Open Your Mind – How Psychedelics Can Cure Mental Health Issues & Make You Happy with Christian Angermayer, Founder, Apeiron Investment Group.
Moderated by Kara Swisher, Host, Sway.
MODERATOR
SPEAKER
Christian Angermayer
Founder
Apeiron Investment Group
Kara Swisher
Host
Sway
TIMESTAMPS
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Kara Swisher: (00:00)
Hi everybody. So for the final session of the day, we're going to talk about drugs, which is, I think, welcome. So this is actually a topic a lot of people laugh about the issues of psychedelics and it's very San Francisco. And I'll just say my background, I've been talking to tech billionaires about psychedelics for years, because a lot of them are interested in it. They're investing in it. They take them, they think they're important, but now it's sort of created a shift now into being a real business, sort of following the weed becoming an industry and stuff like that. So, Christian, why don't you talk a little bit about what you're doing, because I'd like to start talking about, before we talk about the actual which ones do what, and where the promising parts are, talk about the business of it first.
Christian Angermayer: (00:50)
Okay. Hello, everybody pleasure to be here. So in my day job, that's not a topic. I'm just saying it because I read that's the subtitle. I'm running my own family office, Apeiron. We do investing companies. But once in a while, when we have an original idea nobody else ever had, we start companies and we did start a company, which is in meantime, listed on NASDAQ, which is called ATAI Life Sciences. And ATAI is actually working on bringing various psychedelic substances back from sort of the illegal realm, where they are now, into the medical world, as a treatment for various mental health issues.
Kara Swisher: (01:28)
And so the idea is many of these drugs from LSD to ketamine to mescalin.
Christian Angermayer: (01:36)
[crosstalk 00:01:36].
Kara Swisher: (01:36)
All kinds of things have been mostly sidelined because they're considered class one drugs, correct? In the United States, at least that's the case. And during the seventies, they were sort of demonized in a lot of ways. And it was sort of counter cultural, the Nixon administration cracked down on them, and it's been going on like that for many years. Now, many of them are getting big investments from different people. So talk about your investors. So people an idea of who's making these investments.
Christian Angermayer: (02:02)
Well, in the meantime, we're listed, so everybody can be an investor, but I'm the founder. I also was the guy who put in the first money because back then most people said I'm insane. Literally. But I had several early stage investors, Peter Thiel, Mike Novogratz, Louis Bacon, [inaudible 00:02:22], and some other us who really very early when we did our first rounds, trusted in the topic and me and so far so good.
Kara Swisher: (02:31)
So what do you think they're seeing here? A big business? They like to get high? What? I'm teasing.
Christian Angermayer: (02:38)
I think first of all, it's a very short period that these drugs have been or are still illegal. Actually, if you look at human history, these drugs, most of them, the nature ones, because some are synthetic now, but the nature ones are used since thousands of years. Actually, it's a super interesting topic. Too much for today. But most religions and a friend of mine, I can promote the book because it's amazing, The Immortality Key, he has proven, Brian Muraresku, that most religions, including Christianity are based on psychedelic consumption. So this is a long, psychedelics are you could even say the foundation partly of human civilization. There was the famous cult of Demeter in Greece where all the philosophers went to and Plato is writing in one of his philosophical books that all of his philosophical ideas, which our Western world partly is built on, he got during the Eleusinian Mysteries, which were a psychedelic cult, ergot and magic mushrooms. So it was out there for long.
Christian Angermayer: (03:38)
And then the only short period was in the sixties and seventies, when two things happened. First of all, great, some of these drugs had been actually, which gives me and gave my investors the confidence that we are on the right track, some of these drugs had been used in the fifties and sixties as medication. For example, psilocybin, the ingredient in magic mushrooms-
Kara Swisher: (03:59)
Magic mushrooms.
Christian Angermayer: (03:59)
The active, yeah, was by Sandoz, actually, a famous Swiss pharma brand. And it all went fine until it practically got a little bit occupied, I would say, taken over, in a nice way actually, by the hippies, nobody cared, by the way.
Kara Swisher: (04:13)
Timothy Leary and others.
Christian Angermayer: (04:15)
At the beginning though, and I want to point it out, which shows where the sort of laugh of the hippie movement came from, because sort of they did the good stuff. They did sort of LSD, magic mushrooms, cannabis, which makes you, I always say, a better human being. And it was legal or at least medically legal. And then the sin fall of politics came when the hippie generation became political, went against the Vietnam war. So they were looking at the politics at the time. Politicians at the time were looking at them and were like, how can we paint them bad? What's a bad spin we can put on them? Oh, look at them. They're taking that stuff, which is technically illegal outside the hospital. It was legal and they started faking stuff, the government, like putting all these wrong stories out.
Christian Angermayer: (05:04)
It makes you crazy. Why? Because they could say, you must be crazy if you're going against the Vietnam war, if you're going against the establishment. And sadly, back then mental health was not, or thanks God and sadly now it's a big thing, but back then, mental health was not a big thing. So this was a niche disease while it's now the biggest sort problem of our system. So nobody sort of fought for it. It's just happened.
Kara Swisher: (05:31)
Right and what came in their place, which is interesting, there's a very good book out. I just did a podcast with Michael Pollan, who's written two books. One is called Changing Your Mind, which was about this idea of psychedelic use. And the second one is the one he just put out and it's more about three drugs, coffee, peyote, masculine, and opium itself. And he was writing about sort of the history of all three of them. People don't realize coffee is one of the biggest psychotropic drugs that is everyone is addicted on the planet to it, but it's a useful drug because it gets people to work, stops people being drunk at work, which was the way a lot of people were, et cetera. And so we used psychotropics in lots of different ways and we don't think about it. But one of the things that was interesting to me was how drugs go in and out of favor.
Kara Swisher: (06:17)
And one of the things, when he was talking about the opium issues, he was trying to grow opium because he wanted to see, but it actually it's legal to grow poppies if you don't know you're growing them, because they're drugs. It's all these weird laws are going in. And so he did a story that he couldn't publish in a magazine, in Harper's I think many years ago and because if he wrote that he knew what he was doing and making tea from it, he could be arrested and have all his property taken away from him, which was astonishing. Meanwhile, miles away from him, the big pharma was creating, I'm blanking on that name of the company.
Christian Angermayer: (06:57)
Oxycontin.
Kara Swisher: (06:58)
Oxycontin, right, exactly.
Christian Angermayer: (06:59)
The Sacklers. Horrible.
Kara Swisher: (07:01)
Creating Oxycontin. And so opiates took over and that's how they began treating these illnesses. And so that became fully legal and much abused while psychedelics were put into the penalty box of illegal drugs.
Christian Angermayer: (07:15)
So there are many theories. Honestly, sometimes I think mistakes happen in history. So there's another theory, which says, if you look at human history in times of where you needed labor, governments, this meaning thousands of years, were favoring alcohol and nicotine and stuff like that because it makes you fall in line and somehow still work. And in times when you have enough human labor, you allow people more to explore their mind and check out. So that's another, when you look over the history. I think it just was like a political scam and like it worked. Unfortunately nobody fought for it. And anyway, we're here now and we turning it back.
Kara Swisher: (07:58)
Yeah. So here on now with opiates under siege and very dangerous for people to use, to abuse, the Sacklers are in a lot of trouble, refusing to pay, but eventually we'll be paying quite a price for that.
Christian Angermayer: (08:11)
Hopefully.
Kara Swisher: (08:11)
And the governments who allowed it and everybody else. So it caused all this sort of a public health crisis in that way. So talk a little bit about what brought these other drugs back? I remember early on when I'm covering Silicon Valley people, I was joking about it, but they really were every week I was offered either come do ayahuasca with me. Wouldn't you like to do mushrooms? Would you like to do LSD? My answer was always, "No, I don't even want to have coffee with you. So no." But it was really interesting because at first it was a mind exploring kind of thing. Now it's moved to a different thing. There's all these studies going on at John's Hopkins and different places. Talk a little bit of how it moved to trials in order to treat things, then we'll talk about what it's treating because this is a very big business as far as I can tell.
Christian Angermayer: (08:56)
So what I'm very, very proud of, so we did not invent it, but we reinvented the business. We were literally in this millennia, the first one. I had a personal trip in a country where it's legal in 2014. And back then it was not even a topic in Silicon Valley. So none of my friends had ever taken it. This was maybe I had friends who were really hippies, it was 2014, was very early. And it was definitely not a business topic because even then to the years after, when I talked to some Silicon Valley folks who did it, they were like, but it's never going to, it's not possible to bring these drugs back. And my first trip and then the ones to follow in a country where it's legal were hands down, the single most important thing I've ever done in my whole life. Full stop.
Christian Angermayer: (09:44)
Nothing comes close to it. And because I'm an entrepreneur, I actually already, after the first trip, literally the next day, I was like, okay, holy shit. If it's giving this amount of positivity to me and I was always a very happy person. So I had the luck and didn't come to the topic by searching for something. I actually did not want to do it. For a year, I was like, no. I've never drank an alcohol in my whole life ever. I've never smoked weed. I've never took anything else than 2014. And coffee. Indeed I had coffee, I ate sugar. But everything else I didn't do because I was so happy growing up. I was okay, I'm happy, I'm not dumb, I think I have the genetic jackpot because a lot of other people are not happy. Anyway, I took it, was blown away by the positivity it even added to me. And I was like, okay, this needs to be medically available again. That was for me the clear entrepreneurial impetus and this led then ultimately to the-
Kara Swisher: (10:45)
Usually it's because people are just taking it themselves. They're only doing it themselves and it's not the whole idea of it being either guided or medically prescribed by qualified people now. And many of these drugs are not addictive. Most of them are not addictive.
Christian Angermayer: (11:02)
All. Actually all of them.
Kara Swisher: (11:03)
All of them?
Christian Angermayer: (11:04)
All psychedelics are not addictive. They are even dissolving addiction. So all psychedelics have an addiction dissolving ability. The strongest one, which we also advance in clinical trials is called Ibogaine. And Ibogaine has a high potential in the first clinical studies we're doing to even cure opioid addiction, which is the strongest. Opioids, on the scale, psychedelics, non addictive. Opioids, extremely addictive. This is the whole problem here. And the only drug known, which shows this potential to cure opioid addiction is Ibogaine.
Kara Swisher: (11:43)
All right. So let's go through them. Let's go through the best known ones and where they are in terms of trials and creating businesses. I've noticed recently and I'm having the code conference next two weeks from now, one whole day is going to be about this. We're going to do one whole day about all these psychotropic drug companies that are coming up and things like that, including some mind ones that are not drug related, but they're doing all these different things, technical things with your brains, wearing helmets, all kinds of different things. But one of the things that interested me was a company called Field Trip, which is setting up clinics that you go to.
Kara Swisher: (12:17)
Now, there's not many of those right now, but let's talk about where each of the drugs first is and then what are the businesses that fall off of them? Because you've seen the weed business grow quite a lot, even though it's up and down, up and down largely because it's not federally mandated here, for example. So let's start with the very simple one, which is psilocybin. Mushrooms. So talk a little bit about where those are on the development scale to a commercial product.
Christian Angermayer: (12:43)
Yep. By the way, as a of a framework, because that's sort of it, you are completely right. It is not cannabis. It's completely different. This is not a consumer product. We want it to be a medical product. And because we, with ATAI and then we have a stake in a company called Compass Pathways, which is doing psilocybin, and we do all the rest, because we go through all these clinical trials, which are very expensive, we were able to get all the IP around these substances. So this is not a business where multiple companies will do these drugs.
Kara Swisher: (13:16)
Right. I mean, I was just in San Francisco and there are now cannabis shrimp chips.
Christian Angermayer: (13:25)
Exactly. And it's not going to happen.
Kara Swisher: (13:25)
They're disgusting. I tell you, but nonetheless, it's very consumer focused, it's very-
Christian Angermayer: (13:27)
This is medical trials. We want to make them approved like a medication.
Kara Swisher: (13:32)
And this will be medically treated through clinics and things?
Christian Angermayer: (13:35)
Exactly. So most we have some drugs where we might, and we have to see what comes out of the trials, but where we have the sort of, let's say justified hope, that there are one or two which could be used at home because we can modify the disassociative effect. For example, R-ketamine.
Kara Swisher: (13:51)
Which one?
Christian Angermayer: (13:53)
R-ketamine, which is a new version of ketamine. But overall amount or overall number of ATAI's drugs in development will be used or will just be allowed, and we want them just to be allowed-
Kara Swisher: (14:07)
For therapeutics.
Christian Angermayer: (14:08)
With therapists sitting next to you.
Kara Swisher: (14:09)
So if you have PTSD, depression?
Christian Angermayer: (14:12)
Anxiety, addiction, obesity, anorexia, name it. By the way, you can really name any and normally psychedelics work, but the important thing is because the trip itself, you go on a trip this is not like light, don't take it lightly. And the trip itself can be very challenging. I don't like the word bad trip because people come out and are potentially healed. But what happens a lot, all these mental health issues, you have them for a reason and one, it's various, but is trauma. There's let's call it the obvious trauma. A person was raped and knows it. A person was at war like a soldier and knows it.
Christian Angermayer: (14:53)
But trauma can be also something which hurt you deeply, but you don't even remember it. This can be a childhood thing in school and this comes up. But when you dissolve that trauma, the trip itself can be very challenging. Again, bad is the wrong word. It's challenging, but you come out healed. But during that process, you need somebody, not for medical reasons in terms of there's nothing your body does, but it's somebody, this is why psychotherapist, will the one doing it and then psychologists who literally this is where the word comes from, takes you on the trip and kill with you.
Kara Swisher: (15:24)
All right. So let's go through that. So psilocybin. That's the most popular that I can tell,
Christian Angermayer: (15:29)
Which is the ingredient in magic mushrooms and our company Compass Pathways will announce end of the year, phase two B data.
Kara Swisher: (15:37)
Phase?
Christian Angermayer: (15:38)
Two B. And for the ones who are not familiar with biotech, you have normally 1, 2, 3. So the final one, which needs to be still done is three and then it's approved. So they are some years away from approval, but not a lot. There's going to be two things.
Kara Swisher: (15:52)
And there's a lot different trials going on, correct?
Christian Angermayer: (15:53)
But all the trials for medical are just done by Compass.
Kara Swisher: (15:57)
Okay. So what will be the uses for psilocybin?
Christian Angermayer: (16:01)
Depression. So the trial is done for treatment resistant depression. But you then can do postmarketing studies and once a drug is approved, you can also use it for other stuff, obviously. So if the doctors have it available, then it's upon the therapist to say, "Oh, okay. It's approved to a treatment resistant depression. This is where I see the data. But I can use it for PTSD as well." And we going to do more studies, so there is several other studies Compass is doing in parallel to show also the use case for other-
Kara Swisher: (16:37)
But it's mostly around depression?
Christian Angermayer: (16:39)
The signature study, which is the approval study is around treatment resistant depression.
Kara Swisher: (16:43)
Of depression. As opposed to many other drugs people use to treat depression. And this would standardize the use of psilocybin, correct?
Christian Angermayer: (16:52)
You mean like-
Kara Swisher: (16:53)
Meaning we would know how much. Because one of the things I remember when I was talking to one of the people who were working on this, they said, "There's a lot of magic mushrooms in Berkeley." A lot of people in Berkeley, California, and it's so much so that it gets everywhere. The spores get everywhere that they have, they have the happiest squirrels ever in Berkeley, California. Go see, it's actually true.
Christian Angermayer: (17:15)
The regulator made it very clear, and it's also imperative, we talking about yes, mushrooms or psilocybin is originally in nature, magic mushrooms. But we synthesize it and it's the synthetic version of it because you need to dose it exactly. Everybody who done.
Kara Swisher: (17:32)
And it would be dosed via pill?
Christian Angermayer: (17:36)
Yes. Orally. Yeah.
Kara Swisher: (17:36)
Orally. Okay. All right. Next one. Ketamine.
Christian Angermayer: (17:39)
So ketamine, it's a very interesting story. There is an original ketamine, which is an anesthetic. So it's used as a tranquilizer.
Kara Swisher: (17:46)
For horses.
Christian Angermayer: (17:46)
No for humans.
Kara Swisher: (17:46)
I'm teasing.
Christian Angermayer: (17:49)
Yeah. Okay, good.
Kara Swisher: (17:50)
It's not some dewormer.
Christian Angermayer: (17:51)
It's also used for horses.
Kara Swisher: (17:51)
It is, it is.
Christian Angermayer: (17:53)
But because horses are so sensitive animals, not because it's actually a very-
Kara Swisher: (17:56)
You have to be careful talking about horse medicine these days, but go ahead.
Christian Angermayer: (18:00)
Exactly. This is why, so it's a human tranquilizer.
Kara Swisher: (18:04)
Yes it is. My brother's an anesthesiologist. He uses it all the time.
Christian Angermayer: (18:08)
Perfect. And then anecdotally doctors found out that patients who took it because they were in the emergency room or whatever that they reported and who were depressive or even had tried to kill themselves and this is why they were in the emergency room, came back the next day or wake up and they were like, oh my God, I'm happy.
Christian Angermayer: (18:26)
Why did I try to kill myself? Life is awesome. Anecdotally, we found out about the antidepressant effect of ketamine. What is then very sad, which also shows one of my favorite topics, controversial, I mean, not here, I think, but about the value of patterns, because a lot of people are saying, oh Christian, how have you been able or was it actually ethically right that you own psilocybin or we own all these, the synthetic ones we own the patents, and the only way to pay for these trials is to make a business out of it. So ketamine was out of patents. So nobody was proving it. There was anecdotal evidence, people were doing it, but anecdotal evidence is never enough to really bring a good drug to the people. Niches are doing it. Rich people are doing it.
Kara Swisher: (19:12)
They are.
Christian Angermayer: (19:13)
But the woman in Iowa, the doctor will not give her ketamine because his risk of losing his license if something goes wrong if it's not approved for depression is super high. And then they found a while ago that ketamine consists of two, let's say for here, like subversions. The one, they called R-ketamine for right turning and the other one S for left turning, S-ketamine and they were patentable. And that allowed both us with R-ketamine and Johnson & Johnson with S-ketamine to advance clinical trials, because you suddenly had a patent again. So you had a business model around it. And S-ketamine was actually approved by Johnson & Johnson, I think two years ago now one and a half years ago. So now this is what Field Trip is doing, you can have clinics now where you get officially S-ketamine from Johnson & Johnson, because it's approved now for depression and now doctors starting prescribing it.
Christian Angermayer: (20:07)
And we believe R-ketamine is even more potent and especially has a less disassociative effect. So it could be to be proven in trials that R-ketamine is approved for at home use versus use with a doctor because what we all shouldn't forget, and that's the sad part of that whole, is how big the crisis is. And we have 1 billion people globally suffering from one of the diseases we just touched. And we need to make sure because even if the drugs are approved, there will be a bottleneck of therapists, clinics, whatsoever. So it would be very positive if one or two of these drugs, the milder ones so to say, could be approved for use at home.
Kara Swisher: (20:51)
For home use. So you'd get it under a prescription, but then you can use-
Christian Angermayer: (20:55)
Obviously prescription, but for use without a therapist. And R-ketamine has that potential.
Kara Swisher: (21:00)
And this is for, again, what precisely would it be aimed at depression again, PTSD, same things?
Christian Angermayer: (21:07)
They all work, because it's also very near together. Like you normally have one lead indication where you sort of prove it and then you can do more studies to sort of-
Kara Swisher: (21:19)
But it's around depression? The same-
Christian Angermayer: (21:21)
So ketamine is also for depression, the lead study of ours, yeah.
Kara Swisher: (21:24)
Okay. MDMA.
Christian Angermayer: (21:26)
MDMA makes you happy.
Kara Swisher: (21:31)
I understand.
Christian Angermayer: (21:32)
MDMA is very good for post traumatic, again, MDMA is good for a lot of things, but in the lead study, which is not done by us for MDMA, but which is done by MAPS. Rick Doblin. He's amazing. So we are like the for-profit leader and Rick has a nonprofit called MAPS. So whoever wants to donate, he's the one who really deserves it. And they are advancing MDMA. They are in phase three, actually. So again, it should also be a year.
Kara Swisher: (22:03)
This is a widely used recreational drug too, right now. I mean, it's illegal.
Christian Angermayer: (22:07)
Yes, but illegal as a recreational drug.
Kara Swisher: (22:09)
It's illegal, everybody uses it.
Christian Angermayer: (22:11)
It's still illegal. But it's going to be hopefully legal soon, thanks to Rick for, again, lead indication is post traumatic stress disorder, but can be used for other stuff as well.
Kara Swisher: (22:21)
So anxiety. What would that be prescribed for medically?
Christian Angermayer: (22:26)
Anxiety-
Kara Swisher: (22:27)
A nicer person?
Christian Angermayer: (22:30)
We do have... Beg your pardon?
Kara Swisher: (22:30)
The be a nicer person disease we suffer in this country from.
Christian Angermayer: (22:32)
Which one? MDMA?
Kara Swisher: (22:33)
Yeah. MDMA, yeah.
Christian Angermayer: (22:34)
No, it's it's post traumatic stress disorder.
Kara Swisher: (22:36)
Stress disorder, yeah, right, but it could by-
Christian Angermayer: (22:38)
By the way, they all make you a nicer person. That is-
Kara Swisher: (22:40)
I'm sorry?
Christian Angermayer: (22:40)
All of them make you a nicer person. That is I think truly, I think ultimately, so we jumping now, but again, it's very important, very powerful drugs, medical business, but you've seen a lot of medical... I mean, you take aspirin. It's a drug, but it was used, I don't even know which aspirin was originally, but then you realize it has more properties and some when I think maybe people who don't have a depression but who have other wishes or want to improve,
Christian Angermayer: (23:15)
By the way, MDMA was amazing for marriage therapy. Like this was one of the original use cases. Marriage therapy is not a disease. We cannot go to the regulator and say, "Hey, if two people don't like each other anymore, can we?" But once MDMA is approved, or other of psychedelics, a doctor can say, a psychologist can say, "You are a couple, you should do marriage therapy." And if they do it with the psychotherapist, it's going to be legal. So there's always the starting point. But then our point of view is the therapist knows the patient.
Kara Swisher: (23:49)
Sure, but it's not going to be marketed as an anti-divorce drug, right? It's going to be used as a-
Christian Angermayer: (23:54)
Oh, if you would know how many big investors I save their settlements, it is an amazing if one of you many, you all want to make money, you're going to lose 50% of your money if you get divorced, depending on which contract you have. So before you go with bad routes, try to find at the moment, the shaman in a country where it's legal, who does either psychedelic or MDMA therapy with you. It could be the most valuable financial advice I've ever given to you.
Kara Swisher: (24:22)
Oh, all right. Okay. All right. Thank you for that. Thank you. And if you don't end up liking your spouse after MDMA, you really should get divorced.
Christian Angermayer: (24:30)
Exactly. No, that's the point. It shows you what you really want and then at least you know.
Kara Swisher: (24:34)
Yeah. So at least you go, yeah, I do hate you. That really is. I don't want to hug you right now. So MDMA-
Christian Angermayer: (24:40)
A side note, because I'm really proud of it. It was used a lot also in political, how do you say, conflict resolutions in history of humanity. So I'm funding Imperial College's program where we make very right wing Israelis and very bad Hezbollah fighters trip together and come up with a peace plan because it didn't work out so far without. No, seriously, I think if you look how messed up that is and how bad the situation it is, I think you need a new point of view and that's another property psychedelics do. They take you out of the ordinary and give you a new point of view. And we going to release, I think, it's not approval studies. It's like social.
Kara Swisher: (25:23)
Yeah, there's quite a few leaders I would put on it then.
Christian Angermayer: (25:26)
Exactly. I think in the future, I'm on the board of, I can't say it now, okay. I think in the future, politicians will trip together in 10, 20 years as a part of-
Kara Swisher: (25:34)
So they should be required.
Christian Angermayer: (25:34)
What?
Kara Swisher: (25:37)
So politician mandate. MDMA if they want to be a politician.
Christian Angermayer: (25:41)
I think we're far away from mandated, but I think it wouldn't be bad.
Kara Swisher: (25:44)
Yeah. That's another word we're not supposed to talk about right now.
Christian Angermayer: (25:46)
It wouldn't be bad.
Kara Swisher: (25:47)
So the next thing, I guess the biggest one, there's one that is talked about a lot in Silicon Valley, in tech a lot, is ayahuasca. Which is another one. Talk about that.
Christian Angermayer: (25:58)
So ayahuasca is a brew in South America and the active ingredient is called DMT. And we advance DMT for also treatment resistant depression. It's a very strong psychedelic. I don't want to say it's similar to, because they all have a little are similar or different. It's just stronger and then you can take it in different ways. So you can inhale it, then it's a short acting. And you can drink it, then it's a longer acting. And then actually it works on different stuff. But it has very strong antidepressant again, anti-
Kara Swisher: (26:36)
So even a stronger drug for that or more?
Christian Angermayer: (26:39)
Yes.
Kara Swisher: (26:40)
It has hallucinatory aspect.
Christian Angermayer: (26:40)
To be proven on paper. Sorry, I'm always so hesitant because there is all these anecdotal evidence. So the amazing thing, and I'm in biotech since 20 years, is normally you don't know what trial outcome is. In this case, okay, we still have to see the outcome, but we have all this anecdotal evidence. We know how these drugs work, people are using it. Then some of them had been already medically available. We have all the data. However, I still have to say and this is what I'm very proud of because we will prove it once and for all. So hopefully in some years we can sit here and I don't have to say potentially they're doing this.
Kara Swisher: (27:13)
Right. Sure. Okay. I want to talk about one last drug and then talk about how you get it back into a mainstream thinking where people don't think about it the way they've sort of moving on weed. They are. People are much more accepting of that in most and I don't want to get to that yet. But I want to talk to LSD. Because that's I think the one that has the most baggage with it, and I know most investors are very worried about funding these things. There's some investors like Tim Ferriss, there's Peter Thiel, some others who are fine moving into some of these spaces, but that's the one where they get a little nervous.
Christian Angermayer: (27:47)
LSD is different. We don't do LSD. Not because I think it's not good. I think it's actually awesome. But it has a 12 hour thing. And it does more or less the same than psilocybin. And again, my view is we need to think what makes sense in the healthcare system and the healthcare system will need to pay, or the patient will need to pay for the therapist sitting next to him. So if I can have the same outcome with psilocybin, which is around about a four hour trip or LSD, which is around about a 12 hour trip, we will always take psilocybin. There is no medical place in our point of view for LSD, not because it's not good, but because you want to actually, this is why DMT is so interesting because DMT, if you inhale it or if you take it intravenous, then it's actually 15 minutes around about and actually, because we need to-
Kara Swisher: (28:39)
So you're looking for something for a shorter amount of time with most efficacy, essentially.
Christian Angermayer: (28:43)
Yeah, because we want to make a reasonable, it makes it commercial viable.
Kara Swisher: (28:47)
So it's not that it's got the criminal baggage.
Christian Angermayer: (28:50)
No, I would fund it immediately if I would see a commercial opportunity,
Kara Swisher: (28:53)
A commercial thing. And one I left out, which Michael Pollan does write about in the book, which is mescaline, which there's the peyote cactus, which is only used by Native Americans and it's used in the Native American church, but now they have a synthetic version and they there's other cactus. I forget the cactus that works.
Christian Angermayer: (29:10)
As we don't do it, it's the least familiar. So I don't want to-
Kara Swisher: (29:15)
Right. But that's another one that's getting attention, correct?
Christian Angermayer: (29:17)
Yes. Yep.
Kara Swisher: (29:19)
Which builds communities, from what I understand. It's very good around building communities, about getting along about-
Christian Angermayer: (29:24)
I think it's, but again, because I think it's in a similar sort league that MDMA, it has more psychoactive effect, but it's indeed heart opening, which you get it with MDMA actually from our point of view.
Kara Swisher: (29:36)
Right. Okay. So all these different drugs, there's a lot of them. There's a lot of them and there's more synthetic versions coming out and they're trying different things. Most people say the non-synthetic versions are the better versions, but at some point it will be hard to understand the difference. How do you get investors to think about it as a eventual business? And how do you get governments? Because this is something you could see certain politicians, oh, we're going to be making money, you saw the same thing play out over just weed. This is much more drugs with a lot more baggage around them.
Christian Angermayer: (30:10)
It actually I mean we already did. So it's sort of we do the studies. It's not a question anymore. The great thing is it's happening. These reclassification is happening automatically. It's not that we want to change. We don't want politicians to make a political call on it. What we are saying is we going to go like every other medical drug in the world, we going to go through the FDA process. And at the end of the FDA process is an outcome, which is hopefully confirming the anecdotal evidence we have that these drugs are very useful for in a medical context. And then it's an automatism that they reschedule. There is no political lobbying. We don't want any favors because it is a scientific decision at the end. Can we show what we all see?
Kara Swisher: (30:57)
And then I have just two more questions and then we have to go, but how do you get consumers to think of it this way, people who are suffering from-
Christian Angermayer: (31:04)
We don't need the consumer. Two things, which are important. The one is we have it is the biggest problem of the healthcare system. So if you talk to any doctor, they are completely aware of it because again global-
Kara Swisher: (31:15)
Mental health?
Christian Angermayer: (31:16)
Mental health, as a whole.
Kara Swisher: (31:17)
Just walk down the street, but go ahead.
Christian Angermayer: (31:19)
Look at so many [crosstalk 00:31:19].
Kara Swisher: (31:19)
Everybody is traumatized, right now.
Christian Angermayer: (31:25)
And let me give you the official number is 1 billion people. That already makes it the biggest opportunity and the biggest problem at the same time in healthcare. Second, it is still a stigmatized disease. So it's starting to get destigmatized. But gradually. And that means the number is way higher. I don't know the true number, but it's-
Kara Swisher: (31:46)
So it's a market.
Christian Angermayer: (31:46)
It's a huge market. But let's say the true number is maybe one and a half billion, but it's way higher because I know so many people who not go to the doctor who, meaning a friend of mine who a big famous singer, he made a survey among his fans. He's a [inaudible 00:32:01], like 80% of his fans said in a survey, it's not a scientific survey, but why should they lie? After COVID and he has the fan, 15 to 25, I would say, is they have mental health issues. 80%. And we actually, if you look at it, it's just a tie who, and Compass together who has the solution because all the other shit, like SSRIs, opioids, many, they numb people and we need to find cures, not numb them and make them zombies.
Christian Angermayer: (32:33)
And then additionally, I think the world we live in is not good for our brain. We all love it. We have the whole day of Bitcoin and technology and biotech and da, da, da. And we love it, but it's actually terrifying for our brain because our brain wants stability and we never had never, ever was the world, I don't want to say instable, but that fast changing. Again, your conference is the sort of synonym for fast changing. But that makes people mentally traumatized. So the number will go up. I personally would say ultimately the total addressable market for mental health is a hundred percent of the population because everybody wants, what do we all want? We can say, "Oh, we want to be rich. We want to have good sex." Whatever. But ultimately we want two things. We want to be healthy and happy and everybody has other things which make them happy. But that's what it narrows it down. And we've solved the happiness part.
Kara Swisher: (33:25)
So two last questions, very quickly, how much money is going into this right now? I'm seeing a lot of money move this way.
Christian Angermayer: (33:31)
So I can talk about us, we raised over $500 million.
Kara Swisher: (33:33)
500 million.
Christian Angermayer: (33:34)
Over 500 million, 600-ish.
Kara Swisher: (33:39)
Easy?
Christian Angermayer: (33:40)
At the beginning, it was easy because I'm a too big a founder because I have my investment business, so I funded it myself and I had friends who trusted me. So yes. So easy, not easy.
Kara Swisher: (33:51)
So a lot of money is moving.
Christian Angermayer: (33:52)
But actually our IPO was very easy because over the last 12 months, that sort of view on psychedelics, we're sitting here, we're talking about it, has changed, but that was just the last 12 months.
Kara Swisher: (34:02)
Right. Okay. I'm going to ask the last question. We only have one more minute. You yourself have taken these drugs, right?
Christian Angermayer: (34:07)
Yeah. In a country where it's legal.
Kara Swisher: (34:10)
One of the things that they push for me in Silicon Valley is that it opens their mind to new innovation. They think it's an innovation drug, a lot of these things. Talk very briefly. We have 50 seconds.
Christian Angermayer: (34:23)
Okay. The short version is, by the way, this is a side effect. This is not the medical effect. So it's not medical advice. But if you look at how our brain works, roundabout when you're 30, you start losing the creative power, innovation. If you're 20, the world is your oyster. You are in awe of the wonders of world, and it's going down. The good thing is when you're getting older, you build up craftsmanship and knowledge and whatever and what you ideally want, and what Steve Jobs is actually writing in his bio is, you want the knowledge and the craftsmanship of a 50 year old combined with the innovative power of a 20 year old. And again, I have to say carefully, but there is strong anecdotal evidence that psychedelics and especially certain ones are giving you back for good, not just during the trip that sort of innovative the power.
Christian Angermayer: (35:14)
And it gave me a hope, I would say, but it's super simplified because I could talk an hour about this one trip, but you can go into a psychedelic trip and have an intention. You can say, "Okay, I want to learn about my true self." You can go in a spiritual path. But one day I was like, because I was actually late-ish I started investing in crypto in 2016. And I was like, okay, what is this all about? And I had friends explaining it to me, Mike, and sort of the true sort of power of blockchain and crypto, I sort of figured out on a trip.
Kara Swisher: (35:47)
On a trip. Although you can't have some dumb ideas, I've heard some dumb ideas from some people on their trip.
Christian Angermayer: (35:52)
Well, again, this is all about the surrounding and the guidance in a country where it's legal with a practicer, with a shaman or somebody who's going with you. But this stuff definitely has potential.
Kara Swisher: (36:04)
All right. Everyone, Christian, this is actually a fascinating area. Thank you so much.