Hamilton's Pharma Cope, Part 3: Paid Protestor Paranoia

For nearly two years, former Vice journalist and Compass Pathways consultant Hamilton Morris has spread misinformation about Psymposia with false claims about our funding, our interactions with government agencies, and our research and reporting.

In this four-part conversation — “Hamilton’s Pharma Cope” — we address this misinformation head on, exposing Morris’ lies and his lack of journalistic integrity. But even more than a comprehensive rebuttal to Morris' propaganda campaign, this series represents a robust primer to our work at Psymposia and to the problematic dynamics at play across the psychedelic industry.

In this episode, we continue the conversation about our funding and explore Hamilton Morris' conspiratorial claims about the company Usona.

0:00: Hamilton's misinformation about Psymposia's funding
12:40: Hamilton's false lawsuit claims and speculation patterns
25:10: Hamilton's false claims that Psymposia encouraged terrorism
36:00: Hamilton's false harassment claims and paranoia

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from YouTube's captions, then cleaned up by removing filler words, repeated words and background sounds. It may still contain errors.

[00:00] This is part three of a four-part series discussing the claims made by Hamilton Morris on Andrew Callahan's five cast. In this episode, we'll be discussing further claims about our funding as well as a number of claims from Hamilton about the company Eona. So, the next couple of clips are focused specifically on that Eona funding, which Normie emphasized was something like maybe $500 or it wasn't Eona funding. It was, like I said, it was Bob Jesse's I think six plus years ago to it was a personal donation for $500.

[00:46] He He did it maybe once or twice. When we had the initial conversation for these recordings, we were fairly sure that Jesse had been responsible for two donations in the past that were somewhere below $1,000 in total. After we had the conversation, we went back and checked the details, and the specifics are that we received two donations at the recommendation of Bob Jesse from the San Francisco Foundation for a total of $700. And then that combined with the silo mythox and defense to which you Sona provided for everyone. This has been spun up into this conspiracy narrative that we're this is a source of funding for us. So let's continue. So there's what are some of the other reasons that could possibly be in the shadows here?

[01:31] I think also Eona funding Psymposia played a role as well. a Eona funded lawyer was representing Psymposia during the time of the FDA advisory committee hearing, but I don't know that they directly wanted that outcome. They were very happy when MDMA was rejected. The founder of Eona was absolutely delighted by the rejection. What's Eona's deeper agenda? Vengeance against Compass. Yeah, Compass vengeance was a big one. Like one of the weird things about journalism and storytelling is when a story gets complicated enough, it just starts to sound like the gibberish of a conspiracy theorist. Yeah. Because he he's basing this narrative on like a an initial piece, a kernel that is false. And so it doesn't make sense to him because as that little kernel fractals out, it creates confusion in his mind and he doesn't know what's real anymore.

[02:27] No, no, no. I'm following you. Okay. Okay. It's like but you know when you talk to someone they're like oh Alan Dulles and Sydney Golib and they were working with Operation Paperclip and you just we're going to have visual aid for this. Okay. Okay. Okay. All right. Okay. So I'll go into it. So at the juncture we're at right now is that you have this pharmaceutical company making it seem like their rival pharmaceutical company is trying to block the legalization of psychedelics, but it's actually them that are trying to block legal of psychedelics. They're using Vice to disseminate negative press about this company while simultaneously encouraging terroristic action. So, this is all like pretty fascinating because this idea of like pay while simultaneously encouraging terroristic actions. What is going on? I just want to pause this for a second and I'll be the first to admit is that there is competition and there is bad blood that exists between the Eona camp and the Compass camp.

[03:19] This is a longstanding issue that goes back to something like 2017, 2018. Compass moved in rapidly. They were very well capitalized. The Eona camp felt that Compass people were encroaching on their turf. And in Hamilton's mind, he thinks that we're that we are just slotted into the Eona camp and that we have no critiques against some of the big Eona plays. This is a long ongoing thing that Hamilton's had. The one point of agreement is that I do think that there is standard business competition and there is bad blood between executives to some degree from Compass and Eona. But he's spun this into like a very complex conspiracy narrative where we are seen as the vanguard of Bill Clinton with Eona that's going out to slay their enemies which is nonsense. aid protest and controlled opposition oftentimes gets like thrown around, especially in the conservative media sphere to like delegitimize anger and outrage when it comes to things that are happening.

[04:19] The Tesla rally, some of these guys are paid agitators and paid protesters. It's typically not true, but I find it really interesting here that the company EONA is using this sort of like anti- capitalist, anti-fascist language to do their bidding and kind of mobilize like gullible people against the people that are actually doing the good thing. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This is, as far as I know, this is the only example of this that I knew about. The slop on display here. I challenge any Fivecast viewer to find any Eona personnel talking about how they are, you know, using or amplifying Psymposia or engaging in anti-fascist, anti- capitalist narratives at all.

[05:04] The idea that both of these so-called journalists just go, "Yeah, that's what they're doing." is bananas to me. It gives me Candice Owens like French Legion is trying to assassinate her vibes. It's the only thing that I can like that I can only draw from. Actually, I want to say something because, you know, the conspiracy theorizing, there's the one side of it that's like an ignorant andor desperate plea to you know, impose order on a chaotic and scary world, right? But then there's the sort of actor that is out there on on purpose kicking up dust and complexifying a rather simple story that they don't like, they don't want to be told.

[05:50] You know, Psymposia is a group of principled actors that have relevant and incisive critiques on on many fronts of the psychedelic industry. And I don't want them to listen to be listened to because, you know, I mean, as Hamilton has said multiple times in his public appearances, he was a former employee of Compass and we have, you know, speaking of transparency, no understanding of what Hamilton's, you know, personal stock portfolio is in the psychedelic space. And for what it's worth, one of the founders of the Church of Silomthoxin, Ian Benwis, did publish that Hamilton had shares in Compass Pathways. We did some digging and it does appear that according to SEC filings from the year that Hamilton was employed by Compass as a full-time consultant that consultants of Compass Pathways were approved to receive compensation in shares.

[06:46] We've requested confirmation from Morris on whether he received share-based compensation from Compass for his time with them, but we have not received comment back. But he's got a lot of potential motives for wanting people to not understand our position in an accurate way. And every time he does it, he displays contempt for his audience, the audience of the podcast, you know, or show that he is, you know, a guest on. and he abuses his status as a sort of quasi celebrity psychedelic expert however you know dull and in the distance that you know reputation may be today. So this clip that's coming up now is something that was debuted on this fivecast interview which is Hamilton confronting Bob Jesse at a conference.

[07:38] This is was previously unreleased footage that he kind of like seeded to Fivecast. Hi. Hey. I don't know if we've met. Maybe we met a long time ago. I think we might have been on stage once a long time ago but didn't actually say hi. Yeah. How's your reputation preced you? Good. Good to see you. So, I feel like this is sort of an aggressive question. And I feel bad asking, but a couple of ex Psymposia members have contacted me and they told me that you had been providing them with money and intel in what they felt was a effort to destroy Compass. I just want to pause it here to address what he's saying. A couple of exs Psymposia employees approached him.

[08:23] In an interview prior to this, he discussed that he was approached by someone named Travis Kitchens who once wrote an article for us and we edited. In fact, Travis just went on the Danny Jones podcast explaining the extent of his relationship with us. So, this Psymposia group is specifically doing like counter operations against all this stuff. Like they're reporting on all the negative aspects of it and trying to debunk it. They yeah I would say they were providing a critical perspective some of which was much of which was legitimate. I mean these were just it's just reporting into the psychedelic field. It's a group of people. Yeah. Pull it up. Like if you put Yeah. There you go. There you go. It's a website. Yeah. Basically about psychedelics.

[09:08] Yes. That publishes like Hey Steve, would you put in the search bar put in Travis Kitchens and you'll see an article they published to mine. Oh, you work for him? No. No. In 2019, I wrote a very long article. There it is. A channel for magic. This is an 8,000word article. It's very long. You know, they have a if you go to about or something, you'll see you can submit an article. We could write an article on psychedelics right now. We could submit it to them and if they like it, they'll publish it. So, I submitted to them. I didn't know them and they said, "This is great. We will publish it." So, they published it. They don't pay, but they published it and you know, subsequently it was featured in the New York Times. It was featured in some books that you know, Ivy League University Press books and so it's been widely read and I'm as proud of it as anything I've ever written.

[09:56] If that's what he's talking about, that is not an exs Psymposia employee and that is not someone who has extensive knowledge of our funding and anything about the internal organization of our nonprofit. This gives me like project veritas big time. Yeah. You had been providing them with money and intel in what they felt was a effort to destroy Compass. No. Let's see. Yeah. Not directly my money, but I'm responsible for having sent to Psymposia before things really blew up and got nasty. two separate donations, small amounts of money and not for the purpose of getting her to do anything.

[10:47] That's 100%. [laughter] Yeah, that's actually correct. I do have the check in my stash. It was through an account that that he has. That money came in during that period of time where we weren't paying ourselves at all. We weren't getting money for doing the work that we were doing. So donations that came in, like small donations would go towards like, as I said, the website or whatever else we were using in order to do our work. Yeah. So why do you think they said that? Yeah. And why were you giving them money? Well, because for a little while they were saying things no one else would say. Mhm. You know, the same reason you would give. By the way, Bob, we are still saying things that nobody else would say. Just use money. And then because I know that you were involved with the Sarlo family foundation and they've, you know, paid an enormous amount of money to Neşe and to Psymposia to run this campaign against MAPS, $185,000 reported.

[11:46] See, this is what he has been doing this whole time. That's what I'm talking about. This narrative around the SARLO donation to us, which was a completely unrestricted donation. He continually in interviews frames it as this money that was like slipped to us to run a campaign against maps, which is fully incorrect. And anyone who's been in the field knows that everything we did and said during that period was completely in line with what we'd been doing and saying for years. So, we were not hired guns. And people who know anything about nonprofits and all that goes into it. Looking at that amount of money, that is not a large amount of money for a nonprofit and certainly not in comparison to the amount of pharma funding that was on the other side of the clinical trials remains on the other side.

[12:33] But that was long after I left that foundation. Yeah. Long after. And they're suing me now or attempting to. Why? Because I said that they had done this like a dean right now. I'd love to see the lawsuit. Where's that? Could I would like to say something else about the funding because it's like we had the choice of how to apply those funds based on our nonprofit's mission and he's acting like we just paid ourselves out with this huge amount of money. But there were a lot of other things that we needed to use funds for, like getting legal protections for our ability to publish the psychedelic syndicate, which especially at this moment in time when, you know, there's all of this attacking journalism. In order to be able to publish, you know, to speak against powerful interests, it's important to have protections there.

[13:25] And so it's just a complete misunderstanding of everything that we've been doing in order to get information out to the public that the public deserves to know. Yeah. I think saying that it's a misunderstanding. You're being charitable there. I don't think this is a misunderstanding. I think this is a lie and I think this is just propaganda that he's more than happy to spew suing you for something like defamation or national damage. Defamation. Well, guess what? My understanding on a lawyer is that truth is an absolute defense against defamation. Well, they're actually unfortunately they got me on a technicality. I said it was the SRO family foundation whereas it was Susan Sar. Who is they got me on a technicality? The is the This is the conspiracy mind.

[14:10] And I want to say too, I thought about including both clips, but I didn't. This the timeline of this interview when it came out, it was released like three separate times. First, it came out in August. Yeah. This interview between Hamilton and Andrew. And about 48 hours later, it was taken off the internet. Between that time, it came out that Hamilton had been Andrew had forwarded Hamilton the entire video file to review and re-release. They re-released it in September. And this clip, that entire point where Hamilton admits they got beyond a technicality is cut. that's no longer in the interview that is public. I did an interview with Andrew Callahan. His team reached out to me. They were filming at the Maps conference and wanted to collaborate on something.

[14:57] So, we recorded a podcast together. I made it very clear to everyone that the podcast discussed billionaires, multi-millionaires, lots and lots of people who'd conceivably be angry and that I needed to have it reviewed before anything went out. Somehow that got lost in translation. and they released it without me realizing and then I asked for them to take it down. The reason it was taken down is because I wanted to see it before it went out publicly. This video that we have is from the original release. I think one of the funniest things about this is that, you know, this particular phrase being removed sort of after an initial release is that it'd be very interesting to see if there actually was a lawsuit. I don't think there is a lawsuit to be had here.

[15:44] But had such a lawsuit gone forward, you know, admitting on camera that your the opposing team has got you on a technicality might not be very great for your lawsuit. I do want to speak to the lawsuit claim because the only things that I have heard of being circulated are cease and desist that are requesting that people, you know, be careful about how they're representing the facts because misrepresentations are actually dangerous under the current conditions of where the field is at. There are a lot of threats, death threats circulating, a lot of very dangerous rhetoric. And legally, I think a lot of people don't understand that like if something happens, if someone is is whipped up and inflamed by this demonizing rhetoric and comes and tries to get vengeance at your house, you know, for whatever reason connected to this kind of inciting rhetoric, having a cease and desist is a form of protection

[16:46] For you because you can then show that you tried to set the record straight so that if anything happens, god forbid, you're able to then show that and say, "Look, I tried my best to stop this." And then it makes it easier if you need to get a decision about something to make things whole after something horrible happens. And so I find it very interesting that everyone's representing this, you know, these cease and desist letters when people are pumping mis disinformation out into the that media landscape because it's another form of Darvo. It's a abusive tactic where the you know people who are being abusive act like their victims are the abusers and this is representative of that because when you say someone asking me to please be careful because things are dangerous right now is an act of aggression that deserves further retaliation.

[17:40] You are admitting to the attentive viewer that you are actually the one who is causing the harassment. Yeah, I think that those distinctions are, you know, important to make all great points. And I think that the thing though is is that yeah, it's still not a lawsuit that Hamilton is representing. Oh, they're suing me. No, no, they aren't. Well, that that's why I mentioned that is that there have been no lawsuits. And a lot of people have talked about like these lawsuits and legal threats as evidence of our or that foundation's you know, evilness. And I just wanted to set the record straight that actually no, the fact that they're representing at most a request to stop lying in dangerous ways as further evidence that these groups or people need to be put in their place and demonized is itself a red flag.

[18:35] This actually comes up in Travis Kitchen's recent interview with Danny Jones where Danny's under the impression that we tried to sue Hamilton over something and Travis Hamilton's alleged source on a lot of this stuff has to actually go on and contradict him. I don't know. Did he get the cease and assist from Psymposia or Sarlos? No neither a letter a law firm big-time law firm in San Francisco that represents the Sarlo Foundation. Okay. So, it was a SRO. Uhhuh. And they said, "Actually, it wasn't this Sarlo group. It was this other Sarlo group that gave him the money. So technically, you're wrong. And also, they accused him of spinning conspiracy theories and etc, etc., etc. You know, he has a rather complex, maybe even convoluted narrative around this." The clip we've been watching is about to end here and then it's going to cut over into a later clip from Hamilton's podcast of him discussing this confrontation that I just think is interesting.

[19:31] Carlo, not the foundation. Three or something. I hope that's not too much of a pain in the butt for you. People contacted me to say it's very unfair of you to blame Eona for everything. And I don't believe that I did. Just one crazy lady and one pharmaceutical company. Eona. I feel bad for what it's worth about calling out Bob Jesse. It doesn't bring me any pleasure. I've heard from many people that Bob Jesse is a really nice guy. You know, I have no desire to go to war with these people. And I think that all of this fear and fighting I have no desire to go to war with these people, but I'm going to call them terrorists and spend all of my time obsessing over unfounded claims.

[20:19] Yeah, wait for it. You're going to love how he finishes this clip. in the psychedelic world has just been a miserable experience that I really wish to avoid. For the people that are new subscribers who don't know about this, I have several podcasts dedicated to it and I could honestly probably talk about it for 10 more hours. It's just so disingenuous to hear him say he doesn't want to get involved and then immediately cut to, by the way, I have several podcasts on this issue and could talk about it for 10 more hours. He's going out of his way. he tries, you know, the reason the other reason why we're responding to Andrew is that the sheer level of irresponsibility at a journalistic level on display with Callahan's five cast here is something that we can compare to other commentators and podcasters who have hosted Hamilton.

[21:11] Hamilton has on these other platforms, people are like, you know, Hamilton, like you're here to talk about like, you know, the good old days when you used to be on Vice, like doing things in other countries and taking drugs, like what do you think today? That's what we want you to hear. And then he's shoehorning in these conspiracy theories about Psymposia and then they drag him back into, you know, his lane, but not Callahan. The next post that we review is a comment that Hamilton made on his subreddit walking back his assertions about Bob Jesse providing us funding. This post was made less than a month after the interview with Andrew that was framed around this funding came out. If you look in the second paragraph there, he says, "I think the amount that Bob Jesse paid them is relatively small, and I've heard it to be less than $1,000 and was likely paid around 2018.

[22:04] Like we've been saying, we didn't receive some crazy amount of money from you Sona or Bob Jesse. And Hamilton knows that this whole time. Yet, he framed the entire interview with Andrew around the fact that we were funded by some malevolent pharmaceutical company. This post came out like not long after the video. So, it's not like he, you know, looked into it months later and found this like correction. Like, he was aware. The post that was just on screen from Hamilton was from October 5th of 2025, which was less, like you said, less than a month after this interview was publicly re-released on YouTube. Can you even imagine like focusing on I he didn't know this because he doesn't do his homework, but can you even imagine on focusing on like a $1,000 donation versus the fire hose of billionaire money and rich like corrupt money that is coming into this space that is silencing any criticism that is like

[23:06] Totally twisting this sort of what was a grassroots roots movement into this corporate monster like and this is what he focuses his time on. I It's really delusional. Yeah. The last clip I have of this section around like the claims on our funding is I just think an illustrative clip of Hamilton discussing another psychedelic media outlet where he is wildly speculating on their funding almost in the exact same way. The who funded Psilocybin Alpha at the beginning? I actually don't know, but it wouldn't surprise me if it were Bill Linton or Carrie Turnbull or maybe the Sarlo family. Those seem to be, if I had to guess, I'd probably say Linton or Turnbull because it has that kind of nonsense air that you get from people associated with that group.

[23:56] Why would you go on your Why? I just don't understand what the speculation is all about. Oh, I understand what it's about, but I just don't understand the I don't understand having contempt for your audience to the extent that you're willing to just spew the conspiracy [expletive] I don't get it. It's people seem to kind of eat it up. and he's allowed to go on stages where he's platformed as the voice of psychedelic journalistic ethics and the community itself promotes him as an ethical voice while he goes around speculating to his audience in this way. I mean it fits perfectly in like the post-truth world of grifting on your audience. The pattern with Hamilton is a consistent attack, you know, an anti-intellectual way of any journalism or scholarship that, you know, questions the most positive light that psychedelics

[24:58] And sort of psychedelic industry could be painted in. That was a dissection of Hamilton's claims in Andrew's interview with him about our funding in particular. You heard it come up, I think, at least once in those last couple clips, Hamilton claiming that we encourage terrorism or terrorist actions. The next couple clips I have lined up are more on that subject because I think it's worth discussing and kind of dissecting what he's actually talking about there because it's something that's been bandied about and used against us. In our last video, we discussed the environment that this interview was released into, which was post Charlie Kirk killing when leftist groups were being labeled terrorists worthy of attack or prosecution by the right-wing. And I think we need to dispel some of the claims that they're discussing here.

[25:47] So, the next clip we're going to see is a super cut of every time Hamilton in this interview discusses us as terrorists encouraging terrorist action or doing or terrorizing the field. So, at the juncture we're at right now is that you have this pharmaceutical company encouraging terroristic action, paying activists to terrorize their competitors. So, this group were terrorizing everyone in the psychedelic world called Psymposia. So Psymposia is a useless group of paid activists trying to throw a wrench in the game for no reason. Yes. And began to advocate terrorist action. Advise people to start terrorizing and engaging in terrorist tactics. Actual terrorist action.

[26:33] Yeah. The problem was that these people were uncontrollable. They were seriously insane. Dangerously insane. This is why funding terrorist organizations to do your bidding is usually a bad idea. Historically, every time we do it, it always backfires. It hasn't ended well. And so that's actual footage from the interview. That was not I didn't cut in the Wikipedia article about Israeli funding of Hamas. That was Channel 5's team that put that in at that point of the interview. This sounds like Steven Miller. like it actually sounds like Stephen Miller [expletive] that he that he's saying. And so that's just a preface on how often he was describing us as terrorizing terrorists, a terrorist group, terrorizing the industry.

[27:21] At what point have you lost the argument so much that you have to label like the people you disagree with as terrorists? Like that's where we have that's where he's gone in his own mind. It's kind of wild. It's hysteria. And I mean I don't know maybe you know at what point well there there are other patterns in the media sphere. You know if you become discredited enough you can always find yourself a spot on a you know right-wing conspiracy podcast or maybe you know convert to that's where he's going a religion or something you know that's certainly the trajectory he is on. as he gets like more irrelevant, he has to go further into like the rage baiting into the grifting into the lies into the conspiracies.

[28:07] The next part of the clip that I have lined up is Hamilton actually discussing the terrorist actions he's saying we encouraged and I want viewers to hear how he describes it and then we're going to come in afterward and contextualize what he's actually talking about. When you said terroristic, do you mean like car bombs and stuff? I can read you exactly what they wrote actually. They call for violent action against a rival pharmaceutical company. Yeah, I definitely want to see it. Yeah. Yeah, I can pull it up right now. Yeah, for sure. Okay. This is And there's actually a lawsuit right now. This is pretty funny. You can't just tell people to go terrorize others, right? That's not free speech. Oh, yeah. You're right. Well, so now the guy that wrote this, the shitty David Nichols is having his mother, who's a lawyer, sue the New York Times journalist who mentioned that this had occurred.

[28:53] Oh man, they're gonna sue the [expletive] out of us. [laughter] Get a lawsuit from David sued. I'm ready to declare bankruptcy. Let me see here. Okay, let me see if I can pull this up. This is the screen grab. Support Eona. Absolutely. Exclamation point. This is the first line. But no, I mean shutting down Compass independently, [expletive] with their business operations in ways designed to raise the cost of operating. Hey, they want to exist according to the logic of capitalism. Let's leverage that logic to make it too expensive to operate. Here's a post I made over on Cat's earlier Compass post. Cat being another person who is paid by the CEO of Eona reportedly, although I have not been able to I've heard that from two people, but haven't been able to verify it, but I suspect that it's the case.

[29:39] What do we do? Shut it down. There are plenty of strategies that could be developed to make that happen, ranging from milk toast to militant. Facebook isn't really the best place to discuss some of those tactics. [laughter] a Facebook post was public. But some spur-of-the- moment ideas I could imagine right now might be organizing call-ins to Compass andor associated research institutions such as maps to express disgust and result in tying up the lines, thereby making some aspects of general operations untenable or at least frustrating. The same could be applied to the individuals involved. Two, continued writing/coage of how the for-profit commodified approach puts us all in jeopardy and threatens more open access models of medical treatment.

[30:25] Three, check out the strategies some folks used to oppose Huntington life science. This is where this is like threatening people with weapons. I'm not necessarily advocating any of those strategies. I'm not necessarily advocating any of those strategies, but there's a good precedent for relatively small groups of people tanking major corporations through utilization of militant tactics. And it just goes on. It's multiple paragraphs. Okay, so a couple of contextual points up top here. Dave was a former member of Psymposia who left well prior to any of the FDA stuff that Hamilton's been talking about this whole time. He was an early critic of Compass Pathways. The Facebook post that they're discussing there that they do like a little they do their own recreation of the typing.

[31:16] I have the still of the actual post which we can look at in a minute to show how different it actually is than the way they rewrote it there. And Huntington Life Sciences was, I believe, a pharmaceutical company that was accused of all of this animal abuse. Right. And what Dave's talking about there is citizen push back on pharmaceutical companies that they've deemed abusive. He's encouraging people to go look into the history of civilian action and resistance to abuse. Essentially, it's like telling people to learn the history of like the history of labor and labor organizing. Exactly. Specifically, he describes a like a broad swath from what? Milktoast to militant. Yeah. Yes. Milktoast to militant. And that is the reality of the push back to Huntington Life Sciences.

[32:02] There was call-in campaigns up to that someone called in like a fake bomb threat on them. That is true, but I don't think that's what Dave's talking about. And Dave in his post specifically says, "I don't endorse any of these tactics." I'm not necessarily advocating any of those strategies. So, at the point that Hamilton is going around saying that Psymposia was encouraging their viewers to engage in terrorist tactics, the post he's literally referring to says, "I do not endorse these tactics." Nor were any of us actually even aware of this post that happened on Facebook in a comment thread until it was dug up by, you know, the likes of Hamilton and his ilk. And you know, the thing that I think is really the tell here is the sort of juvenile way that Hamilton giggles his way through this that Hamilton doesn't actually take this as seriously as usually when he references it that he, you know, wants his audience

[33:03] To believe. Like last time I checked, terrorists cause mass violence events. They kill innocent, you know, civilians and such. None of that has been evidenced in this post as something that anybody has specifically advocated for. And then for it to be one, you know, former member who's years gone who made this years ago to as he introduces it conflates it with they Psymposia. There's a difference between an individual and what they say and do and a difference between what an organization says and does. Psymposia has had many organizational statements and jointly authored pieces. This is none of that. It's absolutely flimsy and to himself laughable.

[33:51] Like it's ridiculous. And I think the other point I want to make about the way that Hamilton bandies about with this post of Dave, I'm just going to bring it up here. I wanted to be clear. This is a Facebook response to someone in the conversation saying, "Okay, you're against you have these critiques of Compass Pathways, right? Should we be supporting Eona who has similar ambitions but is a nonprofit organization that is putting its manufacturing stuff out into the open science kind of database for people to see their manufacturing practices and stuff like that?" And Dave says, "Support Eona. Absolutely." But no, that's what he's responding to. He's responding to someone saying, "Should we support Eona?"

[34:36] And Dave's saying, "Sure, support Eona." Not pledging his absolute support to Eona. The way that Hamilton frames it, support Eona. Absolutely. Exclamation [laughter] point. This is the first line. This group started out very vocally pledging their absolute support for a pharmaceutical company called Eona. He had announced his absolute support for the pharmaceutical company Eona at the time that he announced his absolute support for Eona. Utterly dishonest. And just for some additional context here, at the time, Compass Pathways was accused and likely engaged in anti-competitive tactics.

[35:24] They had secured a psilocybin manufacturer for GMPs psilocybin that was required. It was a new requirement from the FDA going into the clinical trials. And that that was a cause for concern of a lot of researchers now that they would have to rely on compasses supply and some of the EONA people and you know US-based researchers were were concerned about what this new dynamic looked like in the space a space that had not had these sort of anti-competitive practices before. Yeah. And regarding companies like Compass and Eona, getting back into the kind of schism between the two of them, this next video starts with a super cut of Hamilton discussing his own relationship with Compass Pathways, just for some context, and then gets into descriptions throughout the Andrew Hamilton interview of him saying he was harassed by Eona funded employees.

[36:23] I was doing work at a university that was being funded by one of these pharmaceutical companies. Working in a lab that's receiving money from Compass. I do. I work in this lab that receives funding from Compass. It's, you know, it's really cool. You know, we're making all these new psychedelic drugs. It's really good. I was part of a group creating new psychedelics for Compass. If somebody says, "Hey, Hamilton, you know, you're going kind of easy on Compass all the time, right? Wouldn't it be useful to know that they used to pay me, that I used to make drugs for them for years, right? It would be useful to know. You should know that it's a legitimate conflict of interest on my part." And so I just wanted to show that upfront because Hamilton as he goes on here is going to talk a lot about claims of Eona funding people who they didn't fund just like he does about us.

[37:16] And he kind of gets away with saying he worked for Compass Pathways and people take that as like a oh he's so honest and puts his conflicts of interest on the table. He gets away with this and then just doesn't take it into account in the rest of the way he reports anything. And people don't take it into account when he discusses Compass's rivals and competitors and things like that in his own quote unquote journalistic coverage of these things. And I started seeing this more and more with Eona employees harassing me at talks that I gave. It's like a couple stories, but you know, just weird stuff. There's one where a Eona employee who never identified herself as such was like, I want you to explain what you're giving back to the indigenous people of the world or something like that.

[38:07] And the audience erupts into applause. Into applause. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, that must have been a bad feeling. Oh, it was a horrible feeling. Yeah. Yeah. You can feel the weight of the indigenous ancestors on you at that moment. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. They were What do they want you to do exactly? And why do they think you owe something to the natives in that moment? I mean, it was nonsense. So, someone's tripping on you at a conference about not giving back to indigenous people. They're a paid plant from a pharmaceutical corporation. Yes. How does that make you feel? It makes me feel sad. It makes me feel hurt. It makes me feel vaguely disgusted by all of this. So again, you just have Andrew here giving him these like layups as if everything he's saying is true, saying you have a paid plant from a pharmaceutical company in the audience lobbying like lobbing these questions at you.

[38:56] We know for a fact this person who asked the question was not a USA employee. Well, also the context was, you know, he says it like it's out of nowhere, but this was a panel discussion that was highlighting many representatives and voices from indigenous communities to speak on psychedelics. And the next clip we have is the actual question that was posed to him. So, as this next clip plays, I think viewers should just think to themselves about the way he characterized this question and the tone with which he said this question was posed to him and ask for yourselves if that really seems the case. And also, when you watch this, take into account the text that channel 5 included on this video when they reposted it to their Instagram.

[39:44] Thank you. I have a two-part question about the psilocybin polymorph a compound that Compass has recently patented and so from your perspective as an obviously very accomplished chemist Hamilton who has as I understand recently made a career transition to work with that company I wonder what your thoughts on the legitimacy of that patent as a new innovation first and if you're able to speak to that and two how you think that patent impacts the supply chain and particularly in the context of the issues of indigenous reciprocity that we've been talking about this for him. [applause] So, just to return to what Pace was saying, many of the other speakers on that stage had been talking about indigenous reciprocity and connections between indigenous groups and the psychedelic pharmaceutical industry.

[40:35] So, that question was not some random dart that was just put in there. was actually completely connected to the conversations that had been happening outside of that frame. And that that question was asked by Amanda Pratt, who was a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin and was was working on a dissertation project about rhetoric and psychedelics. This was directly connected to and this exchange is also written about in Amanda's dissertation. So, you know, it was completely misrepresented and how it was discussed on Fivecast. Yeah. And for anyone who is consuming this through audio, the what they put on the screen while that question was being played was that this Eona employee was secretly recording herself asking this question, exploiting indigenous people to the benefit of her billionaire employer, Eona.

[41:29] Indust industrial sabotage. A prepared statement, too. And it really seems to be difficult to have predicted how you know a panel discussion between a bunch of speakers at the end of a conference like how that might go to then show up with that particular question prepared by what Eona like it's quite the stretch. It's just another representation of Hamilton completely speculating on what Eona has the power to do or not do. We know again like I said Amanda was not a Eona employee. We do also know that he felt very bad, sad, horrible about it. And so, you know, this is his sort of retrospective conspiracy theorizing of why bad things happen to Hamilton Morris, you know.

[42:16] Well, and he even acknowledges that at some point. Maybe we can try to find that clip. He straight up says something along the lines of, "Well, you know, she attacked me, so I wanted to get her back or whatever." So, it's like the Oh, you have that. Okay, perfect. When the Eona employee called me out at the conference for not giving back to indigenous people, the point of what she was doing was to publicly humiliate me. It had nothing to do with helping indigenous people. And that was clear to me before I realized that she was employed by Eona and friends with Psymposia. But let's assume for the sake of argument that she really did care about indigenous people. How would you communicate that?

[43:03] If she'd simply come up to me and said, "Hey, I'm working with Eona. I heard that you're working with Compass. Both of these companies are developing psilocybin as a treatment for depression. And I was thinking it would be interesting to speak with Mazda people to see how they feel about it. And maybe we could work together and figure out a way to help them if they feel like they want some kind of help. Maybe the two companies could collaborate on an initiative to provide some kind of nice gesture to the people in Walta. so that their history of work with psilocybin containing mushrooms is acknowledged in some way. Right?

[43:48] Imagine if she had said that to me, how different the results might have been. Completely different. Completely different. History would have been changed. I mean like I didn't know that there was so much protocol for approaching. Could you imagine how the butterfly effect would have changed the course of the universe? Well, it's I mean this is how abusers talk, you know. It's like if you had just done this in this other way, I wouldn't have needed to do that to you. If she had said, "Please, sir, this is like a normal academic conference type of question that he could have responded thoughtfully and normally to, but instead he had this big emotional reaction and then needed to retaliate." Right? And it's not an exaggeration. and he described it as a big emotional reaction that he had to this and now he's sort of thinking back and reflecting on this moment on other podcasts with other people.

[44:45] It's quite a lot of thinking about this moment for Hamilton. Like something good could have come out of that if it had been well-intentioned. But the point was not to help indigenous people. The point was to attempt to publicly humiliate me. And so what did this do? By attacking me for the interests of her pharmaceutical company, she led to me attacking her, there was a mutual polarizing effect that made everyone miserable. And this is how these things tend to play out, right? It's a, you know, sort of cliche nichi quote, but it's the reality. You can become the monster that you're fighting. Look what you made me do. Truly, can you imagine like broadcasting this publicly?

[45:34] Like broadcasting your like emotional instability like this? It's wild. That that is ultimately so much of what is going on all throughout this retaliation against us is that it's there's you know as much as the psychedelic field loves to talk a big game about how everyone is healed and psychedelics are going to fix the world. There's a lot of people who are at a very juvenile level around taking responsibility for their own emotions and like people wanting to lash out and blame people for how they feel and oftentimes that's because a true thing is raised that makes someone uncomfy and rather than face that people would rather lash out.

[46:19] And then the last clip I have here is just the last instance he relays in the interview with Andrew about him being quote unquote confronted by a USA employee. And you know, it was not even just this woman. There was another Eona employee who hit me with one of my least favorite. Actually, it's like this is like my true Achilles heel. I made multiple pieces about psychedelic toad venom, but like one of the most pedantic, irritating criticisms is people will say, "Oh, it's not really a venom. Technically, it's a poison." Like many amphibians, Buffo Alvarius possesses a powerful defense against predators. When bitten, the toad secretes a milky white fluid from its paratid glands that can poison its attacker, making them extremely ill and sometimes causing cardiac arrest.

[47:11] That makes your blood boil. Yeah, it makes my blood boil. Do you start yelling? I can't picture you yelling. No, I'm sure you've done it before. There's a video recording of this. I actually was able I was able to contain my volcanic rage. [laughter] You weren't shut the [expletive] up. [laughter] So, what did you say? I said, you know, I don't something like, oh, that's a teological distinction and it's really not a recognized one by anyone in the toxicology community. I'm like not familiar enough with the toxicology community to know if he's being truthful here, but based on his statements in other regards, I have to assume that there's a distinction for a reason, right? the test would be like to ask Hamilton how he feels about these powerful narcotic psychedelic drugs.

[48:04] You know, he would react similarly as specialists do when you misspeak outside of your area of expertise. It's just it's ridiculous that this is so we'll wrap this one real quick. It's just a couple more. Like there's a hyperrestrictive definition of the word venom that it has to be injected by a fang. It's not the dictionary definition of venom. I think a better one is to think about venoms as something that are actively delivered defensively as opposed to like a passive substance which would be a poison. Anyway, it is a venom. All I'm sorry, he's just like created his own [laughter] thing there. But all scholars who have ever studied this have called it a venom. Anyway, so the Eon employee after I gave a talk about this corrected me saying that it's not a venom and they're coming and tripping. They're being that's what this was about.

[48:51] I was wondering what this whole clip was about. And wait for why he says this person came up and said that to him and interrupting your talks because of your association with Compass or just because they feel like you're a leading figure in the prosic legalization movement. Because of the Compass stuff. Okay. Specifically because of your chemistry work with Compass. Yeah. Yeah. That was the reason. Yeah. Because I work with Compass. Somebody corrected me when I was incorrect once. It's so paranoid. [laughter] very thin skinned. It might be thinner skinned than the boufu alvarious glands containing the fivethoxy [laughter] dimethyl church. Oh, this is so painful watching these. It's truly painful for me. It hurts my soul. What do we got next, Ross?

[49:37] So yeah, that I just think is illustrative of the level of conspiracy he's acting on is is he's making up these people who are coming at him because he was a Compass employee acting on behalf of Eona to trip him up and make him look silly in public and it's like you watch the actual thing he's talking about. It was completely He thinks about quite a bit. He thinks about it a lot. He thinks people are out to assassinate his character. He's very paranoid about that clearly. And these next couple of clips are how he describes people, specifically us, our work, and his own sort of attempts at character assassination. That's where we'll pick back up for the final part of our conversation.