72: Tommaso Barba on Psychoanalysis, Expanded States, and Psychedelics’ Impact on Romantic Intimacy

Tommaso Barba – Imperial
LinkedIn
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David Nutt
Dr. David Erritzoe
Dr. Chris Timmermann
Terrance McKenna – Quote
Swan Dao – Podcast
David Luke
Robin Carhart-Harris – Psychedelics & Subconscious
Holotropic Breathwork
Morphonogetic Field
Annaka Harris – Lights On
Rupert Sheldrake – One Miracle
Nobel Prize – Physics
Internal Family Systems
Alan Watts
Gabor Mate
Esther Perel – Friendship
Auroville
Damanhur
Tamera
Chris Timmerman – 5-MeO-DMT Experiment
MDMA – Relationship Research
Imperial – Participate

Giancarlo: [00:00:00] Hello. Hi. Welcome to this new episode of the Mango TV podcast. Today I am very excited to have Tomazo Barba. Dear Italian fellow friend, Thomas Obar is a PhD candidate at Imperial College London Center for psychedelic research, exploring the brain effects of short acting, psychedelic like DMT and five ODMT under the supervision of Dr.

David Knott. David Rizo and Chris Timmerman. His work focuses on their potential to treat depression and enhance wellbeing. [00:01:00] That’s the part that I’m most interested. He authored the first scientific paper on psychedelics effect on sexual functioning, published in Nature Scientific reports and compare SAB into antidepressant.

Yeah, the sexual part also is interesting with a background in neuroscience and psychoanalysis. Super interesting from Matric University. Barbara also investigates psychedelics impact on romantic intimacy, a passionate science communicator. Ian engages audience via LinkedIn and ex Welcome to Mazo.

Tommaso: Thank you.

Thank you. It’s a pleasure.

Giancarlo: So, you know, my audience needs to forgive me because they heard that 70 times this little premises that I always do is, you know, this, this podcast, I don’t pretend to compete with the, you know, to be, to talk about this big topic. The angle that I try to keep is this idea of, personal transformation. Mm-hmm. Because we believe, at least I believe that global transformation comes from personal transformation. And especially nowadays with all this polarization, [00:02:00] I feel that unhealed activism is actually counterproductive. Yeah. Because it increased polarization and that has been a debate between meditator and, and, and more activist, more violent activists has been a debate going on forever.

But anyhow, so long story short, I would like to keep a, a biographical structure. And, and since you know the angle is pretty much on personal development, I love to start really at the beginning. Where were you born? How was your childhood? Where did you grow up? Uhhuh.

Tommaso: I’m Italian and I come from a rather small town in the north central of Italy close to bologna.

I would say I had like a pretty happy childhood in my initial in initial period of my life. I was a lot encountered with nature. Like there was a lot of ability to play to being around. I definitely remember a lot of like beautiful landscapes and it’s still a place that I’m really connected to.

And I would say also like from a family [00:03:00] perspective, standard nucleus family, my parents, my sister and me, I always felt like quite protected. At least older sister, younger sister. Younger sister, younger sister, younger sister from the beginning of life, at least up to when I started entering at Ians.

Which it was, it, it was when things started to like open up a bit, it was kind of a bit like the exiting from the garden feed in in a way.

Giancarlo: Nice. Nice. But so what was the conversation at the dinner table when you were like 10, 12, 14, 15? Who, who, how did you develop your passion for psychoanalysis first, right?

Tommaso: Yeah. Yeah. It came a bit afterwards and like, I think I could trace it back there because I was always like a little bit of a weird kid. I was always attracted to strange stuff in a way or another. Like I, I remember being like obsessed with like fossils and then like minerals and then it came it came the moment for like flowers and botanic and at some point, like later on, maybe one more, I was in high school, the mind entered in and [00:04:00] the fascination to try to understand myself better also came in.

And I think that’s where the passion for psychology and, psychoanalysis, the brain and the mind slowly like moved in. I mean, at some point I hit psychedelics. And I think like, also, like, I think Terrace McKenna said, it says that, and like when you hit psychedelics, there’s nothing weirder you can go on with.

And so

Giancarlo: when when you hit psychedelics, there’s

Tommaso: nothing weirder. There’s nothing weirder. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Giancarlo: But so do you rem do you remember if there was a cathartic moment that. Make you think, okay, I need to understand myself better. Mm-hmm. Like it was like, you know Yeah. A crash with a girl. Yeah.

Or a fight with a friend. Yeah. Do you remember something like that?

Tommaso: Yeah. Yeah. And was probably my first crash for a boy. Ah, wow. Interesting. And that was when stuff started to kinda like shock me a little bit. Nice. And yes, I think like confusion with sexuality was probably like what drove me into coming into this this place.

I mean, I come from a small town in Italy, as I said, and like growing up with like a different [00:05:00] sexuality there is not easy. And you, you want to like conform. You want to like make your parents proud. And I think that’s when like, he’s not San Francisco today. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I think that’s where the complexity started to come in.

Giancarlo: Yeah. Interesting. If you’re curious, my last podcast with Swan Dao super interesting character. Also his passion for, the mind psychology theology, he did two PhD Oh wow. On theology and philosophy and master in psychology. Everything was triggered and I hope he’s not gonna get upset that I said that, but he was very vocal.

I. About the, you know, sexual orientation. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So, so, so you thought, okay, what’s going on here with me and my sexuality? And So you decided to study psychology at the University of Bologna?

Tommaso: Yeah. Yeah. I went to Milan. I. I went to Milan to study psychology, and one of the main reasons were that like I wanted to like, escape my hometown and go somewhere where I [00:06:00] could be myself more and experience like a new, new version of myself.

Especially because I had like, like high school was the complicated one. Like I suffered from like bullism early on and then like, I kind of like entered the social media world, which gave me re like a really strange like direction, like in change of paths. And then I think like at some point I felt I needed to get out from there.

Giancarlo: Mm-hmm. Interesting. And so, and how was for you psychology from academia? Because our common friend David Luke was very disappointed. He says, I didn’t learn anything about the mind. What, how was it for you? I.

Tommaso: I found it fascinating. I found it like really broad in, in what it was touching at. And I did some psych analysis, some neuroscience, and then there was social media marketing and like human behavior and the work psychology.

So it was kinda like giving you a little pinch of everything. Oh, everything. And I, I mean, back then I didn’t think I would’ve dedicate my career on this. And I was really [00:07:00] like focused on like building up like a social media presence that I, I kind of developed when I was in my early twenties.

And I thought I would, I would’ve moved into that direction, maybe like go into like full on social media world and marketing and, and and and so forth and so on, which I’m kind of glad I didn’t, but what, what, what, why did you want to communicate? Yeah, that’s the point. I think like back then, I just didn’t know.

I see. And like the strange thing is like basically when I was maybe like in mid, in mid high school and I was quite like, like I was the opposite of a popular kid. I was just like, put on the side and I didn’t have many friends. And I started to develop this like personal diary in a blog that was kind of similar to what MySpace is and was was, yeah.

And I basically started writing about funny stuff about my life, about like reflections and things like this. And at some point this blog went viral and I started getting a really big social media. But How old,

Giancarlo: how old were you? Like 16, 17. Oh wow. [00:08:00] Interesting. And so you were still in a home? Yeah.

Yeah. It was a wave to reach out to. Like, like-minded peers. Yeah, yeah,

Tomasso (2): yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I, but the strange thing about that is that with kind of when it exploded, it like just gives you like a massive social status. Yeah. And I went from being like the kid that no one talked to, to the kid that everyone wanted to go out with.

It is such be. And I like and I constructed that thing. And I think that’s, that’s the thing where the keys of a lot of like problems with my identity, they came on later on, is that like I became a creation of my mind instead of really being myself.

Giancarlo: I see. But what was this blog about? It was about your inner turmoil.

Accepting. It was just

Tomasso (2): about like funny, I was just trying to be funny and like talk about high school relatable stuff. Like, oh, this happened, this to the teacher arguing and a bit about love, a bit about like stupid things. It was made to be fun and relatable. But when I look back at it, like there was definitely this like hidden ham that was, oh, I just want to be loved.

To be seen. Yeah. [00:09:00] And to be seen. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, yeah, that. I wasn’t really conscious. I was doing that back then, but now it’s like particularly clear.

Giancarlo: So you graduated at the University of Milan in psychology? Mm-hmm. And what was your state of mind those years? Yeah. Were you, were you in a good state?

Tomasso (2): I would say so. I would say so. Like that was probably the peak of my social media. We can call it fame. Fame, yeah. Yeah. And I was having a lot of fun, having access to a lot of experiences that many people my age didn’t have, didn’t have access to from fashion week to parties. And it was like a pretty nice period.

But like, I think that’s where I started to see the darkness behind it and the

Giancarlo: superficiality of it all.

Tomasso (2): Yeah. Yeah. The superficiality of it all. And the fact that like, I wasn’t really sure if any of the friends that I had around were really friends. And like, and the same was for me, and there was this kind of like implicit thing in which you create everything about your identity based on your social media status.

So like, you might end up going out with someone because there’s more followers than you, and you might not even [00:10:00] really like them. But then like you get something out of it and then everything is like a, like transactional and everything becomes very transactional. And at the same time, like, I think one of the most staggering things that I saw is that like the more famous people I was around were on social media, the more their mental health was unstable and mine was also slowly taking the toll of it.

Yeah, yeah. And you just get so addicted, like everyone was so just like, because it it’s your identity. Yeah. It’s your job and it is designed to be addictive. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that was something that I slowly relies to and kind of seeing people around me that were really suffering from it.

Yeah. Yeah.

Giancarlo: Yeah. It became very, you know, individualistic, like they say about Americans that. It’s especially this generation. Or actually the last generation that they spend money, they don’t have to impress people they don’t like. So, so, so you have this awareness of like, what am I doing with my life?

This is not real, this is not authentic. This not, this is not the real me. And then [00:11:00] what happened?

Tomasso (2): Then, like, I was exploring Milan and I was at the same time like being more and more interested in psychoanalysis. I was reading Freud, I was reading Yung, and like becoming more self inquisitive, I would say, and more curious about my mind and what was happening around me and to the people around me.

And I remember, like, I think the, the curiosity about something different started because I was at this. Party for that. That was like in one of the fashion week event. And I started to talk with the husband of a fashion designer friend of mine there, which started telling me about like his experiences with like ultra states of consciousness.

Mm-hmm. Like with ayahuasca, with breath work and all, all, all, all these experiences and how they really like impacted his life positively and kinda like made him like redefine his addiction to a alcoholism and made him a very different person. And it was a very beautiful conversation that I still remember and I think was one of the points where I just kind of started being fascinated by it.

By, by ultra state? Yeah. By ultra states. [00:12:00] And I started like,

Giancarlo: or, or, or, or expanded states. Right? Yeah.

Tomasso (2): Yeah,

Giancarlo: yeah,

Tomasso (2): yeah. And I started googling about it, trying to understand, and I already had fascination with psychoanalysis. And then I stumbled into these articles from professor Robin Kara Harris that used to be the head of our center.

And he was talking about how psychedelics could be the key to access the unconscious in a way that dreams promised to be. But then they never really happened to be in that manner because of the complexity of studying dream states. And back then Robin, like, I think just conducted the first imaging studies on LSD and its effects on the brain.

And I think that’s where I made the link and I started to kinda like the Oh wow, this could actually be something. Yeah. And I started to be really curious about it and move from the fringe of some, some guy that told me about his spiritual experiences in the Amazon to something that was studied in one of the most prestigious universities in the world.

Giancarlo: Yeah. Yeah. And the mechanism for. Be able to connect the subconscious material is this idea of [00:13:00] basically weakens the default mode network.

Tomasso: Yeah,

Tomasso (2): yeah. And like d different high level networks and ideas, like we have this this higher parts of our brain that is the prefrontal cortex and a few other like, and which, and with a few other areas around it that basically like are, I would say the pinnacle of like brain development.

And that’s where our self-consciousness probably stays. And by like a level of, of, of cross function of this networks, they give rise to our normal waking consciousness. And when we take psychedelics, like these higher brain areas, they get dysregulated, the activity there becomes very chaotic or unpredictable or tropic how we call it.

And when you, you, you disregulate the activity there your normal sense of being somebody, it. Kinda weaken. And at the same time, there’s this kind of like raise of limbic activity from lower Arab, lower brain regions, like the limbic system that comes up. And that can, it’s kind of like opening the gate [00:14:00] from a, a, a lower, less defined, the type of consciousness.

And this gives rise to like the complexity and the strangeness of the psychedelic state.

Giancarlo: Yeah. Amazing. I, you know, when, when my son wanted the, the, he wanted the, he’s now almost 13, he wanted the sex and drug talk. So we started with the drug talk, and I, I talk about psychedelic, you know, the. I divided into category, the, the, the, the one that create addiction and the one that helps with addiction, so the opiate and the psychedelics.

And I explained to him, you know, the, the formal network being like the director of the orchestra of your brain that then fall asleep. And then he, he listens and he said, ah, so basically in every area of the brain, now it’s ified. And I thought it was a, a good metaphor. Yeah. I think it’s a good, it is a good metaphor, you know, because like this, it’s not kept together by someone who decides who you are.

Yeah. So that’s a given freedom.

Tomasso (2): Yeah.

Giancarlo: So this is like

Tomasso (2): kids, when the parents go to sleep and then they just wake up and start like fighting and screaming [00:15:00] and having fun. Exactly.

Giancarlo: Exactly. But so you, you mentioned that you experience, you experience a little bit with the allo tropic breath work, which has a similar impact in the brain, right?

Tomasso (2): Yeah, yeah,

Giancarlo: yeah. I dunno if there’s been some clinical. Trial or not, they’re

Tomasso (2): starting to develop them. And there has been some like research that shows that these also increases brain entropy Yeah. In a similar way. And so how was your first holotropic breath work? Mm-hmm. So I think like it it it kind of developed a bit into, into, into practice that I used to do when I was younger.

And I think Exactly,

Giancarlo: it’s a pr it’s a process. It’s all one off. Yeah.

Tomasso (2): Yeah. Yeah. And I think like the best in which I can describe it, I was, I was lo I slowly started to decompose my sense of self and who I was back then and who I wanted to be. And new things started to come in. I started to see the world a bit in a different manner and also like my future and my ambition in a different manner.

And I think at some point, like something switched and I was just like, I just don’t want to be like. F like [00:16:00] known for the sake of being known and just kind of like develop restlessly, this like social media stuff because I, I, like, I would’ve never become famous enough to become, become like fully like living out of it.

Yeah. And having

Giancarlo: agency.

Tomasso (2): Yeah. I mean, I was having some stuff, I was making some money, but it was just kinda like in that middle way and it was just like, this is just not for me. And at some point, like you just kind of like need to let go and kinda like try to change identity and trying to develop who you are in a, in a, in a different manner.

And that’s. When I started to think, okay, like, I don’t wanna be here. I wanna like maybe do this because it just started to, to, to fascinate me more and more. And I think I’d also, an insight that I got from like the breadth of sessions is that maybe I should like move and dedicate myself to develop this further.

And this is kind of what I did.

Giancarlo: Nice. And so you sign up for a master or you went what, what happened after university in Milan?

Tomasso (2): I I went to mastery University, Uhhuh. ’cause I needed to train myself in neuroscience. Yeah. And [00:17:00] like I, there was no way I would’ve just been able to knock at the doors of Imperial from Milan because it was just too high and too prestigious.

And so I had to do something to like train myself Yeah. Before going going like to a highly prestigious university. Yeah. Like Imperial. And so I went to Mastery for like two years and I trained myself in neuroscience. And then it’s when, but that

Giancarlo: was a postgraduate, Yeah. Master degree. A master master Degree.

Degree. Degree.

Tomasso (2): Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then there was an internship that was linked to it. And I just like knocked at the doors of Imperial at that point, and that’s when I started to be involved in the, in the research over there, which was around the pandemic time. More or less would,

Giancarlo: would they be not?

Tomasso (2): Yeah. Yeah.

Giancarlo: Ba so let me ask you, I want to go when during this holotropic breath work or during psychedelic experience, you have this insight about yourself. And that’s obvious, and there’s so many recollection about that. But would you also, what do you think [00:18:00] about this idea that it’s also a mystical experience?

Is this something that do you, do you resonate with this terminology? Mm-hmm. Do you think that, is it possible that there is some sort of connection with some sort of morphogenetic field cosmic intelligence, uhhuh? Do you feel there is this connection, communication with, with the different. Or maybe not different, but on, on, on, on, on a, on a, on a, on a pattern.

Much bigger than just us. Yeah. How would you explain that in your, in your words? Because you know, we don’t have words for that. Yeah. By definition. Yeah,

Tomasso (2): yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and in a way, like, I think there’s something on it. And I’m not saying the rest because to say the light, there’s necessarily like another word there is God or anything that goes too far beyond ourself.

But there’s definitely, like our mind has the capacity to experience something that goes beyond our normal self-consciousness. And we see it like in our psychedelic therapy trials at Imperial, in which [00:19:00] people, like I would say, kind of reliably report these experiences in world in which they feel like one with the universe, they feel connected with everything that exists.

They feel a, an altered sense of space of time, a sense of transcendent and profoundness that happens at the peak of these experiences. And there is, I would say a lot of researchers shows that the level in which you experience this phenomena connected with a few others, like psychological insights and emotional releases, then predicts your improvements in depression and wellbeing weeks after the session.

So I would say there is something about it and there’s something that has a meaning about it.

Giancarlo: Mm-hmm. But, so I know you’re not a physicist, but you know, there is a, you know, I can’t remember who created this term, the heart problem of consciousness in in physics. Yeah, yeah. In the seventies or eighties.

And, and still there is an ongoing debate. About is the [00:20:00] consciousness a, you know, like a epiphenomenon of the brain? Mm-hmm. So it’s, it’s it’s derivative. It, you know, when, when the brain reaches certain level of complexity, poof, there is consciousness or is consciousness fundamental? Yeah. You know, primordial even, you know, before time and space.

Yeah. There’s this new author, Anika Harris, she create audio documentary Okay. Called Lights On. And she interview all the most known physicists from Sean Carroll and, and, and many others. And you know, the way this, this, the way she explained is that, okay, you can say that the HTO molecule is not wet.

It create water uhhuh, but it’s, it doesn’t have the property of wetness by itself.

Tomasso: Yeah.

Giancarlo: Yeah. That’s the view of consciousness being secondary. She, she argues that consciousness is the water, you know, I dunno if it makes sense, but the reason why I’m interested, and let’s see if I [00:21:00] can spark your interest on this.

You know, it’s not, people say, oh, it’s just mental masturbation. Who cares? You know, if the, you know, they say it’s, it’s Mind of matter. Matter of mind, right? This is like this matter, this brain, this six pounds of gray material that create consciousness or this conscious that create the brain and, and there seems to be no answer.

You know, Rupert Sherick makes fun of the secular materialist, or the scientific materialist because he says that the materialists, they say, listen, we can explain everything after the bing bang, but we just need one free miracle, which is a big bang. And then we can explain everything. But then of course it doesn’t make sense, right?

Tomasso: Yeah. Because yeah.

Giancarlo: The reason why I am interested, and this is something that I never really find, I never really be, I was never be able to dis discuss that because it’s very specific. I guess it’s once you have an understanding that consciousness is primary. You know, Annika Harris on her book, she says, once you understand that, it helps you to [00:22:00] understand the universe.

Okay. My question is, is it possible that once you understand that it’s easier to understand yourself and your relationship with others? Mm-hmm. Do, do you think? Do you see what I mean?

Tomasso (2): Yeah, yeah. And I, I, I would say possibly so, yeah, but possibly So Can you, can

Giancarlo: you say it better than me?

Tomasso (2): Yeah. It’s a, it’s, it’s a complicated one because I would say that like, we don’t really know yet.

And like, I think that, like saying that just consciousness is something that permeates or matter is like, it, it goes very far from the realm of currents and scientific like knowledge. But I wouldn’t say it’s comp like it’s completely disproven yet, but it’s something that is just like, it, it just goes in the realm of like spirituality and philosophy more than the matter of science.

And it’s the same level of like, when we study psychedelic experiences and people report this mystical states, for example, this experience of entities under DMT that is just encountering these beings that are interacting with people, like [00:23:00] with the current level of like neuroimaging of understanding.

We can give. Mechanistic explanation about what these entities are and what happens in the brain and what happens in the brain when people are feeling a mystical experience. But I, we cannot really say anything about it that’s just an illusion of your brain and or if it’s something that has more of a reality to it.

I think at this point, like it just becomes very difficult to, to explain to, to explain what it could be. And I remember this like psychedelic scientist that like ex told me about his experience with DMT and when he entered in, in, in that. Space. He was kind of just like shocked by like the experiencing of these beings and, mm-hmm.

Seeing them. And he was just kind of like a bit old and, and stuck by the idea of like, oh, wow, I didn’t really know that this could be possible. But then he said, when he kind of come back, he was just like, then he kind of faded like a dream. Like a dream. And like, I’m not sure I changed my ontological ideas about it because it’s kind of like a dream, like a dream can feel as real as reality [00:24:00] sometimes.

And yet most of us thinks that we, we, it’s not that when we dream, we all go into different quantum realities. And so, so some like, and stuff like that, we still think it’s something our mind generates, even if it just feels so real. And given this, I think it just, it might end up being a mystery that we will never able to fully grasp.

Giancarlo: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I like, I like to think that it can be like a self-fulfilling prophecy sort of thing. Like if there is more and more scientific paper that. You know, try to support this idea that consciousness is primary. So that means that, you know, people already says that, but that, you know, on a subatomic level level, we all connected.

So, you know, there was this experiment of the double sli experi, the double sli experiment, right? That shows that the observer effect, uhhuh, that you change the outcome of a subatomic photon, proton experiment just by looking at it. Do you remember this experiment? Yeah. Yeah. But so this is like, it’s, it’s, [00:25:00] it’s, it’s not that well known because the critic, the, you know, the critics that say that’s too small to be relevant.

Mm-hmm. And also the novel price in physics, like two years ago, I think they proved this non non-local effect of, of again, neurons that. Huge distance that would affect each other in real time. Define the speed of light, but then again, the critic says it’s too small, so it doesn’t really got into the newspapers.

Yeah,

Tomasso (2): yeah, yeah. And like I don’t really know much about like quantum physics and all of that, but like from what I know, I agree with you that like that word is really weird and really strange, but yet this properties doesn’t, they don’t seem to really apply to like. Physics at a bigger scale. Yeah. And we kinda see that.

And I, I really think that like physical reality is, is real. Like if I, if if I touch something and I feel it there Yeah. It’s because it’s there. Yeah. This doesn’t mean that our mind sees the word as it is. And this is another thing because I like modern neuroscience shows us that we see the [00:26:00] more we see the world more as we actually are, than the word it actually is.

Yes. And we constantly create this models of reality that we believe they’re real, but they’re not according to our biography. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because the word outside and like what we see from life is extremely complex. Is extremely complex. And to like perceive like what actually your, your. Seeing from that photo touching your readiness, it would require too much computational power.

And so your brain has an idea of how things should look like and it just creates a model of it. And that’s why like we are subjective to visual illusions because sometimes we see things moving and they’re not, because maybe sometimes, like, I dunno, you are walking on the street at night and you see a, a leaf moving and you just jump and you think it’s a snake and then you look back at it again and you don’t see the snake.

But for a second we actually saw a snake is because your mind just needs to create a model that is like useful enough, you know, to make you survive in the most skilled manner. And the problem about this is [00:27:00] that at, at levels that are perceptual, it’s easy to correct the model, but the more abstract you go, the more difficult the model be becomes to be corrected by external inference.

And we believe that’s where a lot of mental health issues are coming from, for example.

Giancarlo: From this distinction between perception of reality and reality. Yeah.

Tomasso (2): Yeah.

Giancarlo: Wow. Interesting. Yeah.

Tomasso (2): Interesting. Because if you think like when you have depression or anxiety, a lot of times, like that’s, it’s, there’s like a genetic component out of it, but there’s this strong environmental component in which people, like they might grow up either because of a huge traumatic event or maybe because of a slow traumatization that happened because living in an unsafe childhood or in, in a place where they didn’t feel like really loved.

And so, and they developed this models of the world that like, I cannot be loved. The world is. It’s not a safe place. And then you slowly start to adapt the information that you receive to the model that you have in your mind. And [00:28:00] that makes you like just kind of perceiving the word as you think it is.

Like we know that people from that, they have depression. If they, if someone tells them that they, that they look good, that they did a great job, they will start to think that, that the reason why that happened is because of external circumstances. Because they were lucky because there, there was a good day and so on.

But if the, if then someone tells them something negative about themselves, they immediately think it’s because of who they are, because I’m unlovable, because I’m a bad person. And they create these biases in which they tend to think that the positive information is related to circumstances and the negative information is related to themselves.

And it’s the same for predicting life events and so forth and so on. And so you kinda end up creating a model of the world and then you, you, you just like. Stick to it, and that it just can end up like dictating your destiny in a sort of like spiritual manner too. And that there’s a clear neuroscientific basis about this.

And it’s the same for the, like your perception of the war. Your romantic relationships are also a huge one in which the past [00:29:00] dictates the present in a, in a lot of cases. And that’s quite a fascinating point, which has been told a lot by a lot of spiritual traditions and modern neuroscience tends to confirm it

Giancarlo: well.

Interesting. Yeah, I remember there’s this book by John Harry called connection. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And he’s been studying people suffering for depression for like 20, 30 years, including himself. And, and ultimately says that, you know, we have, you know, our basic needs, there’s the need to be seen to belong, to be part of a community and what that is missing.

You develop this kind of of, of mental illness, but. What was the connection between what you said about people with depression and anxiety and the, the idea of a cosmic consciousness? I lost that connection.

Tomasso (2): Yeah. I’m not, like, I, I wouldn’t say there’s necessarily a link to it, but like, what we found, for example, from our clinical data is that if people have depression and anxiety, then they take psychedelics in this supervised context, guided by therapist and, and, [00:30:00] and, and so on.

And they have this mystical type experiences in which they feel one with the universe. They feel this strong, like strong reduced sense of being trapped in their mind. Mm-hmm. And they, they get a glimpse of that. Then normally their anxiety and depression will tend to be very reduced after that experience.

And the reason why it might be the case is because it takes people out from the prison of their minds. Yeah. And into,

Giancarlo: into, into a collective. Connectivity.

Tomasso (2): Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And that’s the kinda like the inter the idea of ego dissolution that is very similar to what a mystical experiences. And like I, I would say, yeah, you lose something, but you also acquire something.

You are able to see something beyond the denomin is not accessible to you. That doesn’t need to be explained esoteric terms. But I think it’s kind of like linked to this idea of like maybe molecular continuity of life. Mm-hmm. That we are all one in the sense that we are all made of the same molecules and we are all connected in that way.

And that’s something like, and this is

Giancarlo: [00:31:00] just like a, a, a, a, a manifestation of this lifetime. It’s just an a specific aggregation. Yeah. And then we’ll go back into this collective molecular pool. Yeah.

Tomasso (2): Beautiful. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that you might get a glimpse out of it and then like, people, like you see and that’s healing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And people feel more connected to themselves, more connected to the other, significant others around them and yeah. And

Giancarlo: nature. Yeah. And

Tomasso (2): nature and in a society like the one that we live, I think that’s like something that is really important. It’s really important to have.

Giancarlo: Amazing. So I love this idea of the molecular pool, but, so I’d love to talk about the, the internal family system and your experience also with the expanded state and, and, and romantic relationship. But can we anchor them on your biography, where, when, so we are now in London, Imperial College, you start working with this great team.

When did you start your passion for the internal family system?

Tomasso (2): Like, I, I started like going to therapy, [00:32:00] not like a lot of months ago. Like I started like around September. Oh wow. And it was maybe mainly catalyzed by a pretty like big traumatic breakup that I had back then. And the best way in which I can describe it is that like it.

Cracked something in my ego that like it just kind of forced me to look into it, and I could have just put a plaster out of it and just like, kind of like completely discarded experience as a narrow and just completely hate like my ex-partner because of what happened and just kind of going on.

But then I think I, like, I, I didn’t want to do that. I did that in the past. And I think at at that point in my life, I just kind of like, so, okay, there’s something here. There’s something I want to discover more about myself that I, I want to go deeper. I want to see things, I want to understand. Stand.

And like that’s a lot of times like the right moments in which people go into, into therapy because you are forced to be [00:33:00] confronted with parts of yourself that for a very long time they were silent. And like, and if you don’t do that. You will just continuously repeat and repeat the same patterns again.

And I kind of felt to be done with that. I felt it was, it was it, that was the time to just go in and understand something further. And I approach like internal family systems as a therapy. Like as a therapeutic support and together with like relational therapy. I think because I was quite interested in the somatic aspect of it and by the people that dunno, internal, internal family systems approaches.

It’s a form of psychotherapy in which like your identity is is, is divided and analyzed as a different, sort of different selves that are in interaction between each other’s. And they kind of create sub identities inside your mind. And these interactions, they have like different feelings and different emotions related to them and the focus of the therapies just on not only intellectualize them, but to feel [00:34:00] where these emotions are and kind of make them express inside yourself.

And that was a lot of the focus of the work that I’ve done in the, in the, in the previous months in which like I could tell you, like I. In exactly like beautiful and well and verbalized story as I’m doing now, why I was the way I was, but I never really felt those emotions and not even with my previous like experiences with like rhetoric and so on, because I was never forced to go there and there was something in me that just didn’t want.

Some resistance. Yeah.

Giancarlo: But do you mind to share what happened with your partner? How long were you guys together? If it’s still private, I understand. Yeah, yeah. I

Tomasso (2): can, I, I I can give whatever you can. Yeah. Yeah. I can give a, a brief overview of it, but it was like, we were, like, it was around a year and a half, and it was, pretty beautiful relationship for most of the part. But there were a lot of, like, a lot of complexities related to being long distance and ah, he wasn’t in London. No. And I think also like the dynamic that it [00:35:00] was created, and again, like, I don’t want to go too personal, but I think like back then when, when we met, I, like, I would say like, and for a very long time in my life, my, what I call my adaptive child, this thing that I created out of my social media ward.

And by being myself, it just like, was kind of like being everything that I was and was kind of ve me and giving me a lot of confidence and giving me a lot of like yeah, like kinda capacity to lead and the charisma and, and and so on. And like, but at the same time it was preventing me to really being vulnerable in a, in a, in, in, in a lot of cases.

And, i, I, I would say trying to like, not go again too, too personal about it. It’s there’s this quote that I read first from a famous couples therapy that like the parts of ourselves that we reject in us will end up being the one that our partners will end up rejecting when we show them. To them.

And I think this, it was a bit what happened. I think at some point I just stopped being that [00:36:00] version of myself and I just started to be more like, I wanted to be more vulnerable. I wanted to like, get out outside of myself that maybe it was like it was exile for so long and it was difficult for me to get it out, but when it started to come out and emotional needs started to come out like

Giancarlo: it 50 miles.

Tomasso (2): Yeah. Like the relationship ended up being unsustainable and a lot of other stuff were was happening, like life was getting in. But I just kinda like, I think the main, the main thing is that, that part, I didn’t feel that that part could really like, fit in the current dynamic of the relationship. That it was, it, it was created and I didn’t even know I had it in myself for a very long time.

And yeah, that was started to kind of create a change.

Giancarlo: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for sharing. I, I know it’s, it’s, it’s never easy to share. About your vulnerability, but that’s, there’s no other way to grow.

Tomasso: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Giancarlo: It’s, it’s, it’s not a question. Do you like, you don’t like it? I mean, it’s, it’s really two approach to life.

Tomasso: Yeah.

Giancarlo: Either you learn, [00:37:00] that’s what I feel. I mean, there’s many way to be together, but one, one way that I think is working, at least for me, is this idea that, you know, using the relationship container as, as a mirror. So, you know, because that’s where you live with a person and, and, and so you are vulnerable and you’re like, you see all these different parts of you are, and then the other person is there to show you that.

Mm-hmm. And to help to say, okay, why did I get triggered? Why this, why that? And, and vice versa. But then you need two people that. Would like to emotionally mature enough.

Tomasso (2): Yeah. Which is, doesn’t mean being mature in other aspect of life. Like you can be very intelligent and all of that, but still be very emotionally mature and then Correct.

Like, it, it, it, it’s complicated and it’s such a complex thing to like, deal with, especially when people get defensive and avoidant about it.

Giancarlo: Yeah. Also because to the emotional immature person, when the partner, the romantic partner shows some [00:38:00] vulnerability, that person can feel threatened because of a denial of their own

Tomasso: Yeah.

Vulnerability. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Giancarlo: And so, so, so, yeah. I, I, I hear you. But so that was amazing that then you took the bull by the horn and say, let’s break this thing down and see all these different parts. Yeah. But so how, how many session do you think you did? And this is a process that now finished or it’s ongoing?

I’m still

Tomasso (2): ongoing and like. It just changed so much of my identity and who I am, and I feel like now that it’s been maybe eight months, like it’s still ongoing, the process is moving and a lot of things on who I perceive to be kinda shifted and changed and I probably feel the most integrated that I’ve been.

Amazing maybe. Forever, but I, it’s not ended and I still, I can still feel something that is moving and developing and it’s the first time that I’m thinking of maybe changing a therapist and starting working with a guy. I worked a lot with a woman and I think something more is emerging that [00:39:00] is about like, masculinity and feeling it.

That is kinda like moving more in, in my way into, into my conscious. And I want to listen to it and still keep evolving because it’s been, it’s been a bless. In, in disguised in many terms, because I had to do this work, eventually it would’ve had to happen. And I’m glad it did because now I also like really changed the idea of what I want in a partner.

Like I don’t wanna end up being like kind of be the one that all have all these questions. I really want to like find someone that is capable of holding like vulnerability and so on. And I’m on the road to it. And I think like, and I mean so many beautiful things happen. I think I also like, thanks to that I probably now have the best relationship with my family that I had in.

So long because I was finally open to able to open up to them and talk about things that I haven’t done in ages. Like first time I had traumatic breakup. My, like, my parents struggled with me with my sexuality. I was, I didn’t really have any friends and I suppressed everything. And I think this time it came up like I felt [00:40:00] emotions that I, I thought I didn’t belong to who I was anymore, but they were suppressed for so long and they wanted to be heard and they wanted to come out.

And I, like, I just, you just have to go through it and feel it. And it’s uncomfortable, but there’s no other way to process outside feeling your emotions. And that’s the difficulty of it because like, I, I spent like three months in the winter in which like I felt my identity structure was having collapsing a sort of like breakdown while I was like guiding psychedelic sessions for work three, four times a week.

And it was a strange thing. I still look back at it now and I’m like, what the hell? Beautiful.

Giancarlo: Amazing, amazing. I’m so happy you shared this story, and I hope that it will touch some of our listener because, you know, we know that some people, when they hear the word subconscious, they feel, oh my God, let’s keep it locked, you know?

Yeah. They, they don’t want to open that Pandora box, and I understand because it’s not easy, but you know, like [00:41:00] young says, until you make the subconscious conscious, it’s gonna rule your life. Yeah. And you’re gonna call it fate.

Tomasso: Yeah.

Giancarlo: So it’s a little bit like, you know, going through life in autopilot or, or, or in, or, or at the wheel.

Yeah.

Tomasso (2): And, and I can, and these, and people don’t see that, like, normally people don’t see that, and I see like, friends that they’ve been in the same romantic relationship five times and they keep repeating it over and over again.

Giancarlo: But, and then, and then, but, so what do you think about, because, you know, I think there’s another confusion that I.

I’d love your help to clarify is that people think that, you know, expanded state, so psychedelic breath work can be healing. Mm-hmm. And, and, and you know what I would like, you know, my metaphor you know, Alan Wa says the psychedelic is I like the boat that take you on the other side of the river.

Mm-hmm. But then the journey continues on foot.

Tomasso: Yeah.

Giancarlo: Or another friend of mine, says that, you know, the psychedelic and expanded state, they show you [00:42:00] the lighthouse, which represent the connect itself, let’s say, or the authentic self or the so it it like show where it is, but then you still have to swim there.

Yeah. You know? Yeah. And you know, I’m a victim about that because for years, you know, we had this, my wife and I were this ayahuasca practice for maybe seven, eight years, very deep, like going two, three times to different places. And but then nobody ever told us, okay, now you keep on looking at the, at the lighthouse, but if you don’t start swimming, you keep on looking at it like a movie.

Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and, and, and then we discovered Gabor Mate. We had we met him for a documentary that we did. And and he says, listen, you know, the, the way to do to get to the lighthouse is, you know, through the body. So the body keeps the score and all this new, as you know group of psycho psychotherapist, author, you know, from Steven Borgess to Vander Coast, to Peter Levi to G mate.

This idea that [00:43:00] you know, the, the, the development trauma is not just a memory on your head, is actually a, a neurobiological wounds into your, into your nervous system.

Tomasso: Yeah. Yeah.

Giancarlo: And this idea that the wounds on your nervous system, it’s a bit counterintuitive because it’s the opposite, that no wounds on your skin, right.

A wound on your skin. You leave it alone and it it heals.

Tomasso: Yeah.

Giancarlo: The wound on the nervous system, it builds a scar that sort of like protect you maybe in your twenties, in your thirties, and it does protect you. But then. There is a moment where it becomes an obstacle, a hindrance to, to to to this full expression of who you are.

It’s like a break. Yeah. Right? Yeah. And so the idea is that, you know, to, to dissolve this scar, you need to feel it. You feel it, feel it, feel it and localize it in the body and, and familiarize yourself with this feeling. And, you know, gabo calls, calls it compassionate inquiry. So this inquiry into your scars, but with compassion, and I’m still struggling with it.

I’m still doing it. I’m still super self-critical, but, so [00:44:00] my question get a bit carried away. My question is that do you agree? I mean, what did you see from your. Clinical trial is, is the, is the expander stage enough for healing or we need something else?

Tomasso (2): So we definitely need something else to make it work in the long run.

Yeah. And the therapeutic support attached to psychedelics, I think it’s fundamental in order to make lasting change. Because otherwise people can have all this beautiful insights and they like get a, a lot on the moment out of it, but then they don’t crystallize into anything. And then just keep back to be who they were while you need to use something in order to like create your map, in order to develop to develop who you want to be further.

And it, I think it’s, it is a critical component and now it’s like given like the problems with pharmaceutical approvals of psychedelics and all of that is trying to be stripped down. And I, I think. In a way it’s a problem and I hope like that it’s gonna, like, even if it gets stripped down from a pharmaceutical approval process, the culture won’t lose it.

And it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t always [00:45:00] like it doesn’t always have to be this one-to-one restrictive therapy. It can be that it’s gonna be group therapy and like more community community oriented approaches. But it’s important to create something that will allow you to process and connect to other that have process what you’ve been through.

Giancarlo: Yeah. Yeah. You know, like when, when people, you know, from the term psychedelic assisted psychotherapy, everybody focus on the word psychedelic, but the important word is psychotherapy.

Tomasso: Yeah. Yeah.

Giancarlo: But so. So can you tell us a little bit about I saw you were, you spoke with this men’s magazine about talk therapy versus somatic therapy, Uhhuh.

Can you talk a little bit about that?

Tomasso: Yeah,

Tomasso (2): yeah. I like, and it’s a bit this disappointed. We discussed a bit that like there’s this a bit like difference and also dissatisfaction with like classic token therapists in a, in a lot of cases because why would, yeah, like they create, like they, they give you all this intellectual insights and for some people are useful and [00:46:00] they can be helpful and sometimes they, they can really like, make people change who they are, but at the same time can be a bit restrictive because people can have a very good understanding of of, of who they are and be very self-aware, but at the same time not being capable of changing their behaviors, their emotional reactions to them, because they don’t feel the emotions associated to it.

And that I, I relate to it a lot in, in, in, in, in my. In my, in, in my experience. And I remembered, like, I remember this point when I started like this process with therapy that like I had this conversation, which like my therapist was like, do you love yourself? And I was like, yeah. Like that’s, I don’t think that’s the problem.

Well, that even mean, yeah, maybe people even think that like, I do it too much and stuff like this. And she was like, but do you actually love the whole of yourself? Mm-hmm. And it then it started when it started to get cur like curious and like, she started to make me feel like different emotions associated to different parts of me.

And then when we had the vulnerability part that, that when is like, I [00:47:00] started to be like, oh, I’m not sure I wanna go there. Like, and I started to be a bit defensive. And then at that point through sessions that part came out. And this is what she said, that it was my. Self. That was like before I developed this whole social media world.

And that got stuck and exiled in inside the part of, of myself that prevented him to ever being heard. And I still knew intellectually that it was there, and I still could tell you all this beautiful story about me, like developing this identity and all of that. But I thought those emotions were gone, but they were suppressed.

Yes.

Tomasso (2): And when I started to feel them and I realized that it was a part of me that I really didn’t love and I really didn’t want to listen to, and I really thought it was weak, it was bad. It was like unlovable. And it was kind of, was made what I was made believe when I was young. And I, and I, I, I went through these experiences that were like complex to navigate when I, when I was a teenager.

And then I just thought, okay, that’s the part of me that I don’t wanna be seen. I don’t, and I, I, it, it can be loved. And that’s, and that’s it. And then when it came out, [00:48:00] like I think I. I had to really start to feel it and like re reconnect to it and through the feelings and then started to, to show love to this other part.

I, I slowly started to integrate it because otherwise, and then like I, I probably had to just projected it to my partners, which I kinda had this, this feeling of just kind of like, wanted to have a bit like younger partners and be this role of kind of having a, a guide and in life and all of that. And it was probably because I was just outsourcing the, the, the that feelings to, to other people.

Yeah. And yeah,

Giancarlo: but this is like, you know, you’re very clear. And, you know, you should share that. You should write a little book or something, not because you, the way you explain, it’s very clear and it’s rooted in, you know, your study in psychoanalysis and also nice psychotherapy and psychedelics. And I feel it could, you could help a lot of people because there’s some, you know, you had the mask of your social, social media.

I had the mask of, you know, the playboy that was [00:49:00] like my father who like brainwashed me. And, and you get stuck with this identity. You know, like when we started to start doing the ayahuasca with my, with my wife and I, then she would ask me, you know, I was completely in denial. I would, you know, I would meet people at ceremony and I was like, okay, why are you here?

You know? And I was like, oh, you know. My wife had a difficult childhood, and she did. I’m here just to accompany her. I just like the high in the morning. It’s like, but then as we went deeper, I felt that I needed even more than her because my stuff was more hidden and, and, and, suppress. Yeah.

Tomasso: Yeah, yeah.

And,

Giancarlo: and and you know, I remember she would, she would ask me, so how do you feel? And I was like, what kind of question? I’m not cold, I’m not hot, I’m not hungry, I’m not holy. I mean, it’s like, it was really basic, right?

Tomasso: Yeah.

Giancarlo: Yeah. And okay, that’s an

Tomasso (2): exaggeration, but you know how many people we know. But I agree.

I agree. I, I, I thought I didn’t need psychotherapy because I’ve done enough for with myself that I did in a way, but not that type of work. And I just saw that like I was [00:50:00] resolved enough to not need that. Yeah. And a lot of people think that way. Like in my, in my, my previous relationship was definitely sorted in that way, in both parties.

And like if I didn’t have the awareness that I have for this work and not just like, work in mental health, I’m not sure I would’ve had the courage to see that because I was, at the end of the day, high, high functioning and exactly. That’s like a lot of people are, and society

Giancarlo: give you the signals that if you have a good job and everything’s fine.

Tomasso (2): Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah, it’s not true. It’s not true. Like you see that in like so many men, like especially our generation, that they might have this very high career and success, but then they’re narciss terrible partners, terrible parents, terrible partners, the terrible parents, and they end up just like ended up with three divorces in their life and stuff like this and cheating and like creating massive issues around them.

And they still sing is not about them. Yeah. Yeah.

Giancarlo: And, and, and, and, and even more. You know, like the Western, you know, mental health, medical system diagnose [00:51:00] all these ailments like bipolar B, bipolar, bipolar two, bipolar three, A, DD. And sometimes, you know, one of these documentary I have on Mango TV is called Crazy Wisdom.

And it’s a parallel between, you know, people that in the west would consider bipolar. People that have strong emotion, feel a lot in some indigenous country, indigenous culture. They’re considered the elder. Mm-hmm. They’re like people that, like, they feel they, they’re like channeled with the divine, but in our culture we want to lock them in a psychiatric clinic.

You know, we have all this label and all this, you know, this is a bit of a generalization, especially to a scientist like you, but some of these medicines, some of these prescription drugs, they’re pretty like sedative. They

Tomasso: are. They mask the symptoms. They are, they are.

Giancarlo: So we live in a culture where.

Narcissism is like glorified and, and, and sensitivity is sedated. And so what are, what, what’s going, where are we going? Are you optimistic about the future of [00:52:00] this or I don’t know, but look at you. I mean, there’s a young man like you that is now, you know, in, in, in this psychedelic center with me telling everybody about your personal story.

Imagine how many, you know, it’s, you are a good news.

Tomasso (2): Yeah. I mean, at least I like to tell myself that. And there’s like an element of just I want to build something meaningful. I want to keep doing this. And I think it’s possible. And listen, like I like. Five, like 10, seven years ago. Like if you would told me like where I would’ve been, I would’ve never believed it was so alien with who I was back then that I could not like see that.

And again, like my, my, my old belief system that I had like a year ago, I think it’s been at least like to update it to like seven 60, 70% of it. I have very different ideas about the world, about who I was, about my emotions, and I want to keep evolving. I think that if. Anything that I, I hope I will keep doing.

It’s like I will just keep learning [00:53:00] and evolving and have no final form in a way to the point that sometimes it’s uncomfortable because like what I was, what I went through and like the, the over the winter was extremely uncomfortable. And I wish I didn’t have to go through it and I wish I just didn’t.

Like I, I just didn’t have to feel all that stuff. But now that I can look at it from a more analytical perspective, from the outside, I think that was just the purpose of it. Yeah. And yeah, but it, it, it’s hard and if, if we don’t have strong cultural containers like I do because I work in a center around with people that they understand this and like I was held like a baby by most of my friends and colleagues, like when I went through this and it was.

Amazing because I was capable to process a lot of stuff that, like I never had the chance to process when I was young because my friends weren’t supportive. No one knew about my sexual identity. My, I had problems with my parents. So when you are there, you can just suppress because it’s functioning, because it’s the only way you can go through life.

And I’m glad this time I, I, I had [00:54:00] the, the chance to actually feel things.

Giancarlo: Yeah. That’s an important point. Right. So you had your friends and colleague to help your processing. And my wife and I, we had Ibiza, you know, they say in Ibiza is a place where people are in a constant state of process, and that’s why it was so nourishing and supportive, you know?

Yeah. If, if you don’t, if you’re not interested in a process, then it might feel alien, but you know, what you find in your microcosm of Imperial College is what that we found in Ibiza. But, so what advice do you have for people that cannot be in Ibiza or cannot be at Imperial? You know, it’s, it’s because that’s what I think what is missing, you know, just, just if you allow me to share, you know, I had this 20 years of, of, of addiction, of cannabis addiction, and then I started seven years ayahuasca practice, but still, I couldn’t kick the addiction, you know, it was more manageable, it was more intermittent.

Then I went to rehab and that gave me some tools into the therapy together with the expanded state. [00:55:00] But still, it was better. It was one year sobriety, but it was still a, a series of sleep relapse. Sleep relapse. What really brought me sobriety was the community. Yeah, yeah. What you found at Imperia, what I found in, in the north of Ibiza.

But, so yeah. Two questions. People around you, your friends, your peers do you feel that there is more and more curiosity for the inner work, the inner landscape exploration? You know, I, I was so pleased to hear you talking with so much curiosity and enthusiasm about this, the inner landscape exploration.

I mean, there’s nothing more interesting than that landscape, right? Yeah, yeah. But. We agree. Yeah. But do you feel around you, there’s more and more of that first question and second question for people that are looking at that, but don’t have the like-minded people around them, what recommendation do you have?

Tomasso (2): Yeah, like both difficult questions and I, I like [00:56:00] to say yes to the first question that people around like me, they have like more and more awareness of like the inner work and what they need to do and and all and, and all of that. Which it, it definitely acts as a catalyst to like, go more into the, in exploring the inner landscape, which I don’t think can only be done with psychedelics, like in, in ultra states because you can easily avoid things that you don’t wanna look at if you become skilled enough to do so.

And but how

Giancarlo: so? How so?

Tomasso (2): I’m not sure how it happens, but I think like a lot of people, like in the psychedelic world just do a lot of psychedelics and they don’t like, they can easily avoid, they

Giancarlo: reinforce their shadow rather than dis them.

Tomasso (2): Yeah. Yeah. And really avoid the things they don’t, they don’t want to look at.

That’s so true. And you can become very skilled at doing that, especially when the dose is not too high to just take you completely over. And like I think there is the interest. I still live in a bubble because I like a lot of my friends. Are like, is fascinated by these things. And if, if you look outside it’s like a bit more [00:57:00] complicated.

I think the culture is more open to, to that it’s still complex because like the therapy is not like eating, like, it is not like, like therapy is not like popping a pill and the pill, it might have a relatively reliable effect on you. Like you need to find a skilled therapist. Yeah, you need to find someone that you connect with, that your belief systems are connecting with, that you could develop a relationship.

But then the the work starts at starts there and it is not easy. And sometimes you just end up having a bad experience with someone that is not really teaching you anything useful and you end up thinking the therapy is bad, but it’s not. You just were likely working with a shitty therapist or maybe someone that is not compatible to you.

And I think that’s a lot of of, of what can happen around around us. These days and then find community. Like just really try to find people that you just, they’re not just acquaintances, they’re like true friends. Like there is this like quote from Esther Perel that she has this famous couples therapist and she’s saying that in this, in this war we have a million friends to text with [00:58:00] and we go to parties with, but yet we have no one that would feed our cat or our dog if we need, so, and that’s so true, and I think it’s important to develop friendships that will actually help you and be there for you if you need them.

Giancarlo: How do you do that? Through, through common interest?

Tomasso (2): Yeah. I would say so. Common interest, like quality time together and investing on investing time and investing it on the other person. Just don’t, don’t be like polemic about relationships and friendships and just thinking, oh, I still want to have new, new, new, new, new.

And it’s fine. Like, curiosity is fine. I have like, I have so many friends in London that I really struggled to see them because I, I have, at this point, I have too many and I don’t, like, they’re not all in the same group and I still need to spend mostly one, like one-to-one or like a few little group time.

And so it becomes very difficult to like develop these things in a way that is meaningful outside my strict work circle. But I know I could. And there is like, and I, there’s a beauty to it. So

Giancarlo: what [00:59:00] do you think about, you know, people go actually living together, you know, like a group of, I don’t know, 7, 8, 9, 10 in a big house.

Yeah. One kitchen. What do you think about communal living?

Tomasso (2): Like I think it’s, it, it can be nice and it can, it can give people a strong sense of community. The problem is of course, that living with people is complicated. Yeah. And especially if the spaces are not big, like I’m thinking about like student accommodations and stuff like this in which you live like in eight, nine, around, and there’s, there’s beauty to it, but there’s was always a lot of drama that I’m kinda happy to not have it in my life anymore.

But that was also not too intentional. You were living with people that you were just paired with by the university. Yeah. So I don’t know. Like I think there could be a beauty to it and especially when you have like if, if and if is not like the right, like the house Exactly. Like I assume and the right people.

Yeah. Living in a place like Ibiza where you are, where there’s this strong sense of community sometimes, like, you might not live with other people, but they might be your neighbor and people around and you meet every night for dinners and [01:00:00] stuff like this. And that’s beautiful.

Giancarlo: Yeah. Because. It could also be if you have the right team that everybody is in there for with this idea to grow, then you know, the drama that you mentioned can actually be opportunity for growth.

Tomasso: Yeah.

Giancarlo: Yeah, I had this I mentioned him already. This is the second time I mentioned him already. Swan it did all this degree and he had studied so much, but then he says the most. Nourishing experience in term of understanding himself. And the human condition was living with seven people in this house, in, in Canada.

Because you know, it’s, when you see friends socially for dinner, it’s like you’re on your best behavior, you’re in a good mood, otherwise, you know, go out. But when you live together, then, then you see the shadows and, but then when you see the shadows, then you can address them, you

Tomasso: know? Yeah.

Giancarlo: So, so yeah, I’m a little bit like hypocrite about that because I’m a big fan of community, but I’m very happy in my house.

But I’m fascinating about all these intentional [01:01:00] community, you know, like Dam Hu, Tamara, PAMA, Orville, I dunno if you hor because I feel that, you know, if there’s gonna be a new model. To, to, to live together. It would come from this like, you know experiment on the ground. Yeah. It’s not gonna come from academia.

Yeah.

Tomasso: Yeah.

Giancarlo: And, and they’re all like different, you know, like Damman, who they want to keep the entrepreneurial spirit and they’re inviting people outside, you know, from terrain, from outside of Manu to go and maybe invest on, you know, a gym or a nightclub. And, you know, they, they want to integrate the entrepreneurial spirit, but also with the, with the, with sharing of the intention of, of, you know, this incredible like temple that they dig to the Alps.

Do you know about that? Man? I’ve seen, I’ve seen,

Tomasso: yeah.

Giancarlo: And then, you know, Tamara and. You know, it’s, it’s it’s an interesting model, but, so why was I going there? Ah, yeah. About community. Yes. Because I feel that the third pillar, you know, we discussed the expanded state, we discussed the somatic [01:02:00] therapy, but then I feel that the third pillar of this therapeutic method, if you want, is community.

Yeah. This is very important. Okay. Listen, thank you very much. It’s, we, we passed an hour. Tell me about the future a little bit. You tell, you told me a lot about the past. Yeah. Yeah. So what do you. How do you, where do you want to see you in 5, 10, 15, 20 years? Is it too much to ask? Yeah, I have so

Tomasso (2): many Ts and okay, great.

Let’s, let’s listen to some of them. Yeah. I mean, where I am now, I’m like, I just like finished data collection on like this new imaging study that I did with Chris Erman for the five mil. For the five mil d mt. Okay. Tell me a bit

Giancarlo: about that because I don’t know anything about the five ME. Okay. I know about the DMT.

Yeah, yeah, because I, I volunteered the entities, but FIO is a total different Yeah, yeah. Maybe explain a little bit of difference. Yeah.

Tomasso (2): Yeah. I think like FIO is the compounded like most reliably induced ego solution states without necessarily much content about it. It’s like it creates this profound rupture of your self identity in which people at the peak, they [01:03:00] feel they have no identity, they have no body.

There is no time, there is no space. And like. Some people call this like, yeah, this kind like the pinnacle of a mystical experience of like just dissolving who you are and there’s not much visual content about about this drug. It’s white light. Yeah. Yeah. We are, we are studying this especially to understand the neural correlates of the ego dissolution experience and what happens and what comes in when your self identity goes away, which was already been studied with psychedelics.

But I think FEO is a pretty clean molecule to understand those dynamics. And we now finished data collection and I’m starting analyzing the data, which is gonna take months because like all like understanding and like making sense of the brain imaging data to a point in which like they are. Like something that you can see with colors and shapes, take months of work.

Mm-hmm. And that’s where maybe I am at. And on the other side, I’m still like collecting like data on psychedelics and romantic relationships. I have this study ongoing that is the [01:04:00] largest database on couples s taking psychedelics Ah, yeah. Or MBA together.

Giancarlo: Yeah.

Tomasso (2): And yeah,

Giancarlo: I think we participate in that one with MDMA.

Tomasso (2): Oh, nice. Yeah. Nice. Which is still open on the Imperial College website if anyone wants to join on that study. We study like the quality of the relationship for a few months after the experience in terms of an intimacy, emotional connection, sexual satisfaction, and so forth and so on to see the impact of these drugs in DIC context.

We also have this other study in which we’re giving people DMT at the same time or placebo, and then we are studying the possible brain synchrony mm-hmm. After the study and see if there’s an enhancement of social connectedness between strangers and if this, it has a neural correlates in the brain.

Giancarlo: Interesting. Interesting. But, so when you say have lots of ideas, what kind,

Tomasso (2): what kind of ideas? I don’t know. A part of me wants to stay in academia and just becoming like a neuroscientist and keep being in that root. I’m also

Giancarlo: neuropsychopharmacology. Yeah, yeah,

Tomasso (2): yeah. And I’m, I’m also very interested in psychotherapy, as you can see.

And [01:05:00] there’s a part of me that is like, should I actually train in psychotherapy? And it’s just it’s, it, it’s, it’s another job. And there are people that are both, and it just requires, like still delaying the reward for a few years more, which I’m not sure if I wanna do, I’m thinking about it and I want to see if there’s a way to, to do that,

Giancarlo: but in the future, there’s gonna be degree in psychedelic psychotherapy.

Yeah.

Tomasso (2): Yeah.

Giancarlo: Because now it’s other neuroscience or. Psychotherapy. Psychotherapy,

Tomasso (2): yeah. And you can’t really work with psychedelics like on outside specific context, but like there’s no accreditation to be a psychedelic therapist because these drugs are still illegal. Still illegal, so, yeah.

Giancarlo: But, so, so how, how, how do you see the legality evolving in the next few years?

Can you comment on what happened with maps recently in America? Yeah.

Tomasso (2): Like, I really hope like the next one in, in on, on on the development pathway is Compass Pathways, which psilocybin for treatment resistant depression that is now supposed to give out phase three results. And if those are positive, they will go and try [01:06:00] to get approval from the F FDA again when, when

Giancarlo: they’re gonna publish these

Tomasso (2): results.

Like they, they should announce them around the summer Uhhuh and something like that. And then if everything goes moved, maybe in two years, psilocybin could be approved in America for treatment resistant depression. I really hope Compass is going to make it. And so maybe m will be approved before MDMA at this point?

Yeah, I think at this point it might be. Oh wow. I think they might be, and what happens with maps was very complex and like decision that I still fully have to grasp my head around it, but definitely delayed a lot of what we were expecting to happen. And now psilocybin with Compass as the first in the line to possibly approved.

Giancarlo: And also back lay is doing yeah. Five

Tomasso (2): MDMT

Giancarlo: and mushroom also, or No,

Tomasso (2): they’re mainly doing five MDMT and I think they acquired some IV formulation of

Giancarlo: psilocybin. I see. Okay. So, but if you had like the magic wands, because you said that the want to delay the rewards, the rewards meaning to be an accredited professor.

Tomasso (2): Yeah. Like if I wanna stay like in [01:07:00] academia and be a postdoc and develop in that direction, yeah. Be fully a scientist is different. If I now take like more added more three years of like training that I still, I will still be paid, but not as much as I see. I guess just there’s an element of like where I want my career to go, but then like I’m like, maybe in 10 years I just wanna work with people and I don’t wanna work with data anymore.

Nice. And maybe I want to do a bit, a bit of both and then it might have that I need to do it now instead of like. That’s such a good,

Giancarlo: that’s such a, such a good line. Do you prefer to work with data or with people? I don’t know.

Tomasso (2): I dunno. Combination. I think you need both to make theories. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And I, I love both. I get sick of both. So it’s, it’s like maybe you just need to find a balance out of it.

Giancarlo: But then they, then, then there is, there is your communication skills. So what, what is your social media going at this point? Which, which in which platform you’re the most popular?

Tomasso (2): Instagram and LinkedIn.

Yeah. And I just started to build it up. Again, and now, like on Instagram, I kind of blended my previous following with like the [01:08:00] new, the new following, which it’s like a mix of people that wants to see me talking in a, a mix of people that wants to see me shirtless. Which is kind of funny

Giancarlo: because that was a little bit what you were doing when you were in fashion.

Yeah. It was a little bit of a short list. Yeah. Yeah,

Tomasso: yeah,

Giancarlo: yeah. But don’t underestimate the communication, the access you have. Yeah. For being so desirable. Short list.

Okay. So, okay, let’s tell people if people want to know more about your work, know more about participating some of the, of the trial, give us a little bit of websites Yeah. And handles that we put on the show notes.

Tomasso (2): Yeah. I think the best to read about like psychedelic research and also updates on it.

I do a lot of science communication for the general public interest is LinkedIn. Mm-hmm. And like Tobar, which UMN one s. And it’s similar name on Instagram where I also do a lot of like pub public talks. And it’s more personal take of my life probably that I have there over the [01:09:00] LinkedIn one, as it should be.

And I don’t wanna compromise on that. Like, I don’t want Instagram to become my second LinkedIn. Mm-hmm. And I’m committed to that.

Giancarlo: And, and where people can sign up for the couple yeah, it’s on,

Tomasso (2): College, website, college, and then you go and search for research studies, online surveys, and then you will find a couple’s one there.

Giancarlo: But so how, how does it work? People take the medicine on their own. Yeah. But which one do you recommend for couple Exploration? I think

Tomasso (2): we don’t know. We haven’t looked like, we dunno about the data. Like I think psilocybin and or LSD versus MDMA are different experiences, but we have no data to see which one is better at developing like long-term relationship satisfaction in a way.

And it doesn’t always work. Be careful. They’re very powerful tools and yeah. But you don’t, guys don’t recommend the dosage? No, no, no. People need to like, decide on themselves. We just, they just need to pick a date and then the system will send them questionnaire. We give them advice on what to do.

So how to like, prepare for the experience to how to integrate experience. Like what’s, like [01:10:00] some they will have advice on that, but not on the exact dose because the people Yeah, it’s kind of like we cannot really.

Giancarlo: Yeah. I mean for, for my wife and I we credit our long lasting marriage because of this MDM session we would do every couple of years uhhuh, but very simple reason that the things you’re able to share.

Under MDMA, it’s very hard to share without. Yeah. You know, so, or, or rather some of the things that you’re able to share it really open your hearts and it give you this, I, you know, you see conflict from the other point, point of view Yeah. For the other person’s point of view. Yeah.

Tomasso: Yeah.

Giancarlo: So you can imagine how powerful that can be.

Yeah. And someone told me that in MDMA was legal in Dallas in the eighties or something, and, and, and, and the therapist would say, don’t get married under it. Yeah. Yeah. Don’t make life decision. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Listen, this has [01:11:00] been great. Is there anything else you want to discuss or address? No.

Tomasso (2): No.

Okay. I think it was a really beautiful conversation. Beautiful, beautiful.

Giancarlo: I’m very, I’m very grateful for the, for your, your vulnerability. And so we’ll check, you know, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll do that again in a couple of years and see where you are. Yeah. Deal. It’ll be amazing. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.