, get your master in accounting, go to law school, work at a big firm. I just really didn't question the social constructs around me. And as I started, I had my first exit about six years ago. I sold a manufacturing company that I was running.

07:35
And that's when I really stepped out of the box and started looking at what are my passions? What am I interested in? And I started representing a lot of doctors in the space. And those doctors are the ones that kind of educated me on the benefits of psychedelics. I grew up my whole life. I had a lot of friends that did psychedelics. I never judged them, but I thought they like turn your brain into mush. I was always growing up into sports, health and wellness. And I basically fed into the stigma, totally thought they turned your brain to mush. And then all of a sudden these doctors are sending me research.

08:05
Basically out of Johns Hopkins, Yale, NYU, this was like four or five years ago, some of the top research institutions were coming out with research around psychedelics. I was reading about the neuroplasticity, dendrite growth, neurogenesis, how they're helping with all these various indications. It just sparked my curiosity. I started investing in the space and representing clients through my law firm in the space.

08:29
Obviously a lot of my clients were like, hey, you're like the lawyer that, that represents all of us, you need to have your own experience. So I had my own experience and I was just blown away that it was the complete opposite. What society had always told me, rather than turn your brain to mush, it actually lit my brain up. You feel parts of your brain talking to one another that don't talk to one another. I had tremendous perspective. I felt so focused and I felt this sense of clarity.

08:55
within my brain, not mush in my brain. And so that's actually what really inspired me after having that experience that just validated all the research that I was reading. I was like, wow, okay, this makes a lot of sense once I experienced it. So that's when I started, I formalized my fund and we raised tens of millions of dollars and started deploying capital into the space. And we've made a lot of strides on the stigma side and the legal front right now. MDMA as of just yesterday, they received their.

09:24
approval from the FDA on their NDA to get reviewed. So MDMA for PTSD will likely be an FDA approved pharmaceutical in August of 2024. After that, it's still will the DEA will have 90 days to reschedule. Some of the states don't adopt the DEA rescheduling, so they'll have to reschedule. But we are right on the brink. I think probably early to mid 2025, we are going to see MDMA as a

09:49
available for people with PTSD. And right behind that, you have a phase three clinical trial on psilocybin for tumor resistant depression. There's another one for major depressive disorder. We've invested in DMT. We started investing in a lot of short acting psychedelics like 5MEO and DMT and novel short acting psychedelics. They're one company we have that's reducing the length of the trip for psilocybin. There's a lot of interesting things. And I think this MDMA FDA approval is really going to start knocking down.

10:18
a lot of barriers. But just like you said, you were also seeing simultaneously Oregon, Colorado, these different states rolling out their own legal frameworks. And it's interesting because when I first got into the space, I was pretty naive. Like I said, I never tried any psychedelics. I started talking to all the different nonprofits and trying to understand. And there's one particular nonprofit, Decrim Nature, that's probably the best known. They've got like hundreds of thousands of followers on Instagram.

10:44
and Carlos and Larry, the founders, I spent a lot of time talking to them and they educated me quite a bit on the indigenous use. I was really into the mental health aspects, but I wanted to learn more. And you know, some, the more I learned, I started to develop my own personal perspectives on things. And I actually differ a lot with some of these different non-pro, a lot of them are just about like decrim as if these are oranges or bananas, let everyone grow. And the reality is like, the best thing we could do, these compounds are powerful.

11:13
They could be used for good, but they could also be misused. So I think it's very important that you have a proper regulatory framework so that these things are properly labeled, they're manufactured properly. You really have the proper framework and guardrails around it. Because what happened in the 70s is they got in the hands of the wrong people and people weren't using them responsibly. And the worst thing that could happen for the industry is that we repeat that history and take 10 steps back. So I think it's very important as we roll out these compounds that we...

11:41
put up proper guardrails. That's what my nonprofit is focused on, creating responsible legal reform around psychedelic medicines. Do you think, is it as simple, the roadblocks that still exist, that are getting better? You highlighted it. The MDMA thing would be huge, will be huge. But are the roadblocks as simple as we have a lot of politicians that are 65 to 75 years old that remember those seventies and don't want to repeat it and they're just so

12:09
They can't unwire from the mainframe. Like it's just programmed. Programming is deep. This is good. This is bad. You know, it's all black and white. I think it's really, once again, I come back to social constructs. Just around five years ago, before I started reading the research, I felt the same as some of these politicians that I was in their seats. Right. And I'm not some, I'm not some like crazy guy who takes unrealistic and irrational.

12:38
physicians, but society had told me this and I just believed it. So I think a lot of it is just simply educating. That's why I'm so passionate about the big distinction between the cannabis and psychedelic industry is that the psychedelic industry is really progressing through this FDA clinical trials, proving it out through scientific research, objective scientific research. Whereas cannabis really mainly went through the state authorized frameworks where they weren't doing double blind placebo studies, proving the efficacy and the safety.

13:07
So the psychedelic industry right now, so much research is coming out. And if these politicians just take the time to read this research, they will understand that these compounds have tremendous potential and a really good safety profile when you do FDA clinical trials, phase one is really all about safety phase two is when you start really getting into efficacy and phase three as well. And so safety is very important. You could have a super effective drug, but if it's has a high likelihood for abuse or has other side effects and it's not safe.

13:37
is no good. But what's amazing about these psychedelic compounds is that they actually have an incredibly good safety profile. There's Dr. David Nutt out of Imperial College of London, who's the chief medical officer of one of our portfolio companies. Several years ago, he did a state a study on this and took nicotine, alcohol, cocaine, all these different compounds and check and basically did a study on their safety profile and psilocybin, LSD, MDMA. These compounds were like the lowest on like likelihood for abuse.

14:06
So they're very safe compounds. And what's interesting about MDMA for PTSD is it really talks to both sides of the aisle because so many veterans could potentially be helped. Over 13 million people in America suffer from PTSD. So many of them are veterans. Obviously on the conservative side of the aisle, there's a lot of big veteran advocates. So you're actually starting to see a lot of the people on the conservative side really starting to look at this research and the potential these compounds can have.

14:32
But I think the main thing is as long as it goes through the proper federal pathways, I think you're always going to see people hating on what they're doing in Oregon and Colorado. I'm not hating on it. That's a tougher approach. But when you go through the clinical trials, which by the way, it costs hundreds of millions of dollars. MAPS just raised up MAPS is the company that is doing the MDMA phase three trial that's going to get it approved. They just raised another a hundred million. They spent hundreds of millions of dollars on proving this out. It's very expensive. But once you do that, you have data.

15:02
to support and their phase three trials for MAPS, they're actually called Lycos now, they just did a name change. So Lycos, their phase three data showed that two thirds of the participants in their phase three trial were no longer clinically diagnosed with PTSD and over 80% of the participants had a positive reaction to the medications. The research is amazing. That's like a huge medical breakthrough got written up in Nature Magazine. So once you provide these politicians with the data and that's why we're starting to see so many huge strides.

15:31
from knocking down these different legal blockades and getting these medicines approved. What's the dosage on like the MDMA for PTSD? Cause I'll say this, I'm not really joking, this being truthful, that's about the best I've ever felt when I did MDMA. I know, it's kinda bad. Yeah, but it was also kinda the worst I'd ever felt the next day, it was like. Yeah.

15:52
Oh, too much fun. It's interesting you say that. I think so that I love that statement because I think that's one of the big problems like with psychedelics, you're setting your setting is just so important. And I'm actually grateful I waited as long as I did to try my first psychedelic compound. And I think what the problem with MDMA does is it reduces the levels of your amygdala and it releases octetose. Your amygdala is what causes like fear and emotion. So you know, if you have PTSD and you think of whatever the trauma is, you're

16:22
Your amygdala is getting hyper aroused and you can't think straight. So what MDMA does is it reduces that amygdala and it releases oxytocin and you have this sense of connectedness. That's why if you, I don't know if you took it at a club or a festival or whatever, the people you were with, you probably had a concert. Yeah. I think I hugged everyone at the show. Exactly. Here's what's super important. I think when you're young, you do that and you look back at that event and you're just like, wow, that event was amazing.

16:48
I felt so much love because of MDMA, but now I don't feel that love. But in reality, through integration, through really reflecting on the experience, that love was within you. That feeling you felt was very real. So for me, my first MDMA experience, it was just a window for my capacity to love.

17:06
And when I reflect on that, when I meditate every morning, I genuinely believe I could bring myself back to that feeling. Like the MDMA just showed me my capacity. So don't let that one experience just be one experience.

17:18
Let it be a lesson that you have that within you. And since that first MDMA experience, like I have a deep sense of connection and love and understanding for this plan. And I think that's where people really miss out on like the opportunity with MDMA. They take it, they have that one experience and they just chalk up the experience, that one experience. They don't stop and reflect and recognize that that love and that connectedness they felt is within them. The medicine just helped them basically feel that emotion.

17:48
Yeah. I think well, very well said, very well said. I never thought about that. I really am a lover, Chris. I was hug central that night. We all are. We've been beaten down, but we all, we, everyone just needs a little bit of love. I know it was just Friday nights. I guess it's still in. These medicines have so much potential because they do. I think the answers to like mental health and happiness is number one.

18:17
love and number two, purpose. And these medicines, and we just both see psychedelics as a tool. We also invest in like virtual reality for mental health, digital therapeutics, biomarkers, all sorts of other stuff. But at the source of all this is that if you don't have purpose, then you're going to be depressed. That's why you see these billionaires who are retired, who are super depressed, super depressed. And the reason is like, they already achieved everything they need to achieve. They don't wake up with any purpose. Same thing with like professional athletes.

18:47
all this money early on, they retire at 30 and they don't even know who they are. They have no purpose. So I think these medicines really help you find your purpose. And I think that's like a key aspect as far as like the mechanism of action of why they're so efficacious for these various mental and behavioral health conditions. I think there's a point there I want to make that's like, that like honing in on what you just said and talked about, like with purpose. I think so many people,

19:17
Even myself, when you're growing up and learning, like the expectations and like, you think that places and things and markers are destinations. And like, you're going to get there and okay, you get there and you're then you're going to just bath. I'm happy here and happy forever. When what you just said, whether you get all the money or get all the fame or whatever your goals

19:47
It's always the, it's so cliche. He said the journey is everything, but it is because it sounds so cliche, but it's true. You have to enjoy the journey. The goal is not even if you actually look at what's happening in your brain, like once you hit the goal, the dopamine gets released for a short period of time. But if you don't replace that with a new journey and a new goal, you're just back to like normal levels, so you have to enjoy the journey. The journey is the exciting part. That's where the dopamine.

20:15
is being released. That's where you're waking up every day and pursuing something. And once you reach that goal, if you're no longer pursuing something, you will not feel good about yourself. So, I 1000% agree. It's like, you need to make sure that you're setting goals.

20:30
but you're also enjoying the journeys, the good and the bad. At the end of the day, I don't even think there's good and bad things. There's things that happen, the stuff that doesn't go the way you want it. As long as you learn from it, it's a positive thing. And as long as you understand that perspective and you just keep moving forward, you'll enjoy the journey way more and not be so reliant on the outcome and the goal. 100%. What are, we talked about the MDMA, you know, I'll say this, and maybe this will put perspective for you and maybe how to frame this.

21:00
My mom is suffering from like early dementia, early Alzheimer's. My, her mother had it short-term memory. She's active. Her, like my grandmother had Alzheimer's and didn't have a, she drank four pots of coffee a day and sat at her kitchen table for 15 years and died at 85 because her brain shut down, but every organ in her body worked perfect. My mom is probably headed down the same path. No health issues whatsoever. Except her brain. What are to be seeing in.

21:29
as it goes with psychedelics and that sort of thing. I've heard a lot of stuff bubbling around that, dementia and Alzheimer's and all that with psychedelics. Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, those are all neurodegenerative diseases is basically what they're classified as. And there's been some research on it. Most of the research right now in psychedelics is really focused on like depression, anxiety, PTSD, but there's also been quite a bit of research on some of these neurodegenerative diseases. And there's actually a really interesting kind of niche that is

21:57
gaining popularity within the psychedelic space. And what that is, is that companies are now trying to take the psychedelic experience out of psychedelics and seeing if these compounds still have efficacy. So essentially what they're doing is they're blocking, they're not hitting the 5-HT2A receptor, which is responsible for that subjective, hallucinatory experience, because there are certain physiological changes that happen in the brain when you take psychedelics. So the question is, could those physiological,

22:26
changes actually be helpful, even if we block the actual trip from happening. We blocked that 5-HT2A receptor. So we've invested in one company that is doing it. There's been very little research on this, but we invest in a company called Solera that's doing absolutely tremendous research. And my thesis around this particular space is that I think for like depression and PTSD, some of these really where you're in this constant loop of negative thoughts, even addiction,

22:56
experience because it really rattles your brain and gives you a different way of thinking of things. But I actually think neurodegenerative diseases is a really interesting space. So the indication that solera is going after is actually a neurodegenerative. It's a form of dementia, basically, is what they're going after. So that's not to say the psychedelic, the full psychedelic experiences can't also help with the neurodegenerative. We'll see. There needs to be more research. But in the non-psychedelic, psychedelic space, I know that's an oxymoron.

23:25
I think there's a lot of potential because when you're dealing with neurodegenerative diseases, there's just, there's something, it's physiological. It's not necessarily like you're in this constant loop of negative thoughts, like depression or addiction. So we're doing research and you know, that I'm always, I think there's a lot of people in this industry that are a little bit too, too overzealous and they're like, it's going to change the world and it's going to help with every disease. And I'm like, I'm very research oriented. Maybe it's just a result of my background in education. Just like I'm always questioning things.

23:55
And so until we do the research, we just don't know. But I think they've done animal studies and the animal studies have shown to be very positive, but we've healed every indication on demand through animals. That doesn't always translate into humans. So Solera actually is going to be moving into their first human trials within the next few months. And that's when we'll really know. But that's what's so crazy. You said it, you like tabled it with, it's not going to cure everything. If it cured one damn thing, why aren't we using it?

24:24
But it clearly does a lot more. And so- Yeah, I think one area where that whole philosophy that you keep saying really holds true is in the end of life space. So there's a federal statute called the right to triad, which basically says similar to the theme you're discussing, the concept of the right to triad, is if you're at the end of your life, you should be able to access anything that could potentially help you. Really think about it. Like if you're at the end of your freaking life,

24:51
FDA approvals take a long time, but there's certain conditions within the Right to Triact. It has to be a phase two drug. It has to have already gone through phase one and shown that it's safe. But there's a lot of states that also have their own version of Right to Triact. And basically there's a lawsuit right now that has been filed because much psilocybin has shown so much potential for end of life depression and people are trying to access it through the Right to Triact, but they're not able to. But I think the end of life...

25:20
It's if there is something that could potentially help, if I got 60 days left and there's something that can help me better cope with death, I don't care if it's FDA approved or whatever, I should be able to access it. And that's really what the spirit of the right to triact really was. However, it's not the way it's being implemented. I think we're going to look back on this, probably not even our lifetime, a hundred years, whatever it is. And there's going to be some real, I don't know, coming to Jesus moments for.

25:49
the people that roadblocked some of this stuff when, when pharmaceutical drugs have proven completely on, they don't phase the degenerative stuff we're talking about with the brain. Like there's been no, no literal to no traction whatsoever. And we might have compounds from the earth that if nothing else make quality of life better, but at best might cure or reverse some of these things. And

26:18
And I think that's why Chris and I are passionate while we do the show. Is we want to make sure that people know that alternative wellness should be the first alternative. Yeah, I think it's important that you look at the history of the pharmaceutical space to understand why we're in this position. What really was like an eye opener for me is when I was reading, I started learning about the mental health space, researching pharmaceuticals. And when I saw that Xanax and some of these other SSRs, they were developed in like the 80s and the 90s. There's been little to no innovation.

26:47
from pharmaceutical companies in the entire CNS space. And why? Number one, CNS is very complicated, hard to solve these problems. But number two, it's because they're fat and happy just prescribing Xanax and Valium and all these other SSRIs and Benzos, just prescribing them and keeping people on them for their entire life, just masking the symptoms. Right, so there's been very little to no innovation. That's why our investment fund, we think there's actually now, within the pharmaceutical space been.

27:15
a lot more investment coming into CNS. So we have this Renaissance, people talk about the psychedelic Renaissance, but it's really a CNS Renaissance we're starting to see where people are like, okay, we now understand we're in a mental health crisis. Like these pharmaceuticals clearly aren't making things better. We need alternative solutions. And that's why our fund, our sole focus is basically diligent saying and talking to every company we can to try to invest in what we believe.

27:43
are the alternative solutions that will prove to be effective in the future. We believe psychedelics could be one of those and we've invested quite heavily, but there are a lot of really innovative alternative solutions that are right now being developed to address this. And I think we're going to hopefully see a Renaissance happen and hopefully be able to turn the curve on this mental health crisis. Yeah. It just.

28:07
It chaps my hide, like literally here locally, there was some articles recently. And it's actually a guy that I don't have any issues with their hat in the past. He's definitely like a Republican politician around here. And he was talking about Delta eight and he was talking about all these drugs and he was like, we're getting rid of it. All these things that are being sold that they're just to get you high. And dudes at the bar after work, having four cocktails, getting drunk, which is fine.

28:36
But somehow he is divided in his own mind. He's gonna say that in the news article, but then, and it's like, the divide of her study. His poison isn't the same poison, so he's choosing his team in a way. I'll tell you why. It's because our simple human brains, we're so simple, we look at things very binary. We try to put them in the buckets. And I think that's the problem that we have with even on the marijuana side, classifying them as either medical,

29:06
or recreational. The reality is your therapeutic approach to life should be looked at on a spectrum. Everything you do can have some form of therapeutic value. So for me, do I use cannabis medically? I don't smoke that often, but on a Friday night, I'd like to take a toke. It relaxes me. Is that medical or is that recreational? Even alcohol, I think could be used in a

29:30
medical therapeutic context. If you don't, if you have a good relationship with alcohol and on a Friday night, you had a hard week and you want to reward yourself with a little beverage to help take the edge off that's therapeutic, right? So I think we got to stop looking at the compound and we got to start looking at the intention of how you're using it's all about intent. If you're using these things with the right intention.

29:53
I think they could be very positive, but whether it's psychedelics, cannabis, alcohol, nicotine, cocaine, whatever it is, if you're using them with the wrong intent, then they're probably not going to be held all about your intention. And it shouldn't be looked at as black and white medical or recreational. It's a spectrum. We're all trying to like consume things to make us feel better. We just need to do them with the right intent. What are like, what are things that maybe our audience will be interested to know that you're seeing?

30:22
Whether it's in the psychedelics, we talked about some of them, or in cannabis law, we've talked about the MDMA trials. That's exciting. That's one of them. But is there other things or both positive or negative that might have impact and might surprise people that you're, that kind of hits your desk every day? Yeah. One of the areas we're looking pretty deeply in, we've started to invest quite a bit in is these short acting psychedelic compounds. The challenge from a commercialization perspective with psilocybin and MDMA is

30:52
You need to be in a clinic for six to eight hours to experience them. Right. So that's not ideal from an access perspective is also not ideal from a cost perspective. That's expensive to have therapists sitting with someone for that long. So there's these other psychedelic comments and really novel psychedelic compounds to a lot of people forget like LSD and MDMA. They were made in a lab. Right. And like in the seventies, when we had the controlled substances act, the research just stopped on finding.

31:20
new psychedelic molecules. They all mostly they MDMAs and intactigen, but most of them work on like your serotonin system, your 5-HT2A receptor. And so there's all these different receptors in your brain. So what we're investing a lot in is these novel psychedelic compounds that are hitting certain serotonin receptors that we want to hit and not hitting other serotonin receptors, ideally in a short duration.

31:45
which will increase access and make them far more affordable. We by default ended up with MDMA because there's such a long history with it, it's an incredible molecule. But there's a lot of innovation happening with other intactogens, MDMAs and intactogens, but there's a lot of companies now developing different intactogens that act a little bit differently from MDMA. So I think there's a ton of innovation. I think a lot of people get caught up like on the patent landscape in the psychedelic industry, like you can't patent nature, you can't.

32:13
patent psilocybin, you can't buy, and they think like the pharmaceutical companies are evil and we're very intentional about not investing in companies that take improper patent positions, but there's so much innovation going on as well. And at the end of the day, in order to get a patent, it needs to be novel and unique and have utility.

32:31
right? So something out of nature is not novel or unique. So you can't patent nature. However, if you're taking nature and you're improving upon it and creating a shorter trip or a more steady trip or whatever it might be, you're innovating and you're adding value to society. And therefore you could get a patent for that. And that's stuff that we love. And I'm super excited to see the innovation that's currently occurring within the psychedelics. There's another area we're very

32:59
interested in is the virtual reality for therapeutics. It's very nascent. Paratherapeutics knocked down a lot of the barriers is one of the first like digital tools that was FDA approved and they actually haven't had a great stock performance. So that's shied away a lot of investors. The biggest challenge I think with VR and digital therapeutics is just adoption. Even me, I bought my VR headset and we started investing in a company that thought it was awesome and now it just sits on my desk. It's very hard to get people

33:28
So I think the younger generations are more comfortable with it, putting it on and using it, but getting hospitals and clinics to buy these headsets and get their patients to use these headsets. But I do think we're very early in the technology. I think it still has a long way to go, but that's another area that I think is going to be very interesting in developing new solutions for mental health. Yeah. I division pro.

33:53
I want to do the right grad cast or one of our other shows. I was wearing that the whole time. Like you get disoriented the whole augmented reality. Yeah, it's disorienting. And I think we're going to look back five, 10 years from now and laugh at how silly the vision pro was. Like we're just getting a little taste of what the technology could be. But in the future, it's going to be like contact lenses and you're with your brain going to be able to pull up and.

34:21
transition to AI or whatever you want to go into. And it won't be disorienting. It'll be much more simple. It won't be a big clunky head piece. Um, but this is really like version one. And once we get to like version eight, I think things are going to start getting very interesting. I'll use this cell phone analogy cause I worked on cell phones and wireless very early on. This is the equivalent of the bag phone.

34:46
or that giant look like a home phone from back to the 80s that you carry, that you carried around and how silly that would look today. I think it's going to be the same thing. Like you said, the equivalent. I totally agree. The other area that's really interesting is like the implantable devices. I mean, there's a lot of everyone pretty much knows about Neuralink with Elon Musk, but there's other companies that are developing different, like implantable devices in the brain. And that obviously there's also like ethical.

35:15
issues that need to be considered there. This is very powerful if you're able to put a chip in your brain and kind of control and upload things from the cloud and the internet world into it. But as long as we stay focused on using those, I think for medical conditions and not in like everyday life, I think they have the potential to, you know, help paralyze people with no vision. There's tremendous potential.

35:41
on the therapeutic side, but it's also a little bit scary and that's not lost upon me. Yes. And as a lawyer, right? The litigation could go crazy. And that's why I like operating as a lawyer in these emerging spaces is because like laws need to be developed. And that's what excites me. And I love law. Like I was a dork in law school, love law school and trying to think of how these laws should be structured. And there's really no blueprint.

36:06
there, right? Whether it's AI, cannabis, psychedelics, there's no blueprint out there. So we really need bright minds to come together to try to figure out like, what is the best legal framework we could use so that all of these different innovations are used responsibly. Any final questions or comments, Chris, with Dustin, before we let him get out of here? I think this is a great show. I think super informative for the average people, but

36:35
Yeah. He's nailed everything, dude. Just to give people a background, I saw Dustin speak actually at a conference, one of the cannabis conferences down here in Miami, like about a year ago, actually, literally, I think a year ago. And dude, it's funny these conferences and we touched on this, but you don't look like the average dude that's going to be talking about psychedelics. At least maybe nowadays is more common, but five years ago, some dude dreadlocks, engaged ears and tie-dye. And I respect to those dudes. They were the...

37:05
laying the frontier of the game, but it's people like you. And I think that's why we've become friendly down here. We've hung out a few times where it's, and I was the same way. I was completely anti psychedelics, ignorant. My buddies had done them in college and I was like, yeah, whenever. But like you, I had a profound experience and was like, Holy shit, man. And now it's just like you trying to break that stigma and get the word out there and it's so much years of.

37:35
old programming, right, that we're breaking through. But I think it's extremely exciting. And I think what I love the most is, like you said, making laws where it excites me to have people like you that are lawmakers or lawyers that you've dipped your toes in the water. You know what it's about. I think the bigger lesson is, like Ryan said, for so long, we've had these politicians stuck in their ways.

38:03
voting on things they have no idea what they're talking about, whether it's psychedelics, cannabis, just people that have never experienced any of these things, making these massive decisions that are just roadblocking the rest of us. So I'm excited to see what happens. And I'm just glad that you're on our side of the, our side. Yeah, no, I appreciate that. And yeah, it's funny because I had conversations with some of these kind of dreadlock hippies or whatever years ago and they give their woo talk and I roll my eyes like these guys are crazy.

38:30
And the reality is those guys were enlightened, but unfortunately just through their presentation, because of society, like they weren't able to communicate some of these thoughts as effectively as now you're starting to see more of the suit and tie type people starting to have their own experiences. And I give those people tremendous credit because they were ahead of the game. Me, but now sometimes I'm talking to people and I hear myself say something and I'm just like, man, I'm starting to sound like some of those people. Right. I didn't say anything.

38:58
I try to be realistic. I'm a very like research-based objective type of person, but sometimes I started talking about some experiences and consciousness and where I think things are going. For me, my main interest is like altered states of consciousness. So that's really been my practice with psychedelics is exploring that altered states of consciousness. And sometimes you can get really deep down a rabbit hole with that and start talking about aliens and other wild stuff. And I'm like, I've come a long way.

39:26
Yes, literally down the rabbit hole a Dustin where can everybody keep up with all the many things you have going on? Social web all that stuff Yeah, so my personal IG is Dustin r10d us tin r10

39:44
My investment fund, you can check out our website, eate I T E R investments, plural.com. Um, there's a contact link there. You can reach out to me through that as well. Great, man. We really appreciate you coming on and we'll have all that in the show notes today. Thank you so much, Dustin. Appreciate it guys. Chris, any final words for me, my friend?

40:10
Rock and roll baby. Hey guys, you know where to find us? The vacaypodcast.com. You can find Chris and I as well on the old IG, those blue checks before you could buy them. We'll see you next time on the vacay podcast.

40:29
you