so that way china is becoming stronger and stronger and they're also engulfing us by occupying uh sri lanka then various other above iran port and pakistan that cpec corridor and laying roads in arunachal pradesh occupying ladakh and aksai chin and all that so we have to worry but the point is by worrying we are not going to do anything economy is the only thing we can do our economy has to grow and we have to become economically very very strong of course deployment of army navy air force and various other things have to happen we have to consolidate as a power in the world by economic might and other power we must secure a seat in the united nations security council if that happens and then you become more powerful see china and russia are together okay i should be talking about diplomacy and things like that i think i'm launching into a field which i am not very familiar with but if china and russia are together and


with but if china and russia are together and pakistan is also joining and we are not aligned to anybody and things like that is going to be we have a quad and we have a another one you know or whatever it is all sorts of things but point is when it comes to tomorrow when taiwan it will be taken over by china who is going to protect taiwan because they are the biggest semiconductor producers in the world so if china moves into taiwan and take over what will happen to all the computers and other things there so that is all the biggest worry about china coming and doing things like that so we must know as to who is our enemy and how we can the only way is that if we are 1.4 billion people they are also the same do we take up the economy do we take up the military might we do we take up the gdp again again take up the uh per capita income the answer is capitalism according to me a form of it you


is capitalism according to me a form of it you know i'm not here i'm not an economist to suggest to what capitalism or daxalism or communism or not but the fact remains that the world recognizes somebody who has got the means to protect himself yeah you and me you can preach a lecture like vivekananda or anybody saying that oh um the whole world is a maya you sacrifice another but you reach mukesh ambani's wealth and then tell people that wealth is nothing great about it you have to be a rich man to give that lecture yeah um so i mean i have another burning question for you yeah in my head for a while yeah uh you work both in the intelligence bureau and the cbi what's life like there like in both those worlds if you could describe that yeah yeah starting with the intelligent very ips officer in my opinion i keep going to the national police academy i keep telling every ips officer must have a stint in the intelligence bureau


officer must have a stint in the intelligence bureau in the beginning of their career for someone who doesn't know what the ib does could you ib is collecting internal intelligence they are all over the country they are spread their internal security is their important thing all about all these blasts ltte naxalism so everything they keep their eyes and ears open states every state police also has their own state intelligence bureau and then they keep watch as to what's all happening and they inform the government so that informed policy decisions can be taken by the government so that is intelligence bureau offshoot of that is r daw and rnaw is only for external intelligence pakistan was bifurcated by rnaws intelligence rn cow was the man there is a book called the art of war how rnaw was brought brought about and how they brought about bangladesh i suggest your readers to read that book and how bangladesh was created okay our army and general sam manaksha and all they did but the whole background were completely uh


all they did but the whole background were completely uh successful job was done by the rnaw that was the beginning of rnaw mr ramnath was the one who spearheaded that shankara nayar is another band so this type of exposure for an ips officer or others is a must so that you know how you can focus collect intelligence and how to do that and things like that yes um and what about the cbi so cbi is more of investigation it is all about investigation they don't get saddled with all nonsense like the local police is doing anybody going to police station we are saddled with case false or right or wrong we have to investigate waste over time so we have got millions and millions of cases which right wrong or policies to whereas cbi picks and chooses as to what is given by the government or what is given by the state government on request or what is given by the supreme court or i could there it ends so cba has the choice of picking up


it ends so cba has the choice of picking up on cases and they have officers on reputation like me and various others they can pick up the best talent and then they deploy them and they so their conviction rate is 70 percent if the state could be much much much less but we are dealing with volume uh which is money more times bigger than the cba cases what does working in the ib or the cb and or the cbi do to a person's mind sir see that's what happened to me you look at me what i did in the police is the culmination of what i learned from the ib and the cpa see if cbi's investigation skills as to how you can say bomb this um various cases give you a complete insight as to how do you do how do you do foreign sake how do you do cyber foreign six now cyber crime is a feature crime in fact i should be talking more about diplomacy in china i should have kept my mouth shut but we


china i should have kept my mouth shut but we should be speaking about cyber crime and the future crime and this is where the cbi and others score because they are ahead of all other people they have got the foresight i request all your readers to read a book by mark goodman a policeman again marc mark good man gwd amen this is a future crime is the name of the book it says all the future crime will be computer crimes hereafter for computer crime or cyber crime the criminal need not visit the site at all example is north korean based cyber criminals working from mauritius or some such place sitting in the bank of bangladesh computer systems for two years ordered federal reserve in the usa to release one billion dollars in manila so after sitting for a long time in the computer system unobserved they issued the orders sitting in the systems of bangladesh on a friday evening by monday morning morning in manila they got 83 million dollars and they walked away nobody


got 83 million dollars and they walked away nobody has been able to detect this is a cyber crime okay now in this see the geography allegedly there are north koreans allegedly they are working in mauritius the place of work play is in the money is there in federal reserve new york and money is received in manila and after that the whole world is there playground so this is the kind of thing which will happen we have to be ready for that i'm assuming it's not just financial that they will there can be other things you can do there can be anything like you buy a hired car i can drive you from behind and crush you so cyber crime is everything say for example this air conditioner i can see that it is putting a pouting uh poisonous gas and all of you can be killed i can open your door by putting your my finger biometrics in my uh system i can open anything i can make your uh system explode from long distance you can make


your uh system explode from long distance you can make strains crash i can do anything as long as these are systems are all running uh on computer based technology so future crimes are all going to be committed by through computer only because our dependence on computer is is becoming more and more more and more uh it becomes body part no it has become a body part so we have to be worried about that and what kind of things can happen what kind of crash can happen coming back to those strategies in 1998 you which you couldn't uh i couldn't answer that that mafia story which we began so if this is the end of the session we are going to have i must say that ahead of the times we brought about a new law called maharashtra organized crime control act that worked wonders because that had special codes special prosecution within one year of commission of crime the trials were getting over whereas other cases took 20 years and 30 years murdered the quality robbery that was one thing then we


the quality robbery that was one thing then we used this detention act now 1600 criminals were retained for one year uh so 1600 years of man years of criminals were spent behind the baths behind jail so that much crime has to come down the guns 2500 guns these fellows had access to all uh illegal guns we mopped it up by uh seizing it from them and then that few so-called encounters which they said they should be shot that is all as per law as per section 100 of the indian payroll code and with all these things the name and fame which was attributed for market reasons to this so-called encounter specialist was wrong falsely it was given all the credit they took over because the press gave it to them they all got vanished now uh pradeep sharma and that other fellow was a they are all in jail now in telugu with that mukesh ambani house jeep wala mata then others have all gone into jail and they vanished and things like that so


into jail and they vanished and things like that so that 98 experiment of how one man or how one determined individual can solve a major issue which was pestering for a long time is is is is a is a experiment uh worth uh analyzing and finding out in that the strategies you mentioned about strategy what are the strategies for example all the telephone uh tapping which you did legally 1885 law telegraph law allows us to tap telephone so we never thought until then that foreign telephones owned by ibrahim or jyotarajan in cambodia or malaysia could not be tapped that was the people's belief one day i thought why didn't we go and check with vsnl we went there i found out lo and behold they said why this gateway is here we can do that so once we tap that all the intelligence as to who they are going to kill who they are going to shoot so the normally in the movies they show no the police always comes late and they blow the whistle and all that it


and they blow the whistle and all that it reversed in amir khan's house our opi dattas house or various other houses of the cinema people policemen were waiting when these guys came and saw they shot because they thought policemen were all buddhos but the police were very sharp and well-trained bulletproof jackets and all that that is where the control happened this is strategy if you ask me that how a vsnl uh can allow us a peep into their mind now again that comes to this thing what is intelligence you know you spoke about ib elaborately collecting intelligence either physically be part of the conspiracy how many times can be part of the concept but if there is a telephone tapping with of this type whatever you give orders to whoever it is i get access to your future plan as to what you are going to do okay very simple people getting complicated what people don't understand what it is say for example you got or your father got an exhaustion call what did they


your father got an exhaustion call what did they do from uh karachi they will call and leave the number your father will say he says when your father comes to my office saying that sir they are asking me to call this number i take that telephone on listening watch now your father speaks or he calls or anybody calls that number uh gives me uh their plan and who they are going to shoot or who they are going to execute so we suddenly from human intelligence we went to mechanical uh electronic intelligence not mechanical electronic intelligence electronic intelligence is far superior so the earlier role as youngsters would call police used to come late after the whole thing is overall and all that that completely got reversed we were there way ahead of them and now this is what the strategy you were talking about using a law called mpda which was there already but we detained 1600 people in three years which was not used earlier police and the later police so by doing this kind of a legal job for


so by doing this kind of a legal job for example whatever encounter took place that was perfectly legal uh 100 of the indian pillion court there was no allegation there was nothing wrong absolutely nothing wrong um and your electronic intelligence i feel then turned into this computer intelligence which brings me to one of my final questions yeah um what does the aamjantha need to know about cyber crime right now the common cyber crime is simple sorry to button cyber crime nobody can go ahead of the cyber criminals because cyber develops by the minute and second it is like covering with the basket the sun which is shining in the afternoon nobody can control the growth of science and the technology so only thing you can do is being aware after as to how you can become a buddha like for example i get a message saying that you know would you like to have sex with uh so-and-so so young and the boy and all that do i um get hooked into that or do i get a job offer all


into that or do i get a job offer all of you young people did you go you get a job in a rbi a reserve bank of india dcs infosys and all that okay then you get hooked to that they say okay pay 40 000 rupees fake these are all fake so also in the businesses they say man in the middle where your money to be paid to uh him they say instead of this account you send it one telephone call like you are paying his account in new york all the time but they say okay put it in a row you should ask them phone call corona are they all the time you took money in new york why are you asking me to put it in rome we don't do that so with that it is happening in a big way what is i i'll give you again uh example in dhane there was a school teacher a lady and who was got into that no i get uh you also get no reader's digest thing coca-cola 200 million dollar some african


digest thing coca-cola 200 million dollar some african woman will write my father gave a large i want to give it who would give you one rupee do you get a free lunch anytime nobody gives you anything free so people should be aware that this greed for unearned money has to be come to a big zero you work for it and earn your anybody will give if you give also don't take it so this is the awareness in computer saying that they are asking for like jamthara they are all uneducated boys they speak like sbi or bank of baroda officers and they talk to you and all that the minute you say tomorrow i'll start one more account if you do all these things if your otp number or various other details are not given to anybody one day one income tax man called me and said how much of advanced tax you have paid i'm from finance manager i said who the heck are you i will never give you these details and uh you are a phone call for me


details and uh you are a phone call for me you know unless somebody comes and sits in front of me and i identify you and verify you i'm not going to give you any information hell with you oh no no we have to collect it and give it to the furnace i said you do your job i'm not going to give my job so this unsolicited demand for your thing because you are going to benefit and you are going to get a 200 million dollar by who will give you 200 million your father is not giving you 200 billion dollars right yeah so this awareness of that i cannot earn money without actually putting in hard work and this windfall as they call it will never come your way your pocket may have obese of nikhil jaga lot of people daily in the press you read in the times of india indian express you read daily people are losing money because they have fallen into con game nothing even g20 those ambassadors a year or two before they were given that free keychains


year or two before they were given that free keychains usb you know keychain with usb they put it in their laptops every computer was taken over by the others now ambassadors g20 taking such a freebie and then using it and losing their data something unimaginable unbelievable yeah this whole podcast has been unbelievable for me sir you've taken this right yeah there's rarely a podcast where i feel so heavy posted and it's beautifully heavy honestly it's not in a bad way uh maybe to end this conversation i have one question which i wanted to ask you again from the moment we started rolling in your entire career what has been the most challenging day for you as a man see in the police every day is a challenge anything can take you hundreds of kilometers away and you have to be prepared you have to be prepared for see when we plan for a bundle or anything like that we plan for the worst day scenario where everything like sky is falling the seas go um for coming and occupying


falling the seas go um for coming and occupying and the vip has been shot there then there is a riot all over if that is the day i get up in the morning and i plan for that i have a plan a and if plan a full ever fails i have a plan b and plan c and i have the resources and where without for example 26 11. why did we fail that 10 fellows coming 2-2 follows each place we failed because we failed miserably in anticipation that was a lack of leadership we had ak-47 we had commandos we had everything where did the mumbai police became a laughingstock because we it was a war by pakistan on 26 11. another day if you like this conversation i'll come again on 26 11. so we lacked anticipation and deployed those commandos with all ak-47 we had ak-47s that time we had commandos so in that sense every day a policeman's day was such a is a challenge for which one has to be ready you


a challenge for which one has to be ready you have to keep your gun powder dry you can't have a wet gunpowder and go to a war lastly i was a very very docile professor of economics in madras university again i got a challenging life now i can't say oh i don't want a roller coaster ride so for me it was a i asked for a challenging life i got one i thoroughly enjoyed i must tell you there was not a day where okay failures were there there were heavy days i felt bad when a human life is lost we could have saved that so many such things happen but overall if you look back it's a fantastic journey and it's a very very ideal kind of journey where i don't have to look back and regret that i've done something wrong okay so that is the reward where you lead a grandfather like tomorrow my grandchild is asking for stories i can tell without hiding any guilty wrong thing i can tell openly all stories


guilty wrong thing i can tell openly all stories and it will be all true and all there will be positive and productive stories so that's about it we've got a long way we will go again i'll come back to you again yes sir if you are uh if you are listeners like this thank you very much yes sir one last sentence i want to end with which is that you are an absolute tiger and people don't understand everything that the entire police force of the country has done for us our safety so so on behalf of the entire country i salute you thank you very much and i really bow down to you i also bow down to you for all your individual contributions which came up in my research for this episode and most of all i bow down to you for sharing everything with the internet so this is going to stay on the line there's nothing to hide about it i request all your visitors to visit this roti bank initiative please visit my website called www india we are feeding


please visit my website called www india we are feeding the poor free of course in this pandemic times we have had 6.6 million people a day until today every day in mumbai alone we are feeding 10 to 11 000 people idea is to give it to poor children so that they can go to school study come up get employment crime will be less yes ultimately i'm trying to control crime by feeding the poor so that's it so thank you so much for having me on your show wonderful i enjoyed we're very glad thank you very much thank you sir thank you bye-bye so that was the episode with one of the country's most legendary cops when you meet him in person his energy does get a little bit intimidating it's not easy to absorb everything that he see you know all the perspectives that he has but in his heart he's someone who just wants to share his experiences share his learnings so that the next generation of indians that's coming out is much more informed is


indians that's coming out is much more informed is much more capable and honestly is much more street smart for you guys to tell us on our social media in the comment section what you liked about this particular episode drop a comment interact give this episode a like share it as much as possible also remember to check out our youtube channel trs clips for highlights of this episode forward the highlights to your friends on whatsapp but above all follow us on spotify because we're spotify exclusive now every episode is available on spotify 48 hours before it's available anywhere else in the world tell us through your suggestions what other topics you'd like us to cover with d shivanandan so this was just episode one [Music]


this particular episode was not created with an intention to encourage you to take drugs experiment with drugs try out substances i myself am a complete tea total oh there's no kind of substance in my life not even alcohol this podcast is just an honest account of what's out there in the world we shot it with a doctor who's medically certified we shot it with one of the most renowned neurologists in india today who's talking about what's happening in the world of neurology when it comes to things like ayahuasca cannabis peyote shrooms dathura all these subjects so if you're someone who finds this world of subjects fascinating as i do because there are these substances out there that alter the way the mind works which change you forever which have a role to play in modern day medicine in the future of medicine if you're someone who enjoys these kind of subjects this is gonna be one of the best podcasts you hear in your life that's what i promise you doctor


hear in your life that's what i promise you doctor said warrior returns on the runway show make sure you follow the renovation spotify every episode is available on spotify 48 hours before it's available anywhere else in the world because we're a spotify exclusive now enjoy doctor said wario breaking down the world of drugs everything from acid to ayahuasca to weed to alcohol and all this intense heavy content is going to be served to you on the runway show [Music] yo this is going to be a dark conversation and we will begin by talking about something that fascinates me a lot which is the world of plant medicine we've had something called dr mark plotkin on the show who spoke about how ancient tribal cultures know a lot about plants ancient cultures in general know a lot about plants the living breathing example of that is ayurveda in india but in the amazonian cultures there's also a lot of knowledge of their own plants etc and it was on the best podcast we did um in the


was on the best podcast we did um in the history of this show what we didn't address much was a particular substance called right so we've spoken about ayahuasca on the show we've spoken about peyote which is a mushroom yeah but we've not spoken about enough about dhatura and here's my introduction to dathura and after this i want the scientific aspect of what happens to that right so the first person who told me about plant medicine and ayahuasca and all these things was my shaman the person who had administered my imr to me yeah so he had a very deep spiritual impact on my life and he told me that when it comes to plant medicine imagine that there is a scale number from minus 100 to plus 100 but plus 100 represents the positiveness of a particular plant zero represents the neutrality and minus 100 represents evil yeah so you said that ayahuasca somewhere on the positive side right uh there are other plants which are on the positive side peyote is another


which are on the positive side peyote is another positive plant weed is considered like cannabis is considered right in the center neutral then there are some negative plants like certain kinds of mushrooms yeah and then at the far end of the skill near minus 100 is something called right so my first instinct was how can a plant be positive or negative and then i put my own body through an ayahuasca experience and i saw the positive impact it had on my mind my life my whole trajectory and life changed like after that which began with the change in thought process it also gave me a very gentle experience because they say that all these plants have sort of a spiritual identity also where everyone who does ayahuasca most people report feeling a certain feminine energy in the room with them when they're doing it for example i'm talking to you you're a guy i feel a masculine energy near me right bhavi who's recording this is a guy masculine energy there's two masculine energies in


masculine energy there's two masculine energies in this room if bhavia was a girl you'd feel a certain amount of feminine energy from this human being in the same way when you do ayahuasca you feel a certain amount of feminine energy with you which guide you through the truth okay iot is a positive masculine energy you feel a male energy with you okay okay uh it gives you slightly more intense experience than i ask the shaman compared it to um a male and a female tiger in the wild so that female tigers mother tigers will gen be gentle with their cubs up close that's what ayahuasca is like it's your mother it guides you spiritually to a certain point peyote sort of roughs you up to guide you spiritually like the role of a father shows you the reality then i said open your eyes by slapping your face yeah then i asked him what is datura why is it minus 100 so there are two creepy things about the torah with ayahuasca


two creepy things about the torah with ayahuasca everyone reports having felt a feminine energy and that's a common sort of report but peyote everyone commonly reports having felt a father energy with datura almost everybody commonly reports feeling the energy of a dark sort of dog or a wolf that is the energy associated with it right to the degree where some people's dhatura hallucinations often have an actual dark dog as a part of the hallucination which just stays there while you're hallucinating right so that's the first creepy thing the second creepy aspect of dathura and even dr mark plotkin kind of echoed this thought he said that it's a it can get dangerous the administration and i would love to know the medical aspect of it but the second creepy aspect of the torah is discovered from the deep corners of reddit if you actually read people's dhatura experiences some of it is crazily intense right so for example when you smoke weed when you drink alcohol you know you put a substance


you drink alcohol you know you put a substance inside your body which is making you feel a certain way even if you're having a bt or a bad trip you know okay there's something i've put inside my mind yeah often the case with dathura such that it erases a little bit of your short-term memory so you don't know that you've taken a substance to trip and you're just tripping yeah and i don't know how medically accurate that is and i'd love to know further but if you read people's experiences they've said stuff like i took it i hadn't remembered i was taking it but i had a flash of a memory of me going up to uh people and introducing myself along with my friend what is the friend they've not expected i don't remember what the friend was right and then i woke up in jail and i asked the policemen in the jail about why i was locked in and the policeman said you were going up to people's houses completely naked just


were going up to people's houses completely naked just ringing everyone's bell in your neighborhood completely naked and talking to them right and they don't even know one other person said i tried when i was alone and my next memory is me waking up in the hospital and my friend came to visit me he stood at the door i could sense a black dog in the room but the friend then started climbing on the wall like a spider and then went on the roof and then i actually woke up and i was actually in the hospital damn where i just passed out and i was dreaming of all this someone else wrote oh i could just see a black dog i'd taken the tatura in a public place i could just see a black dog staring at me yeah so you read all the scary [ __ ] about dathura botany experts like mark plotkin don't talk much about it i know for a fact that it's even a part of indian culture the tura is administered to people in


culture the tura is administered to people in the himalayas but i don't know much more about this substance other than the stuff i've already told you and even my shaman highlighted it as a sort of evil plant where it's been known to cause death etc and i know that when you're studying pharmacology um as a doctor you have dathura as one of those angles so what is this substance so when you talk of perceiving reality all these chemicals are coming together to help you see the world now when we mention lsd when you mention weed when you mention uh ayahuasca all of these chemicals are affecting molecules that are in your brain [Music] affects the autonomic nervous system and the autonomic nervous system is what basically keeps you alive it is what controls your heartbeat it is what controls your breathing it is what controls your body temperature and atura dhatura has something called atropine and that screws up with your autonomic nervous system at a fundamental level so


autonomic nervous system at a fundamental level so dhatura is poisonous if you take it even a little bit beyond what is recommended you can die atropine is a medicine that you use when somebody is at their dying stages to restart their heart and the problem of dhatura is this the difference between what is a tripping dose and what is a fatal dose is not much so that is one reason why we should definitely stay away from that there is something there is a phrase called mad as a hatter dry as a bone which is what happens in dhatura intoxication where you completely lose your mind your body becomes very dry your mouth becomes very dry you are very dehydrated your body is warm burning and you have no recollection of what you're doing this entire trip happens because your basic autonomic nervous system gets what does your autonomic nervous system do normally like what is its role when you from the moment you wake up to the moment you're sleeping your autonomic


wake up to the moment you're sleeping your autonomic nervous system has the role of keeping your water balance your body temperature your pupil size the level of your breathing all of that in balance so when you're climbing stairs your heart rate needs to grow go up that is autonomic nervous system if it doesn't grow up then you won't be able to walk out if you are breathing faster that is your autonomy nervous system your anxiety level is autonomic nervous system so if your intoxication trip doesn't go well you might go into a severe panic attack so that is there are a lot of negative connotations with datura why do you think people do it it can't just be for the thrill that there is some spiritual angle i know for sure because i once read a book uh we spoke about it on the mark plotting podcast also it was called the teachings of don juan where they spoke about how the torah is administered in the native american community but in a very


in the native american community but in a very calculated way there's a whole ritual behind it etc but why do you think people do it so my personal take on this is that psychedelics have been a part of human culture since time immemorial every culture that we have known has had a psychedelic component including indian tradition with the whole som veda the soma plant that is believed to have psychedelic properties even in aztec culture or amazonian with ayahuasca there are churches in santa monica i think in mexico and you know south america where they administer these drinks which i think has priority psychedelic experiences have been part of our human human cultures because of its spiritual angle we are so entrenched in the here and now i am in this room i'm talking to you that to escape this is considered as a spiritual experience so any psychedelic experience allows you to leave the confines of reality and there is no other way to do it the whole concept of spirituality is who


to do it the whole concept of spirituality is who am i and what is my relationship with the universe so when you find an answer that there can be some other explanation not just what i can see here and now i can be somewhere else i can be someone else that itself opens the door to spiritual thought i believe that this is the basis of psychedelic experiences to escape escape the current reality and discover a new reality um you know so again gone clean since a while now but i remember when i was at the peak of my marijuana usage okay i enjoyed getting high i would speak about it would joke about it would think about it um often as you know there was a phase in my life where i even did it every day and my first thought in the morning was let's get work done and then incentivize myself with marijuana big yeah often there was a thought of oh no work today no need to incentivize let's just go for it and get high in


let's just go for it and get high in the morning wake and bake you know and i'm not the only kid in in urban india who's done that and it's not just over india the rest of india is also now it's following yeah i started that whole uh trip and if you're an older indian and you think oh what is this podcast are saying bad influence your kids are already probably at parties with people smoking weed or consuming punk etc etc um but when i was at my peak um there were certain good things that it did for me in terms of it did calm me down a bit it took away like some level of aggression that i had especially in college was angsty about being an engineer in college i'm sure you've seen three idiots so all that [ __ ] actually happens you have your uh virus virus characters in uh engineering college and uh it used to kind of make me very angry very aggressive very angsty and weed would kind of just pull me


very angsty and weed would kind of just pull me down would mellow me out i also saw that my fellow stoners in engineering college were all smoking pot or consuming edibles like my form of consuming it was edible mainly brownies etc um all of us and all of them are doing incredibly well just by the way most of them have cleaned up their life entirely and i realized that it was the angst and the aggression which was making us kind of go deeper in that direction um what i also felt was like say if i had a sober phase in college where i said no no this is too much and it's very important to have those sober phases even when you're in your intense tone of face get out of it for some time eventually try cleaning up your life but if you're in the middle of it and if you think that you'll smoke pot for the rest of your life you'll consume pot for the rest of your life have phases of sobriety at


of your life have phases of sobriety at least so when i come out into those sober phases what i realized is one your brain was definitely working faster etc etc but i also felt like having experienced being high that much and then coming out of it i had a new sort of third person perspective on my life i was seeing reality a slightly different way which is what happened to probably bob marley he says that the herb is the healing etc it just allows you to see human life in a different form you see life with a little more sense of empathy i remember i didn't have the best relationship with my parents back in college i kind of blame them for putting me in engineering college but when i was high i couldn't fight with them i couldn't like you know blame them in fact i had to go and hug them like you know it became that and that's probably what bob marley went through i mean mohammad probably celebrated weed and all a bit too


probably celebrated weed and all a bit too much uh maybe for his time it was right i don't think that celebrating pot that much in the modern days correct is not because we're in a different narrative right when different times you know we're in different uh we're dealing with different mindsets but my point of saying that is even something like weed which is so basic it's so available everywhere right it changed my perspective to a certain degree i can't imagine what things like lsd do to people and i felt that about ayahuasca but i was not so much about your perception of life as much as it is your perception about yourself sorting out your own stuff your healing and you know i ask isn't one of those things you should do all the time yeah but what do you think happens during lsd trips that people say oh it changed my life forever i had some experience and it came out a different person i feel that what we are relying on psychedelics to do is


we are relying on psychedelics to do is basically what life itself does but over many many years if you think about it growing up is changing your perspective of life what you feel when you're 16 17 is not your viewpoint of the world when you're 35 40. what happened a series of events happened that changed the chemical nature of your brain and change the way you look at life that is what perspective means perspective is you look at the world in a different way you wait for experiences to do that you wait to meet new people you wait to lose your job or get a new job or have a breakup or all those life experiences teach you to look at the world in a different way what psychedelics do is it gives you another perspective by forcibly changing the chemicals it doesn't wait for experiences to do that it goes in alters the chemicals in your brain suddenly you're looking at everything differently and when the chemical goes away those neurons come back and


the chemical goes away those neurons come back and you're looking at the world in the same way but you have the memory of oh the world can be like this because at the end of the day your perspective is just chemicals acting in your brain like when i'm seeing a red light or a green light on your face that's also some sort of chemical reaction my head exactly so when that light is hitting your eyes suppose the neurons in your brain that are responsible for reacting to red if they are for some reason occupied then you will see this color differently and that is one of the things that happens in lsd since you mentioned lsd lsd is uh a drug that primarily acts on your occipital lobe that is where it starts from the action starts at the back which is why when you take lsd the first effect that happens is small points of light start glowing bigger and bigger i'm talking theoretically of course so small points of light grow bigger and bigger and you


points of light grow bigger and bigger and you can start seeing light spots everywhere everything else is the same and then gradually you start hearing music because those auditory networks have started acting up and then gradually the drug affects more and more and more of your brain until all your neurons are firing in a pattern that haven't really been they haven't been firing in that pattern before and if your neurons change the pattern of firing the world changes around you one interesting thing about lsd specifically is that your consciousness is not impaired so this is quite unique because lsd affects mainly your serotonin networks so serotonin is one molecule that goes all over your brain but because it doesn't affect your consciousness you are always aware in lsd as opposed to say alcohol if you drink a lot of alcohol you will behave in a way that you are not in control but in lsd your consciousness centers are not active so you are aware of things you are tripping but in the middle of a


things you are tripping but in the middle of a trip if somebody comes and talks to you you will you are able to dial it back talk to that person normally and then when they go away you are able to dial up the trip again yeah this is exactly what happened in ayahuasca also yeah i'd go i had to pee in the middle of my trip and when i went to the toilet normal nothing nothing focus on putting a urine in the pot aim is perfect aim is perfect it falls in the water you go you flush you go back you start tripping tripping again the reason is that is what serotonin networks do serotonin doesn't affect your consciousness that much the alcohol side of things affects gaba networks so gaba is another molecule and gaba has a lot to do with your consciousness that's why when you're trying to pee when you're drunk maybe you'll miss them you will miss the mark blame it on gaba so when you are going to sleep gaba is


so when you are going to sleep gaba is actually active because gaba has the job of depressing your brain gaba brings everything down serotonin doesn't do that so that is why the effect of the drug depends on which chemical it acts on you know in the i'm not going to say in the last podcast because we did a bunch of recordings on this particular day that this is being recorded but we spoke in one of the recordings some time back yeah some time back we spoke about uh neuroplasticity yeah how your brain is moldable your brain is like clay you can shape it up and you can become what you perceive the future as basically manifestation is a very real very scientific aspect of the human mind yes uh and sort of molding or that shaping of that clay of your brain is decided by your habits and how much you're resting your sleep your chill time etc do these substances have the effect of hasting neuroplasticity or do you think that they actually


neuroplasticity or do you think that they actually have mechanisms like those molecules in these substances i'm not saying all i'm not generalizing but do you think that some of them like ayahuasca or peyote i'm speaking about these two because i was what i have experienced i've not experienced the others i went in as one person i came out as a different person yeah i believe that something biologically changed in my head 100 it absolutely does the problem is that since the last 50 60 years because of the whole pendulum swinging to the other extreme so in the early 1920s 30s once the lsd was discovered and other drugs were discovered there was a spurt of research into lsd that is how as i mentioned before we found out about serotonin networks so today the drugs for depression are serotonin reuptake inhibitors so you increase serotonin levels these drugs would not have been there if we didn't know about serotonin serotonin we wouldn't have known of if lsd wasn't


we wouldn't have known of if lsd wasn't discovered so when lsd was discovered there was a lot of research into it a lot of things came to light then the whole anti-drug pendulum happened the swing happened and all research stopped and now in the last 5 10 15 years research is slowly starting to pick up again yeah just i got to dial back time a little bit i think this was ronald reagan's presidency in the united states so basically or a little before that what happened was there was the vietnam war in the 60s and early 70s and there was a backlash to vietnam where americans said that no we don't want to take our country and go and attack civilians go and attack one whole country killing isn't needed death isn't needed therefore that gave rise to the hippie movement in america right now the hippie movement also included an aspect of drug culture where people started taking lsd people started getting into plant medicine now there was political angles


started getting into plant medicine now there was political angles to the hippie movement where the hippie movement was opposing the war any war generates money and generates clout for the people involved right therefore it was coming in those people like that leadership's way yeah so they thought that okay now let's paint the hippie movement as villainous yeah let's paint everything that they do was willingness that's why all this lsd culture plant culture got a villainous sort of paint on it i have a friend in bombay he's actually been on the podcast and he he's old he's like 40 years old uh he's a big stoner it smokes a lot of weed he said that even his dad was a stoner he also told me that in the 1970s you could actually purchase hashish and weed from local pan walas in bombay in bombay it was legal wow it was available but big daddy usa put major drug laws uh when it came to weed when it came to all these other substances in the


when it came to all these other substances in the u.s to cull the hippie movement right uh they tried painting a villainous picture and wherever the u.s goes the us was world leaders even through the cold war the whole world started copying the us i don't know what the exact situation was but i believe in the 80s it was rajiv gandhi's government which got a lot of pressure from ronald reagan's government to do this to put intense uh anti-weed laws and anti-drug laws in general so hashish bhang weed which were a part of indian culture uh actually started getting painted in a different light they got categorized with things like cocaine heroin yeah which are sort of lab made yeah and uh which have very very synthetic and which have bad impacts on the human body yeah i'm not defending weed at all i'm just like kind of narrating what had happened so this happened in the 80s now who grew up in the 80s our parents generation that was


up in the 80s our parents generation that was their youth okay that was their 2010s what 2010s were for us where you're moldable where you're impressionable you don't have google in the 1980s you don't have social media in the 1990s so any indians who were born in the 2000s the 90s or maybe even the 80s have been raised by parents who were themselves young in the 60s 70s 80s when this anti-drug was going on right try talking to your parents about these kind of things and they will conversation they will say you are a drug addict try talking to your relatives like that i've dated girls who have spoken to their dads about you know the dads are deep into alcohol drink every day and a lot but if i bring up this if i bring up that what's that scale called the dependability versus uh abuse yeah uh and you know you anyway forget that's a whole other conversation but if i try explaining these things their automatic reflex action is


try explaining these things their automatic reflex action is no no no this is wrong you're talking about drugs we're talking about addiction you're a drug addict if you're doing weed not a gateway drug to doing cocaine etc those are their narratives in their head try talking to your own grandparents about it and they'll be much more liberal about it because their youth was the 40s 50s 60s right right so it says a lot about geopolitical culture also and how it affected our textbooks our thought processes now i allow you doctor to come back to the last five to ten years so yeah the sad thing is that how geopolitics affects scientific research and for me that is the wrong part because now people are discovering that weed or cannabis based drugs can have certain curative or therapeutic effects in intractable seizures so when somebody has epilepsy there is a syndrome called as dravid's epilepsy which is a very bad form of epilepsy that affects children and there was a


of epilepsy that affects children and there was a study that was published i think four years ago that cannabinoid medicines have a good impact on that now this research could have been done 20 years ago because cannabinoid medicines were available then but because of this whole lockdown or the crackdown we couldn't have access to this research so that i feel is wrong you cannot prevent science from understanding more about the brain through these chemicals because of your geopolitical just because of that geopolitical connotations um is weed gonna be legalized in india according to you i think yes uh the timeline is difficult but just like what you said that the us sets the trend i feel that everybody will follow there's a lot of money to be made for governments through taxes if they legalize weed exactly and there's a company called bombay hemp company a friend of mine anurid kanti was heading research for them back in the day yeah back in the day i'm talking like as if you're born in there


i'm talking like as if you're born in there back in the day my friend what he told me is that there is sort of this movement uh from the indian cannabis community uh where they're trying to get it legalized whether trying to educate basically our parents is generation order who are currently heading the government and i believe that the government has understood that there's money involved here they're seeing what's happening in the u.s where uh they say that the next billion dollar startups are cannabis based startups and when we say cannabis based startups is not just products that get you high not just yeah it's weed oil it's cbd oil all of that which has medical benefits correct uh i think people purely again because of the previous generation are unaware of the wide range of um uses of that plant absolutely because when you talk of pain and the way that pain is perceived cbd actually acts on a system called endocannabinoid system that is in the brain that is in the body it is


in the brain that is in the body it is inbuilt and you have access to it and the one of the functions of the endocannabinoid system is to reduce the pain that you feel so we spend millions of dollars on painkillers which is like a blunt instrument and here you have a system that is designed to modulate the pain that you feel and because there is this whole geopolitical connotation you were denied access to drugs that can affect this so let's talk about carpet bombing a little bit in the in the nature of war carpet bombing is a phenomenon where you'll throw missiles over a certain piece kill everything kill everything your enemies the terrorists but also the innocent villagers also those cute little puppies in that village everything right so painkillers are like carpet bombing your own body where you're using it to reduce the pain but at the same time it's doing other forms of it's creating other forms of damage in the other parts of your body absolutely so doctor


in the other parts of your body absolutely so doctor what are those other uh parts of your body which are getting damaged through painkillers so the most important one is the effect it has on the kidneys because a lot of painkillers get excluded through the kidney and renal damage is a huge consequence of chronic painkiller use so there is something that is actually a disease called nsaid induced uropathy or nsaid induced nephropathy which is basically kidney damage because of long-term painkillers so all these ufc fighters boxers who were earlier told to take painkillers have realized this even nfl athletes and they say even mainstream nba stars even mainstream footballers they are all realizing who were told earlier to take painkillers have now moved to cbd oil which even might fall in the list of illegal substances yeah and the leagues know that these guys are using cbd oil maybe even smoking pot may be actually consuming edibles but these guys prefer these substances because it doesn't cause that


guys prefer these substances because it doesn't cause that kidney damage and it might get them high it might have a recreational aspect to it but it does the job of reducing pain so the cbd oil aspect is actually very safe explain what cbd is too yeah so it's it's cannabinoid uh the idea is in in cannabis or in weed there are two molecules one is thc which is tetrahydro and the one is cbd so this is cannabinoid and the cbd part of it is not the part that gets you high it is the thc part that gets you high so different marijuana strains so different plants have different concentrations of thc and cbd so the more the thc the more uh high potential that that plant has so that is why when you say that oh yeah acha that means that it has a greater potential of making you high which means it has more thc whereas the cbd part is the one that is used in the cbd oils which has effect on pain and all that so


oils which has effect on pain and all that so we have to educate ourselves about this find out if something is good because no chemical is 100 safe the antibiotics that you use are not 100 safe but everything has its use and part of what we do as scientists is to find out how is this useful so when you when we talk of dhatura it is poisonous but the torah cytotropin atropine is life-saving if used in the right amount in the right time that is what science is similarly um i went to california about three years ago where it was i mean it's still completely legal recreationally etc you go buy um you know cannabis infused gummy bears yeah by cannabis infused yeah first time i went to amsterdam it blew my mind yeah yeah that it's all legal recreational like baskin robbins man they have boxes of different flavors the only thing is you can't try out anyone yeah very kind of eye opening experience uh from you know the point of view


opening experience uh from you know the point of view of wow the world has reached this stage of openness now especially when we've grown up in the 90s in a society where if someone heard the word weed they'd say drugs so uh it's it's just a different reality we're living in now uh i remember sitting in a restaurant where we ordered a cbd drink and my first hunch was will this get me high and the waitress was like no no this is just it's a painkiller like you won't feel anything if you're feeling anxiety maybe that'll come down that's what you will feel yeah um and i i had it felt great it kind of felt like having kombucha you know what computer so it's like a yeah it's a probiotic drink now i want to highlight thc also the actual part of a weed that gets you high does it have medical benefits thc by itself so thc part is what i talked about uh when i said it can act on pediatric seizures so when


said it can act on pediatric seizures so when i mentioned uh drivet syndrome so it is that thc part of it pediatric procedures are seizures that kids get okay so i've read about i think vice documentaries made some documentaries that was the that was a study that was done but the important aspect of it is how thc actually goes and acts on a system that already exists in the brain and we wouldn't just like lsd helped us discover serotonin we wouldn't have discovered endocannabinoid system were it not for weed to the point where we call it the endocannabinoid system yeah that's that's exactly what i want to ask you is its purpose just to get activated by getting stoned or does it have other purposes the endocannabinoid system in your body so for the longest time we thought it was just for getting stoned but that doesn't make any sense because why would the body have an inbuilt system for something that you may or may not smoke that's not very efficient so


or may not smoke that's not very efficient so it was not until many years later after discovering thc that we found out that a body has endogenous cannabinoids inbuilt inbuilt our body has molecules in itself that can go and activate that same receptors that weed can i'm assuming that these are called cannabinoids because this chemical structure is similar to the chemical structure of cannabis plant or dnc specifically uh yes okay so the word cannabinoid comes from cannabis plant and that is why it is named after that in fact the endogenous molecule is actually called anandamide based on the fact that it gives you pleasure anand in hindi and i'm assuming yes pleasure it means happiness um what do those endocannabinoids which are indigenous to your body which are already present in your body what is the actual purpose in the human body if you have two neurons and they're talking to each other endocannabinoid will come in the middle and make sure that those two neurons talk to each other better okay like


those two neurons talk to each other better okay like lubricant it is a lubricant for neural communication so it helps everything function smoothly so when you smoke weed i'm guessing you have external cannabinoids which go and sit in their place we'll go and do that the only difference is that the endogenous cannabinoid will not affect the whole brain at the same time because the system is so tightly regulated that you know that area of the brain lubrication so send more there so it is a tightly regulated system when you smoke weed it goes all over the brain that is why you will have lubrication going all over so there will be random neurons talking to each other in an unpredictable way and that confuses you that confuses you which gives you the feeling of being high yes whoa i'm so high right my reality is all distorted what is going on because random things are talking to each other you know you spoke about the use case of the indigenous cannabinoids yeah


about the use case of the indigenous cannabinoids yeah what is the use case like why would a part of your brain need lubrication versus other parts so every every neural system has inbuilt backups and safety valves so there are ways of modulating what if what if something goes wrong what if this slows down how do we increase it so endocannabinoid system is one of the ways in which you can modulate other networks like dopamine like serotonin so endocannabinoid can control dopamine networks and dopamine can control serotonin networks citronella can control dopamine networks so it is all part of a chain which is why a psychedelic doesn't affect just one thing in a chain reaction eventually it affects everything else so could i put a use case as such right you're sitting outside your exam all before an exam right you're thinking [ __ ] all the stuff i've studied i'll forget about it in the exam hall but once the bell rings and the exam begins and you're starting


bell rings and the exam begins and you're starting to write all of it flows out of your pen so i'm assuming that some part of the endocannabinoid system is at play there calming your head down and allowing you to go back to your memory absolutely okay this is like a use case absolutely so for different practical use cases different parts of it get activated correct oh wow so you cannot function you cannot do any of your routine functions if any one of these systems are in fault so if someday you're going to the exam and your endocannabinoid system says i'm not working today you will not be able to write the exam because you need all of that okay i have a pertinent question next can you get high without taking uh an external substance like is there a way to simulate a high i believe you i believe yes because these are inherent systems i believe that there are ways of triggering that same kind of reaction but i don't know how i believe it's a long-term meditation or


how i believe it's a long-term meditation or some meditative practices because do a deep pranayam have you had a kapalbhati yes it's like fast breathing really contracting your abdominal muscles fast it's like you breathe through your nose keep your back straight yeah and hit your stomach in inwards keep things on so what happens is your stomach going inwards automatically pushes air out of your lungs right now when you're breathing in you don't pull through your lungs you just let your stomach out so you're basically massaging your lungs using your stomach that's kabal so it'll be something like this keep your back straight back straight is like the key right and then hit your stomach back don't move the rest of your body just your stomach inside inside inside like as if you're punching your insides with your stomach interesting so this so if you do this for a while three minutes four minutes open your eyes after some time you will feel something for sure


eyes after some time you will feel something for sure another one is you keep your uh you keep your thumb out you keep your last two fingers out keep your middle two fingers down uh breathe in one two three four five hold for two seconds and then switch yeah switch your hand breathe out from the other side yeah then breathe in hold for one second switch breathe out from the other side do this for five minutes and trust me i've consumed a lot of pot in my life this definitely simulates some form of a high but uh it's something you figure when you do a lot of breathing exercises when you do a lot of meditation the first time i ever did an intense meditation i felt like colors were more saturated once i opened my eyes and that lasted for maybe two minutes three minutes right then as you go deeper into your meditations what starts happening is those effects stick around longer so there are definite molecular chemical changes that happen in meditation for sure uh the one


that happen in meditation for sure uh the one of the main things is your autonomic nervous system really settles down it goes into the parasympathetic phase the other is your pain pain modulation happens so you feel less pain these two have been proven but i have to read about changing in vision i have to read about uh color change because i'm trying to understand how that could happen especially for aluminum um the only other real experience i had which was similar to this was getting high like i can't compare to any other life experience i've had not getting drunk getting high and then a lot of people who never consumed marijuana think that marijuana's like alcohol before they've consumed marijuana and understand it's a whole other experience so alcohol is basically shutting down your brain it does not do anything else it reduces your inhibition which is why for a while you feel more happy or you you'll feel like you're more energetic you are laughing out louder but that is


you are laughing out louder but that is because your most superficial levels of inhibition are all keeping you down but then as you go on inhibiting inhibiting inhibiting you are going to go there is an uptick in energy and then there is a progressive downtick so which is why alcohol is not at all like the other drugs what happens when you cross fade you mix the two weed and alcohol because i remember doing this back in college and it's like an atom bomb in it not recommended yeah it's unhealthy it is unhealthy like it actually destroys your mind doesn't it it is unhealthy to pump in that many chemicals into your brain let's put it that way because your like i said your brain requires safety valves so if you're messing around with one neural network one system you are counting on our other systems to kind of take care of your brain but the more drugs you mix the worse it gets yeah you know i've stayed off substances for a while now


know i've stayed off substances for a while now like the longer you stay off if you combine meditation with it if you combine sort of this intense form of learning which happens to the podcast method you become very calm um that's the big change i've seen so it's it's kind of i kind of it almost erases the memories of being crossfaded and you know what crossfading is like like this is the best i remember we had gone for this college trip to pune this is what crossfading feels like man um [Music] first of all everyone crossfaded there everyone drank and uh consumed some form of pot either edible or smoking again people think that oh what kind of college you're seeing this happens in every college in india nowadays i go for college events i mean pre-covered yeah and i've never not been offered a joint and i'm like no sorry stopped doing that stuff a while ago it's just so rampant now so if you're a parent watching this don't


now so if you're a parent watching this don't think that i'm spreading some uh thing amongst your kids your kids are already stoners and boozers themselves but anyway uh crossfading but they'll grow i remember everyone was crossfaded yeah and um what starts happening is that if i'm looking at dr said right now i can also sort of laterally notice that there's a plant on the side there's a light behind you uh the peak of crossfading kind of pinches down your vision to just a point of focus and that has its own trip because you're so fascinated by how your vision has changed and you're tripping and you're not conscious of the trip completely because of the alcohol so you're going into another zone i remember i was dating this girl then and she had crossfade and she had passed out okay i went into her room because i needed help i started getting i felt like i was too gone like so i went to her room and i just sat next to her like like one


and i just sat next to her like like one of those sleep paralysis hallucinations and i tried shaking her to make her wake up and then i realize she's more bombed than i am so i just sat there i went to a senior of mine and i sat with him and he gave me like this therapy and he's also crossfaded but crossfading has i've never felt my brain turn more to pulp than those moments that's what i'll highlight oh man the worst experience of my life on psychedelics is pong and that was the first time i've taken bhang so i've never experienced anything like that until you do it you never realize how fragile reality is yeah yeah because we walk around with this imaginary situation around you that you feel the solid hair nothing is going to move nothing is changing i know you are here i know i am here but once that bhang hits reality changes time changes you are suddenly talking three times faster four times faster or slower depending on


times faster four times faster or slower depending on how your brain takes it one of my friends went into a panic attack and when doctors go into panic attack it's a whole other vibe because they start uh saying panicky things but in medical lingerie they're like quick help me that's crazy dude i uh i'm not gonna deny that because i have a lot of doctor friends and this is something i've silently observed but i've never noticed even if you're tripping you don't stop being a doctor wow that's that's very true um you know again i have what in psychology terms is called an addictive personality disorder just listening to joe rogan uh podcast yesterday with an addiction expert and she was talking about how addictions especially if you have an addictive personality disorder you need to fuel them into the right things yeah exercise sport uh learning all these things and you know because of god's grace i feel like i've been able to do that over time took me some time to get


do that over time took me some time to get out of addiction but i'm completely sober now and i i will not do that stuff again purely because i know my own personality and i'll go down a rabbit hole if i try doing it again um staying very conscious of it also entrepreneurship needs productivity and focus but if i go back to my college days where there was no productivity to care about you know we could pass by studying last minute et cetera et cetera you're depressed because of like the college professors etc um getting into pot was all about getting bombed in my ass like i've consumed a crazy amount of pot and bhaan used to be my go-to especially when i figured out that bhanga is freely available at most pan jobs in india you know that there are different brands that sell these bhangoli's so i'm assuming the bhang that you did was they were holy god yeah right you must have holy there are four hours of holy playing and then


there are four hours of holy playing and then that's the common way of doing bhaang right but i'm a foremost owner so uh weaken it up to a notch yeah we discovered five six legal companies okay these guys have a license yeah to produce these little bangles you get for like five rupees ten rupees it's basically as much as a packet of lease we used to have them sometimes before our classes and then go and attend classes dude and trip out during the class because it's so convenient you don't have to roll a joint you don't have to smoke it i was in this whole fitness i mean i still am in the whole fitness way so i never i always stayed away from smoking as much as possible so this became a very convenient way of like getting stoned but because i was in that addictive personality thing and we just spoke about how uh dopamine levels get altered yeah if you keep kind of going ahead with your addiction yeah we when we spoke about


with your addiction yeah we when we spoke about dopamine right like that uh basically the longer you indulge in an addiction uh the lesser joy you get from the same amount of that substance consumed therefore if you got very high using that one bahangagola the first time you ever took it if you make it a habit eventually in a month's time of doing it every day used to it eventually you'll need three or four of those golas to get the same amount of a hit right or i sound like a junkie right now uh just saying i passed with like first class and i'm not defending my weed usage i'm kind of reflecting on my mistakes honestly but i got into a phase of consuming a lot of those i remember the the particular pawn shop i would purchase stuff from that guy had also gotten into the bhangoli's so he would sit there all day popping bhangoli's and being he used to consume at least 10 20 a day and he was bombed


least 10 20 a day and he was bombed all the time like i'd meet him and he would like ask me the same [ __ ] question every time and i'm like dude i i had we had the same conversation the last time and that's why i realized that whoa he's probably gone into some excessive usage of it yeah what eventually started happening is i definitely started feeling slower i definitely started feeling a little more um foggy in the head right unfortunately i was conscious enough about my career to not do it near exams and all not all kids are also what happens is if you consume a lot of a particular substance in this case it was bang but weed in general uh if you're consuming it very often you you like jokes about weed you like conversations about weed you bring up weed wherever you can you also defend your substance very heavily and i know that there's some neuroscience behind why you defend your addictions uh but that started happening


defend your addictions uh but that started happening man it happened for a long time yeah one of the misconceptions i had heard was that weed was safe as compared to say tobacco or alcohol but that's not entirely true because anything that you use to forcibly change the networks in your brain if you keep on doing it cannot be safe so long-term weed usage definitely has impact on memory yeah it has impact on sexual health so there is it's one thing to say that consuming cannabis at one particular point in time is safe versus consuming cannabis every day is safe you know people use those cbd benefits and the thc benefits to defend their own weed usage oh but this is like cbd yeah like painkillers this is anxiety but dude hold on your smoking pot every day like there is more to life man um also what ends up happening is and you know even in my d addiction phase i had phases where i went back and i went into a rabbit hole and


went back and i went into a rabbit hole and then i went into this whole thing of doing it every day and then a friend or a relative or the romance of my life at that point would come and tell me that dude you're going back um and that's why i came on and observed that you say i was in the middle of a rabbit hole and i'd gone away from sobriety um in my sober states my mental health wouldn't be on point my self-doubt would creep up again and this is into my career right 25 26. it would affect my relationships that's the other aspect of marijuana a lot of stoners including myself are often creative professionals or there's some creative aspect of their job there's definitely a linkage between the two and i'd love to actually hear the science about it um but in that chase for higher creativity you also kind of embrace the concept of isolation a bit too much no i don't want to talk to you right now i'm sorry that's


to talk to you right now i'm sorry that's not how human relationships work is that because of some guilt or shame or something you for me and i know for a lot of other creative professionals owners who use marijuana for the sake of their work uh isolation breeds a lot of fresh ideas in the same way that you perceive life differently after your high after you've come out of being high you also get a lot of ideas when you're stoned and um you sort of like uh you want to chase that state of being alone away from human society just to create to write to paint to create music this can genuinely affect your family relationships and your romances absolutely because you are training your brain to think that this is how creative process works yeah so if you want to link up a random idea to a random idea you are no longer able to do it now without weed that is the dark side of it because on the one hand i get why curiosity can make you want to try


i get why curiosity can make you want to try something but as soon as you say that the only way you can get there is through this you're in a you're in a pickle so i'm always looking for nuance when you say that drugs are bad i don't agree i think that they have their use but the problem is that human beings are weak that our limbic system is weak let's be fair our limbic system is weak the limbic system has had 10 million years of head start it is going to get you addicted which is the kind of argument against alcoholism right right that a a bit of a drink once in a while is fine but yeah uh it is a legal drug if you actually study the science of it it does have heavier impacts on the human body than marijuana but it's completely legal it's accepted in society it's accepted by our parents generation uh drinking is like oh yeah come and get a drink oh why don't we share a drink why don't y'all share a


we share a drink why don't y'all share a joint brother sorry uncle uh like you know that used to be uh the argument like but uh i loved what you said about the fact that human beings are weak people don't know how to regulate themselves uh my personal go on no and it is people knew this right from ancient times people knew that people are weak the reason that so much importance has been pressed on abstinence on denial on self-regulation is because people know that neopaiga like for the majority of society allowing this or making this socially acceptable is dangerous so to be on the safe side it's no for everyone why do you think alcohol is legal versus all these other substances like if ayahuasca all these things have healing properties why alcohol that one drug basically which is championed i'm going to go out on a limb and say it's a economic money money because you can tax alcohol really absolutely and it can be made under a very controlled in a very


can be made under a very controlled in a very controlled way i also feel that if you dial back to the 1900s or 1800s alcohol culture started picking up again because of european imperialism the world wasn't connected as much and the one positive about alcohol is that it's a social lubricant yeah so if you're very anxious about opening up a conversation or so-called breaking the ice with other people you can break the ice more easily when you're drunk maybe there's that angle also there is the one one theory that i had was maybe because plant-based drugs or psychedelic drugs technically could be grown in small batches in people's houses and makes it a little bit more difficult to tax yeah because i don't i don't think that anything that is that global we can talk about without bringing economics into it it's not possible it's this is also interconnected that if something is illegal then economics has to come into it do you know that alcohol brands and i'm beer biceps imagine how


alcohol brands and i'm beer biceps imagine how many offers we've got for having alcohol brands in our channel and we've rejected all of them right it's just like an usual sort of thing which i'd agreed to when i started my career but alcohol brands have the highest marketing budgets they pay the most like they pay a crazy amount they pay probably double triple any other brand does just for you to have uh say a bottle here yeah for beer biceps to drink that particular dude if i was still a drinker i would have made double the amount of money by just saying xyz brand brings you the runway show damn brian brings you beer biceps but whatever man like i'll tell you what my deal with not working with alcohol brands um i don't like one the fact that it is the one legal drug yeah and two i don't like the fact that because it's so out in the mainstream you see it in films you see it on television you see it in children's shows sometimes


on television you see it in children's shows sometimes it's that mainstream in the mainstream-ness of it it can lead weak people into deep forms of addiction which we refer to as alcoholism there's a whole word for alcohol addiction nowadays it's called alcoholism we kind of normalize that also there's a whole word for it yeah a weed addict someone who smokes pot all the time is not violent that's not the case with alcoholics alcoholics have had a history of violence uh drunk driving absolutely there's death and darkness associated with alcohol but it's not out there in the mainstream i'm seeing it around me man i'm seeing alcoholism bringing down people's careers one of the most disturbing things that happened recently was i went back to my old school and uh outside my school there was a small shop that used to sell golas and um bahang gulags no juice golas though the one that so now that shop has become a beer shop man outside my school and that is


a beer shop man outside my school and that is that is disturbing because if it is if you're going to legalize something like alcohol which has almost the same amount of effects as weed on the brain it incapacitates you to an extent that you can't do do anything and it is addictive it is more addictive than weed and it is more dangerous and if you want to legalize that and expose children to it then there is a lot of hypocrisy that is my problem with this whole conversation that there is a lot of hypocrisy in the conversation without really understanding why most people who talk about weed and alcohol understand the neuroscience of neither one so then on what basis are we discussing this on what basis are we saying this one is good this one is bad that's my problem my hunch is that the world is changing man yeah like 18 year olds of today aren't like the drunkard 18 year olds of my time and by saying drunkard 18 year olds of my time


by saying drunkard 18 year olds of my time i'm referring to myself like i was that kid who forced alcohol down people's throats through parties with like a lot of alcohol anyway i had to go to one extreme to come out at the other extreme man addictive personality disorder um but i i don't see that with gen z's you can channel that that's the thing that all everybody who tries drugs their entry is fueled by curiosity we have to understand this we have to appreciate this they have a need to get out of their existing reality use that to something good like create a podcast yes create a podcast make something new they can do that because they have that drive the only thing is that the opportunity hasn't presented itself and drugs are the more easier opportunities but the motivation is that so we have to appreciate that motivation and hopefully help people do that instead yeah you know there's a lot more to life than looking forward to your wake


lot more to life than looking forward to your wake and bake days or looking for your weekend we can stay stoned the entire day there's a lot more to life man especially when you see your actions affecting the ones around you in a positive way or affecting people you've met on your professional journey in a positive way um there is of course a certain level of ego boosting that that brings which is also high in itself but you just go to sleep a much happier and much more contented person that is so true the one of the problems of drug addiction is exploration becomes escapism for sure starts off as exploration let me find out something new about myself let me find out who i am who am i under the influence of this drug let me find out who am i once these barriers are broken and i can see the world in a new way great explore but as soon as it becomes escapism you're going there to run away from something behind you it's a


to run away from something behind you it's a problem um before we move into the final section of this episode where i want to highlight the modern day take of neuroscience when it comes to ayahuasca peyote etc shrooms also i'd love to talk for a short time about heroin and cocaine what does it do specifically i've had friends who've had cocaine addictions i've had friends who've had uh have you heard of this thing called meow meow that is mdma right no it's mcat uh it used to be a drug when we were like entering college 10 years back 12 years back okay oh mdma is ecstasy right it's it's sort of a variant of ecstasy i i highlight these three substances heroin coke and mcat because of all the drugs that i've heard of and read about these three seem to be the three most dangerous ones right in my experiences so what's the medical perspective on these and also what's the bro perspective in terms of what do you think happens on


in terms of what do you think happens on the trips i know a little bit about what happens through yeah things i've heard let's also put meth in that bracket that's the fourth one sure so we can start off with meth because that is the easiest to explain there is a hormone called adrenaline that adrenaline and its brother nor adrenaline so these are extremely important chemicals in the body it helps you wake up first of all so as the noradrenaline level goes up in your body you go from sleep to drowsy to awake to focus to concentrating and if it keeps on going up you go into anxiety you're going to panic so that is the nor adrenaline spectrum now what meth does is it is meth amphetamine and that increases your adrenaline levels basically gets you excited helps you focus gets you active if you're at a party you are dancing more your blood is flowing more your heartbeat is high and you are more energetic dangerous the other


high and you are more energetic dangerous the other side of the spectrum if it crosses you get anxious you get panic attacks you don't know what is happening so that is what method does the other drugs are a little bit more complex to explain like for example heroin acts on a whole other system called the opioid system in the body in the simplest terms reduces pain makes you more relaxed is it true that a heroin drip feels like a very very extended orgasm uh if it hits that right spots it does yeah for some people correct so the opioid system has two main roles one is pain management so opioids are legally used so for example morphine is an opioid drug legally used in cancer pain so cancer pain is one of the worst pains that a human being can feel and no painkillers will work what happens there is just intractable pain why pain ongoing because cancer infiltrates the nerves and then it affects you at such a core level that superficial


affects you at such a core level that superficial painkillers don't work morphine acts in the brain so it acts in a central way to detach you from the pain carpet bombing kind of so it's a central acting agent and detaches the pain from your sensation so now you are no longer aware of that pain but things are still morphine can reduce everything so like carbon fungi so increase in morphine if you give too much morphine then it's not just pain that goes down even your breathing can go down you can stop breathing if if it's an overdose for example so you have to be very careful which is why it is an illegal drug without medical supervision heroin does the same thing but uh it is synthetic doesn't is not used for medical purposes it is used only for recreational purposes helps you detach helps you not feel pain has intense addictive properties so much much more than weed or lsd they say the first time you do it you have to do it a


time you do it you have to do it a second right so that is the danger of heroin uh meow meow i'm not sure what it is if i'm not wrong it is either the next step after meth or the previous step before method is cooked because meth is cooked as we all know because we've all seen breaking bad yeah but uh it's either the step before uh myth or after the the one that has the best name according to me is ketamine and there is something called as the kitty party where uh you have ketamine injections the way it works is there is something called dissociative anaesthesia so ketamine is again a medical drug you use it for surgeries and you have dissociative anesthesia so you don't get completely knocked off your sensorium is there you are conscious but you feel nothing the whole body is physically numb yes but you're conscious and you don't feel any pain so you dissociate yourself from your body so you can have those floating about yourself experiences you can


can have those floating about yourself experiences you can have out of body experiences third person experiences and there are people who reported watching themselves have the operation god so you can get all these trips with ketamine so it's called kitty parties but you should only do it with an anesthetist only when you're getting operated on helps to have doctor friends yeah maybe i've not done it that's why i'm raising this question but i don't get the urge to do these substances considering the fact that we've grown up in the 90s 2000 2010s when there's so much awareness about drugs you know when even even kids who are massive stoners don't go beyond it and what what happens generation says that oh weed is a gateway drug to other things it might be true for once in a while cases but we've all had friends who are stoners our age very few of them go into these subjects nobody in fact like out of everybody i know who has ever smoked pot nobody has


i know who has ever smoked pot nobody has gone beyond that so that's there is there is a tendency for us to exaggerate the risks of things have you heard of something called nde there is near death experience yeah yeah yeah so there are people who talk about how they see their soul leaving and they see themselves dying and that is considered as one of the signs of having a soul or you know having a spiritual experience so near death experiences trigger a lot of these molecule release in the brain so near-death experiences can trigger your endocannabinoid system your opioid system so your ketamine the the places where the ketamine is acting that is ndma there's a molecule called ndma and uh near death experiences are explained because of this so near the experience is a psychedelic experience life flashed before my eyes correct so that is a psychedelic experience it's so cool that you brought this up because we will now address a part of this conversation that i completely was overlooking joe


of this conversation that i completely was overlooking joe rogan's dmd oh man so what is dmt uh i know that you obviously that's the active compound in ayahuasca correct but there's also dmd that you can smoke and i've heard that it's a shorter trip but it's also dangerous because that's synthetic dmt and it has its own bad effects not i mean i'd love to hear from the doctor like what is it what does it do how can it be dangerous the the effect is very similar to ayahuasca because the molecule is the same the effect is on serotonin so it goes into your brain acts on the serotonin networks has intense psychedelic activity so you have hallucinations of aliens you have hallucinations of different entities and those hallucinations are so vivid that people come out feeling as if they have just had an entire conversation where those entities are talking to them telling them things that only they know because obviously it's coming from their own brain but when you hear


it's coming from their own brain but when you hear it from somebody else you feel like you've had a big spiritual experience that how can this person know this deep dark secret that i have never shared with anybody else one of the interesting lines that i read in a research paper was how all this could have therapeutic applications for trauma so what happens in trauma is suppose you had a very bad experience in your childhood these drugs can help reshape those networks so that you are not looking at that traumatic event in the same way so you can look at that experience and not feel that fear that you used to feel when you had that traumatic experience before so in mental health uh therapies these drugs could have a role if researched properly and the final question of this episode doctor is uh i've heard that neuroscience is very fascinated with these substances nowadays what is the specific fascination is it all the stuff you've already covered like about dealing with trauma dealing with ptsd i


about dealing with trauma dealing with ptsd i think the fascination is to understand our brain more because there's still so much learning to do so much more we don't understand a lot of things still and the hope is that with every door you don't know where it can lead to so we don't want to close any door and psychedelics is a major door of research it directly gives us insight into the molecular levels of the brain so the hope is that using psychedelics we can understand more about the brain and use that knowledge to help everybody just like happened with lsd serotonin and now millions of depression patients are getting better because of medicines similarly hopefully more research into psychedelics will give us a better future crazy i think there are people like this gentleman called terence mckenna bob marley for that matter all these guys who delved into the world of psychedelics had things getting unlocked in their own brain and then spread it through their art spread it through


and then spread it through their art spread it through their speeches i also feel that we are at the brink of the next stage of human evolution be it neuralink be it research about these substances we're getting to a higher stage of existence becoming more empathetic becoming more aware because of the information age so we're entering some very exciting times from a neuroscience perspective and you know while these podcasts are meant to spread information i also feel like these podcasts should raise questions in the listeners heads and i also hope that listeners share these podcasts everywhere including whatsapp spread it to your families so that you know the human race moves into a higher form of knowledge almost we're all in this together yeah at the end of the day 100 thank you for the super drugged out episode doctor gonna have you on the show again this is our last recording on this particular day we recorded four episodes back to back yes and i'm feeling a little stoned right now that's what knowledge does yeah


little stoned right now that's what knowledge does yeah you know that's so cool you said that uh and this is something i never looked at in this particular fashion i always looked at getting into content creation as a place for my addictive personality to calm down in i never thought of curiosity being one of the cures for addiction and that's pretty much what i told you offline as well and in the last podcast i said that i felt like uh podcasting is driving me a little bit insane but honestly there's so many gifts related to podcasting and this is one of them like the amount i learned today even if i'm able to retain one percent or five percent of it i'll be the most interesting person in the room so it's not just me also the listeners so thank you doctor man you have a sexual mind i love it and feels happy on the show again it's an honor alright bro it's our honor thank you see you see you that was an informative and kind


see you see you that was an informative and kind of fun episode of the ranvi show that we created with dr sid warrior you know as we spoke about on the episode the generations that preceded our own which are born before the 80s which are born before the 50s they have a certain kind of outlook when it comes to the world of drugs they categorize all substances in the same category as heroin or cocaine and i hope that this particular episode kind of shed light on all these subjects i know that we have a huge chunk of our audience that's older so i hope that those members of our audience actually came across this episode i hope the medical fraternity came across this episode and i sincerely hope that you'll share this episode with older people with people from the medical world of india of the world in general i was i personally enjoyed every bit of it i felt honored that dr said warrior decided to create this particular episode on the ranvi show and i'm


this particular episode on the ranvi show and i'm honored that you guys follow us just make sure you follow us on spotify as well every episode is available on spotify 48 hours before it's available anywhere else in the world lots more to talk about with dr sid wario but at the end of this episode i'd also urge you guys to check out the episode we did with dr mark plotkin if you want the tribal aspect and all these substances which have been prevalent for more than 50 000 years which have had an impact on ancient human culture dr mark plotkin's episode of the runway shows one of those episodes that's an undiscovered gem it didn't get too many views there wasn't too much hype around it but i remember when we recorded it i felt like this is one of the most intriguing episodes we had created so enjoy that episode after this one we'll be back on the rnv show soon [Music]


spirituality isn't just about meditation or dharm or puja spirituality isn't just for old people spirituality isn't even just about self-improvement it's about all these things and so much more the secrets of death the secrets of the universe the secrets of leveling up your mind in life this and more on today's episode with swami mukhod every three months or so we host a spiritual leader on the show and this episode just like other spiritual episodes was rich was enlightening was calming and was extremely educational remember highlights of this episode are available on trs clips and also remember follow the runway show on spotify or spotify exclusive which means that every episode is available on spotify 48 hours before it's available anywhere else in the world i will let you slip into this extremely calming extremely spiritual episode with the former iitn now known as swami mukhed [Music] thank you for being on that nvidia show runway here i am delighted to be here and looking forward to today's conversation


to be here and looking forward to today's conversation you know uh before the camera started rolling uh we spoke about something very interesting uh and i think it's so relevant to the times we live in uh where the world is so polarized people have such strong opinions about everything the moment you bring up even the word spirituality there's a bunch of people out there who have a lot of negative emotions associated with that word they kind of look down upon that or they look down upon people who maybe even are saying that word or promoting these concepts and then there's a massive section of the audiences which honestly i feel have gone through things in life have eventually led them into spirituality and they love these kind of conversations i remember even myself i was one of those people who laughed at like spirituality and meditation back in college and now we're doing this where you know we're making content around it and it's become such a crucial part of my life and my audience's life so so this


my life and my audience's life so so this conversation for me so special as with any other spiritual conversation i feel like these are the conversations i've actually started this podcast for sir so thank you for being on the show again oh i'm really happy to be here and i look forward to discussing something that is really meaningful and that can add value to the life of the people who are listening uh so so what's your take on this whole spirituality angle what is it what does it even mean spirituality brings meaning and purpose in our life as we go through the journey of life we are called upon to make choices in this ethical dilemma what should i choose in this complicated situation what should be my priorities what should i define as the purpose of my life and these questions are so important to everyone now if we don't have a value system to access it becomes so difficult to make these choices so spirituality provides us with the wisdom with the help of which we can establish some values


with the help of which we can establish some values and make the choices that are required and not only that in our daily humdrum existence we get caught up in the process of mundane works earning money paying the bills taking care of the family and we have a need that remains unaddressed the need to connect with something bigger to find the higher meaning behind the mundane works that we do so spirituality helps us connect with something that is bigger than ourselves and besides that spirituality helps us answer the big questions in life now when we go through school and college we develop the cognitive intelligence which is iq beyond that some people also develop eq very well where they can understand their emotions they can empathize with the emotions of others and they can master their emotions but the question still remains what is the purpose of my life and if we don't understand that purpose then we are running around like a headless chicken so spirituality helps us find the answers to these questions who am i