Manesh Girn - The Psychedelic Scientist
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Guest Background
Manesh is currently a PhD student in Neuroscience at McGill University and has been lead or co-author on over a dozen scientific publications and book chapters on topics including psychedelics, meditation, daydreaming, and the default-mode network. He is currently conducting research on the brain mechanisms underlying LSD, psilocybin, and DMT, in collaboration with Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris and others from the Imperial College London Center for Psychedelic Research. In his free time, he also runs a YouTube channel - called The Psychedelic Scientist - where he discusses the latest findings in psychedelic science in an easy to understand, but non-superficial, form.
YouTube Clips
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Show Notes
2:01 - The Path to Becoming The Psychedelic Scientist
5:11 - Personal Experiences with Psychedelics
9:22 - The Case for Not Tailoring Psychedelics
13:03 - Can Psychedelics Enhance our Ability to Learn?
16:23 - How to Determine if Microdosing is Working
19:36 - How the Default Mode Network Influences Our Day-to-Day Lives
23:04 - What Inspired Him to Start The Psychedelic Scientist
26:29 - Why Psychedelics Won't Make You a Better Person
27:59 - Why Free Will Doesn't Exist
31:26 - Can NeuraLink Mimic a Psychedelic Experience
Links
The Psychedelic Scientist YouTube Channel
The Psychedelic Scientist Instagram
Notable Quotes
We live a lot of our lives in this myopic kind of tunnel vision, and it made me really reflect on the potential of the mind. What does it mean to have a more clear experience of reality? What does that even mean? How can these drugs teach us about the kind of fundamental way we frame our reality?
My first experience was at a beach. I was probably 17, 18 years old, and had some psilocybin mushrooms. And that experience really allowed me to step back from my usual way of perceiving the world. And I kind of saw myself from a third person perspective.
If we're creating these drugs, which just give a two hour trip, there is going to be a lot of unprocessed stuff at the end of that, that can lead to more harm than good. You might come out of it more anxious because it's like you brought it up, but you haven't worked through it. So in some sense, the full duration of the psilocybin, or even LSD might be needed for some people to really process what comes up.
There were reports of people in the KKK, in the far right. People taking psychedelics in their ceremonies, to basically deepen their commitment to their own ideology. Right? So we can't see psychedelics as this panacea that's going to change people and make them better.
