You know, the cannabis market is perhaps ten percent, maybe five percent therapeutic,
ninety five percent recreational. I would say more psychedotics are the other way
around, right, It's going to be ninety percent therapeutic and probably ten percent
recreational. You're listening to Carrie Leutz's Financial Survival Network, where you get valuable
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I'm yours Garry Lutz. Hey, you know there's all sorts of new novel
treatments coming out for many things. There's a mental health crisis in North America
probably across the planet, and we have done very little at addressing this concern.
And just look at the number of homeless people in urban areas throughout not
just the United States, but North America around the world, and imagine if
there was some inexpensive and like widely tested drones that that could help solve this
mental crisis. This mental health crisis. How much? How much would society
benefit from that? Well, Benjamin Lightburn is with us now and he is
the CEO of Filament Health. That's fi LA m nt dot hell. It's
traded publicly traded company FH. It's on the CBOE of Canada. Ben,
it's great to have you on the show. So psychedelics treating these widespread mental
health issues relatively new approach which seems to be seems to be effective in many
cases, doesn't it. It does seem to be effective, But I actually
want to correct you, it's not very big do right. So when you
think about humans using psychedelics for various purposes, there's documented evidence of this going
back for thousands of years, right, be it spiritual, cultural, you
know, shamanistic things. You can see mushroom statues in meso America, you
can see paintings of magic mushrooms, things like that. And in fact,
even in the modern era, we did actually have psychedelics in relatively wide use
in the beginning in the thirties, forties and fifties and sixties, until of
course that was all shut down once the kind of genie got out of the
bottle and the psychedelic movement became associated with the counterculture and the anti war movement,
and then of course we had the War on drug and basically the criminalization
of all drug related activity. But you are definitely right in posing the question,
you know, what kind of harm to the society might have been avoided
if we had had broader access to these substances for the last five or so
decades. But in any event, in the last few years, maybe in
the last decade or so, we have seen a very strong resurgence in the
amount of research and the amount of studies being done with these substances. And
in some cases you're even seeing certain jurisdictions allow people to be medically treated with
these substances in a kind of like pre approval, early access or early access
basis. So it is definitely a very exciting time for the psychedelics industry and
hopefully a very exciting time for society as certain of these psychedelic substances look to
be approved as drugs over the next couple of years. So interesting, So
tell us the results treating mental health issues, How effective psychedelics have been and
how effective are they compared to other approaches? Great question, So so far
the the indication the disease areas that are most advanced in clinical development would be
the PTSD and depression MPMA in the case of PTSD, and and psilocybin for
depression in the first case. We're seeing, you know, roughly like a
sixty percent remission rate for people with PTSD. It's just very very high considering
there really are slim to know approved therapies for people currently suffering from PTSD.
So it's very very very promising. And you know, it's important to remember
that these drugs are always given in conjunction with some form of therapy or psychological
support. Like it's not as if, you know, very sick people are
being given powerful hallucinogenic substances and just told to go on their merry way and
hope we're the best, right. There's always you know, strict procedures and
protocols in place to ensure the safety of everybody. Really in the area of
depression, you're seeing big reduction of depression scores after after three weeks or twelve
weeks, whatever the case, may be very very promising, you know,
higher typically than what you would see for the predominant depression treatment, which is
of course SSRIs. Many people aren't familiar with the SSRIs because something like fifteen
percent of North Americans actually take them. These are drugs that you tink every
single day. They're drugs that often come with side effects like weight gain or
sexual dysfunction, or just general foggy headedness. And the other interesting thing about
SSRIs is that they only have a one third chance of working any given time
around, and they only have a sixty five percent chance of working even after
attempting multiple different courses of SSRIs. And it takes a couple of months sometimes
to become stable. So someone's journey to go through different SSRIs can actually last
years, whereas what we're talking about for psilocybin therapy is the single dose and
with therapy and these can have effects that last for for several months. In
the area of substance serious disorders, which is where Billman is focused, we're
seeing very exciting research coming out. There was a big study that came from
NYU where in alcohol use disorder where they showed it eighty three percent reduction in
heavy drip drinking days amongst people who are regularly abused alcohol. You have early
data in smoking cessation. You also have preliminary data in cocaine use disorder,
all of which are showing really just amazing results. And so again it's a
very very exciting time for psychedelics and maybe hopefully even for society as some of
these drugs get approved over the next few years. Interesting the substance abuse that
can really reduce you know, these SSRIs after you take them for like ten
years, that cause many people to become bipolar as a result too, right,
well, and they have there's withdrawal symptoms, right, so if you
try to get off or you try to switch, it's not necessarily straightforward.
So it's as tsurized our big issue for sure, for sure. And as
far as other forms of therapy talk therapy and all that, those have really
low success rates. Right. We know that they work, but that their
success can be limited. Right, So really what we're talking about is a
whole new treatment paradigm. Right. It's it's a it's a it's it's a
new thing, right. It's it's not you know, like you said,
you know, one hour a week of talking to a therapist. It's a
kind of like intensive therapy of high dose psiocybin where you are you know,
typically lying on a couch and someone incapacitated and left, you know, to
deal with your own thoughts. But people report that psychedelics have a way of
showing you, you know, things about yourself that you probably already knew deep
down inside somewhere. But it's kind of like a tool which like shows shows
you the way internally right and and allows you to have, you know,
certain insights and discoveries about yourself that you may not otherwise have had. Do
we have any idea how these things actually work from a metabolic standpoint or we
just know from the results. The short answer is no. The long answer
is that there are many different things currently being hypothesized. The predominant theory is
that they are serotonin receptor agonists, so they mimbic serotonin in the brain and
activate the serotonin receptors, and that is kind of what it is thought to
cause the flooding feeling, the hallucinogenic you know, the response, the the
different visuals and auditory hallucinations. But there is research that shows that, you
know, maybe not research, but reports of certain people that have you know,
not had these kinds of hallucinogen responses and yet still had a therapeutic treatment.
Outcome. Or there was a study that came out the other day in
mice where they had mice that were genetically modified to not have five HTQWOA receptors,
and yet they still exhibited antidepressed effects from psychedelics. So, like I
said, the short answers, we don't actually really know why or how it
works, but we do. What we do know is that people that have
these experiences, they regularly as cided as like the top one or two most
impactful experiences of their entire life. Right, they say, doing this was
similar to witnessing the birth of my child, or getting Mira, or watching
a cross close friend die or something like that. Right, these these experiences
rank among the most important people's lives. They're just going to share something with
my personal experience. Not with a loose engens but weight loss drug a zempic.
I took that. You know, I was like twelve thirteen pounds from
my goal weight. I just couldn't get rid of it, and I said,
okay, I'm going to take it for two three months. Hopefully too
bad side effects, but some of the unintended side effects. Number one,
I'm not a big drinker, but you know, a moderate drinker two three
times a week, one or two drinks. I found that it like cut
that in half. And then for coffee, I am a I was a
pretty substantial coffee drinker, to three cups a day. I'm down to one
cup a day. And it's the weirdest thing then, because it's just like
I had no desire to cut my alcohol consumption or my caffeine consumption, and
yet it just made me not want it really strange here, and now they're
saying it works for cocaine in certain people as well, so maybe some multi
fascinating type approach. I just think it's interesting that all these drugs are here,
and you know, they're being prescribed and used, and yet we don't
really know what they what they do. You know, it's a kind of
like a theoretical question, you know, how much do we need to know
about how something works rather than if it works now and just having the results.
And this gets back to your question that the beginning was about, well,
how do you even do a FLA see what control study with psychedelics.
So the water is further muddied by the fact that you could claim that that
that psychedelics don't in fact work and that it's all just expectancy bias from the
participants. And so that is one further complication to the argument. Well,
if it were who cares how or why? Yeah, if it's placebo,
it's good placebo, right, But it's unethical to prescribe people placebo, even
if you know it's going to make them better. Yeah. Yeah, Well,
you know there's a limit to double blind studies, Like, you know,
they never did double blind studies on parachutes. You know, you really
want to prove that parachutes save lives, then you should do a double blind
study. But nobody's jumping out of a plane without a parachute, right.
So well, just like it's impossible to do research on what is the safe
amount of alcohol for a pregnant woman to consume, right, right, you
can just prescribe one group to take tons of alcohol at another one to take
no alcohol and figure out what's the safe limit. And so we assume that
we just take the most safest case, which is that no alcohol is safe.
Right. And in this case, as long as we know that drugs
are safe, right, I mean band trips and things like that, you
know, we don't so much see that with non uh, synthetic hallucinogens do
it well. A lot of people actually would push back on the idea of
bad trip, right because many people would say that it's actually the sort of
like negative experiences and past traumatic experiences and all these kinds of things coming to
the surface and having a challenging experience that this may actually be the intended consequence
of doing psilocybin therapy. Right. So it's it's kind of like a no
pain, no gain situation, right, Like if you have a lot of
you know, baggage or you know, emotional trauma or things that are holding
you back and causing you blockages, it does stand to reason that you know,
to work through all this will be difficult and will be like like people,
aren't you don't really do like these high dose psychedelics. It's not really
like fun. It's not really like recreation doll. It's not really like,
hey, let's like eat some mushrooms and go into the woods and watch the
northern lights. It's you know, we're this is this is definitely not that
right. This is like a tool that kind of forces you to confront your
demon's head on and and and and there's no escape and so it can be
very challenging and overwhelming, but many people would say that that's actually the very
point of the whole action. Do people have the psychotic breaks on these hallucinogens?
Has that ever happened it? I think there have been one or two
things that have been reported like that, But often you will see that this
person may have had a predisposition to those occurrences, and so it may have
actually just kind of like reawakened something that was dormant. You also have something
called persistent hallucination disorders, people that report like even a year year after their
psychedelic experience that they may have like little flashes of hallucination. So this is
something that persists in a small fraction of people that undergo psychedelic therapy as well.
Wow, all right, well I think we should cover this topic.
As far as the company goes, at what point does it become profitable and
you know, start putting out sizeable returns? What's the milestone for that?
The catalyst? So currently our drugs we are in phase two, and so
we need to complete phase two and then complete phase three, and then after
that we would be submitting a new drug application to begin marketing the drugs.
So I would say probably a fair estimate would be four or five years away
for us to finish all of that, but we've already been through all the
pre clinical and phase one, so we're we're marching right along. Another unique
thing about our company is that because we manufacture our drugs naturally, and we
were the first to do so, we've been able to claim a lot of
very valuable IP We have over twenty five issued patents now, and what's what
that's been able to do is allow us to enter into revenue generating licensing agreements.
So unlike most kind of junior biotech companies, we actually are already revenue
positive, revenue generating. We're not profitable yet, but there would be a
path for us to generate significant revenues before actually getting our own drugs approved,
which is which is quite a unique aspect of our Yes, very much so,
Hey, one final question for you, and that covers the topic of
microadocing, which I know isn't related to what you're doing here, but I'm
curious if there's been studies on microdocing, if it helps anymore, whether you
need the large dose to get the maximum benefit. That is another one of
the big unanswered questions in psychedelics whether or not microdosing works. A lot of
people swear by it right, A lot of people say it really helps them.
A lot of people say it saved their life. There hasn't been much
good quality research done on microdosing, especially in people who are sick right where
you can actually measure outcomes. We actually have a couple of microdosing studies where
we're supplying drugs to which will hope to overcome this deficiency in the microdosing research.
So I would say the jury is still out there. Most people would
probably say most like scientific researchers, would probably say there's not really any evidence
to support it. But you know, people on the street, a a
lot of people out there swear by it. And if it does work,
it would be huge because it's much easier for people to take once a day
small dose that they barely feel, than it is for them to take like
the very high dose that require supervision that needs to be kind of like a
semi medical setting. Sure, I find the whole thing fascinating. It's a
shame that all the research into psychedelics was basically aulted in the sixties due to
the widespread I guess distribution of LSD and other hallucinogens, and now it's kind
of being rediscovered. I knew there were studies that took place and have been
taking place throughout the past fifty or sixty years, but nowhere near what's going
on right now. And the fact that you know it's going back quite a
while now. When they finally loosened up on the research and we see these
things are beneficial, I guess it creates a whole host of problems to the
regulators there letting the genie out of the bottle. The one thing I will
say, where like drug legalization, is many many health benefits have been espoused
for cannabis, and really the research what I've seen, other than perhaps some
pain relief aspects and seizure reduction, I just haven't seen the research prove it
out. Hallucinogens. On the other hand, you know, most of these
studies and that haven't been extensive, have shown great benefits with some risk,
but moderate risk. Agreed. I think people often try to draw parallels between
cannabis and psychedelics, and there certainly are many, but there are many differences
as well. My opinion is that in psychedelics, you actually kind of have
the medical efficacy, which is kind of dragging psychedelotics skicking and screaming into the
mainstream. Whereas for cannabis, the medical efficacy was like, maye be a
tool to kind of legitimize recreational use, Whereas you know, we should have
just said people should be free to use cannabis recreationally, and we don't need
any pretend fake ghoma prescriptions or anything like that, right, we should just
let people smoke weed if they want to smoke weed, right, Like,
this is the mand of the free supposedly, right. So I would agree
with you that many of the claimed medical benefits of cannabis definitely did not come
to pass, although it is important remember that there are very important and highly
efficacious cannabinoid based drugs that are out on the market. Right, But I
would like I would say that, you know, the cannabis market is perhaps
ten percent, maybe five percent therapeutic, ninety five percent recreational. I would
say for psychedelics the other way around, Right, it's going to be ninety
percent therapeutic and probably ten percent recreational. And it's interesting because you look in
the in the drug books cannabis is classified as a llucin egen, but I
don't know exactly what that means. In the case of cannabis. All the
scheduling system is so ridiculously out of date, right, Like, all these
substances are Schedule one controlled substances, saying that they have a high potential for
abuse and no accepted medical benefit, and both of those things are just completely
untrue, right you. You even have the FDA that designated psilocybin to breakthrough
therapy, right So it's it's ridiculous, honestly, and it's it's it's it's
kind of embarrassing for sure. And before microdosing, there really were no long
term leucin engen abusers out there. You know. It's generally a thing that
goes on a cycle. Whatever they take it. It's not a long term
abuse drug. So all of that's really fascinating. They just tell us the
best place to find you connect with you on the web, Ben head to
our website Filament dot health. Side up for our mailing list comes out usually
every Thursday or every other Thursday, and obviously look us up on all of
the normal social media channels. Filament and dot health all right. Excellent,
And there's a link in the show notes to your website on Financial Survival Network
dot com and when you go there sign up for your free newsletter. BET
been a real pleasure. Thank you so much for coming by, Thanks so
much, thanks for listening to Carrie Letz's Financial Survival Network, your solution to
today's trying times. For the latest, go to Financial Survivalnetwork dot com.
Financial Survival Network now more than ever,