Cannabis, Condoms, and Psilocybin: Session 118 with Matt Johnson

You may recall that a few months back, I interviewed Dr. David Cox (@davidjcox_). In our discussion, we spent a fair amount of time talking about the literature on the use of psychedelics for the treatment of a variety of behavioral and mental health challenges.

I recently got the opportunity to extend this conversation with Dr. Matthew Johnson (@Drug_Researcher). Matt Johnson is a Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at John Hopkins University, and he's been a leading figure in this area of research for over 15 years. His expertise in this area is so well regarded that he's been sought out by media outlets such as (takes deep breath):

The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Globe and Mail, Daily Mail, USA Today, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, Denver Post, Baltimore Sun, CNN, CBS News, NBC News, The Atlantic, Newsweek, Vanity Fair, Marie Claire, Vogue, Whole Living, The Washingtonian, Scientific American, Nature, Vice, Insider, Inverse, Healthline, Psychology Today

(pause to inhale...)

60 Minutes, CNN's Wolf Blitzer Situation Room, Fox Business News' Kennedy, the Dr. Oz Show, PBS' Retro Report, Labyrint (television show in the Netherlands), Spectrum News NY1, the BBC World Service, NPR's Morning Edition, NPR's Kojo Nnamdi Show, New Zealand Radio, and Newstalk Radio Ireland... just to name a few.

Matt has also been featured in a special episode of The Tim Ferriss Show on this very topic. As such, I'm a little more than humbled to chat with him on Behavioral Observations!

In our chat, we did a quick overview of Delay Discounting, talked about decision making with condom usage, and the behavioral economics of cannabis. As an aside, we've done quite a few shows on Behavioral Economics. Here's a quick list of them if you want to get really up to speed:

• Session 17, A Behavioral Economics Primer, Derek Reed.
• Session 114, The Behavioral Economics of Toilet Paper, Derek Reed.
• The aforementioned David Cox episode.
• Session 11: Obesity, Food Insecurity, Behavioral Economics, and Mindful Eating, Erin Rasmussen.
• Session 2: Science and Pseudoscience, Steve Lawyer.

Back to this show, Matt and I spent a large part of our chat discussing his groundbreaking work in the area of psychedelics. We really get into the weeds, as it were, of how these studies are done, and discuss everything from recruiting participants, the timing of these trips, how participants are supported through their experiences, bad trips, transformative experiences, hypothesized mechanisms of action, what these treatments will look like in five years, and much, much more.

And before I forget, here are some links to additional readings that we referenced:

• MacCorquodale and Meehl (1948). Article on Hypothetical Constructs.
• Rasmussen and Newland (2009). Quantification of the Anti-Punishment Effect in Humans Using the Generalized Matching Equation.
• Hopkinspsychedelic.org, a clearing house of all the cool research that's being done at JHU.

We close with a fun discussion of the concept of impulsivity. In Matt's view, as a psychological construct, the term isn't very useful, and we get into how he came to that conclusion.

This episode is brought to you by:

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• Behavior University. Their mission is to provide university quality professional development for the busy Behavior Analyst. Learn about their CEU offerings and podcast-specific discounts over at behavioruniversity.com/observations.
• Lastly, I'd like to mention something I don't bring up all that frequently. I have a membership program for the podcast; think of it as a DIY Patreon… It's been running for a few years now, and it costs the princely sum of $9/month. Members get access to a private FB group in which they are able to get nearly instantaneous access to the videos of these podcast interviews. The best part is that members get the raw feed. That means no ads, and none of the introductory comments. You just get right to the interview.

  Another cool thing we do is hold Zoom Hangouts with former guests. We do this about 6 times a year, and it works like this: we schedule a Zoom call, a former guest comes on and joins us, and the members have the opportunity to ask them questions directly.