Christian Angermayer is an entrepreneur, investor and a thriving force in the current psychedelic field. He is the founder of Apeiron Investment Group and the biotech company ATAI Life Sciences. ATAI’s focus is developing solutions to help the more than 300 million people globally who suffer from depression. Their research explores the use of psychedelic compounds to heal a broad range of mental health disorders alongside depression. This is Christian’s second appearance on the show.
In this episode we really dive into his personal journey towards psychedelics and how he became a driving force in this exciting new industry. And we also talk about racial trauma, and the new ways we’re beginning to understand it and redefine our notions of mental health on a broader scale.
Transcript:
Anne Philippi
We're very happy to welcome Christian Angermayer today. Christian is a very, I would say thriving person, a very important person in a new psychedelic field. And of course, it would be great if you introduce yourself, for us to our audience.
Christian Angermayer
Okay. Yeah. Hello, everybody. Very happy to be here, which is actually a second time we're doing it together. So we're already good team. What about me, my name is Christian. I'm German living in London. I run my own family office, which is called Apeiron investment group. And I do invest a lot in psychedelics in the media of psychedelics, bringing them back as medical as hopefully soon a medical treatment for various forms of mental health disorder. So that's sort of the reason why I'm here otherwise, I invest a lot in generally in biotech, FinTech, crypto, deep tech, like space tech, AI. So the broad range of let's say, tech investments, I sort of invest or slash start, or have started psychedelic companies and sort of the biggest one actually a platform and then within a time or several compounds were developing, there is a company called Atai Life Sciences, which I founded, and which I would say is the largest psychedelic if you want to call it that way company at the moment, so enough sort of this virgin space of psychedelic medicine.
Anne Philippi
We had the idea to today to do a little bit like a fast run through to the most important questions that people that might not be in the psychedelic field already would actually always ask If you're talking about psychedelics, so of course, the first question would be why are you interested in psychedelics?
Christian Angermayer
I think a lot of people came to psychedelics because they were actively sort of seeking for something. So with me, it was rather, well, not the opposite. But I was like, I sort of was, in a certain way, I would use the word anti drugs, at least for myself, I'm a libertarian. So it's not that I'm, I was said, like, other people shouldn't do this or that. But I was for myself, in very early years, like when I was I remember when I was like, 13 or 14. And I have to say, I grew up in Bavaria, where beer is sort of like, basic nutrition. But I define for myself, and so for myself, so I don't want to take drugs, because very positively said, I was always a happy child. I was not bad in school. So I was like, Okay, you sort of have the jackpot with your brain, it's all fine. So don't risk it. Don't put anything sort of outside in your brain. And that actually sort of childhood thing sort of stayed with me. So I, I never have actually drank alcohol ever in my life. I never smoked a cigarette and never smoked a joint. Actually, the only thing I did was coffee, and I feel bad about that. And I started drinking coffee. I remember them I was 26. So my first coffee I drank was 26. And I was super guilty. And so really very Puritan I think he would say, and then like seven years ago at a actually was a birthday party. Friends had sort of set me up sat me next to was now a very dear friend who I met that evening, who's a very famous neuroscientist in Germany for his watch. Thank you very much for the evening. And so they I think their intention was a little bit Okay, let's try if we can get Christian drunk for the first time in his life, to his sort of thing was like to tell me that I'm not going to die. If I drink alcohol, yeah. Which obviously I knew is me. Anyway, so we had this fascinating discussion. And he pulled up as his main sort of part of the discussion, David Nutt's charts about sort of the risk of various struck so whoever is watching Google, David Nutt, a very famous neuroscientist here in London. He's at Imperial College, he wrote the book actually about the misperception we have about the risk of drugs. And and the chart is very graphic, because sort of it shows you what he did. He ranked all drugs, how risky they are. So the surprise effect was like that alcohol, by far, really, by far, I think it was, the whole score had like 80 risk points and alcohol had 72, actually followed by heroin. So heroin now, in a comprehensive view, is a little bit less risky, doesn't make it better. It's the second most risky drug. Yeah, but it's less risky, alcohol. And then at the very end, yeah, on the right side was a tiny, tiny risk score, which practically just means that you can hurt yourself if you do something stupid. And mushrooms were magic mushrooms. So that was sort of the basis of our discussion, it was super fascinated, because we have this sort of completely wrong, or at least Yeah, so let's say wrong or a few in our society, how which drug is risky, which not I remember, my parents told me if you ever take psychedelics, you never going to come back like this is like, you have to stay out of it. So So anyway, so that was the start. And then you also said look, but but his chart is not telling you is actually what is good for you. And obviously alcohol would be, again, the worst one, because there is no real upside. Maybe it makes a little bit more social, but like, but then he actually talked about his main point, sorry for the long story. But he talked about his work with psychedelics, he actually which I was really pressed, or actually, I'm more impressed. Now looking back, because I now understand the whole history of psychedelics, he did his PhD actually filled with Albert Hofmann. So he was deeply in that scene. And he was like, Look, all these psychedelics, especially magic mushrooms, have been used as medicine can cure various mental health disorders. And even if you're happy person, like yourself, they have sort of an upside, they can make you more happy, more creative, they can add to your life. So so that was the moment when I sort of because he was so legit. When I started, sort of thinking about it, researching it, and as I said, and maybe the introduction of it quick, but like so I started my career in biotech by cp founding a biotech company when I was 20. So when I Say I have my family office. It's not inherited, but it's sort of my own entrepreneurial work. So I do like biotech a lot. So I started reading and it actually took me a year. So I'm a very, very sort of risk averse person. So and then one year later, I was in the Caribbean with really, really close friends whom I trust. And as people say, we might come to that later. It's all about set and setting. So it was the right moment, right environment, right people, and they had homegrown magic mushrooms, it was in a country to add that disclaimer, where magic mushrooms are legal. They were like, want to try and I was like, You know what, yeah, let's do it. And as I always say, in one sentence, it was the single most meaningful thing, important thing defining thing in my whole life ever did. So it sort of very deep spiritual mystical experience, which really, as people describe it completely added to my life a lot. Yeah. And because of an entrepreneur in my heart, the next day, I was like, Okay, this should be available for people, not just in the Caribbean, not just like, yeah, so but like in a, in a regular way. And it was legal in the 60s. So I was like, why can't we bring it back? So and that was sort of the start of the whole endeavor? Sorry, for the long story.
Anne Philippi
You kind of brought us to the point when you tried it. So I mean, and as we know, like, when you when you do a magic mushroom trip, kind of the next six months leading up, like, like after this trip, it's often when the experience will show in your life, like in a way that you might not even know once you just finished the experience. So how would you describe what has really changed in your life, I mean, in general, as an entrepreneur, as a person, after you did your first trip,
Christian Angermayer
I have to say, again, positively, in my case, that I came already from a sort of a very happy place. So I'm an personally very spiritualist, I was always into meditation into sort of self improvement, like the whole self exploration, whatever. So which, by the way, I think so I, I immediately understood why sort of magic mushrooms in that case, and in general, psychedelics can help you so much because I saw in my case that they sort of, in a way deeper way, obviously, I was ever able to reach myself, but they sort of triggered the same mechanism, or the same positive Yeah, sort of self exploration stuff, meaning a lot of, let's say, mystical traditions, or what ever tried to teach you partly without psychedelics, because like, that is not the only way to sort of come to that sort of revelations and, and sort of exploration of yourself. Yeah, but they have just like sort of the eyes. Michael Pollan says you go from zero to one, like, while the others like meditation, you work and work and work. Yeah. But like, so when I sort of, I immediately saw how they sort of fitting into that whole, let's call it wisdom, tradition, or mystical tradition of religions. So I think that in my case, mean, I did see apologists for say there was at least massive change from minus one to one because I was already sort of the way I was thinking, I would say, but maybe the fun anecdote is to give you a concrete answer is that like, I think it was like four weeks later, my mother, who might who I didn't tell that I took magic mushrooms. When I was back in Germany, she was like, something did change last week. So what did you do? So and the reason was that I'm an only child, and I have a great relationship with my parents. But like, you always take that for granted, and you're always busy. And I see them actually, I think my parents would completely disagree. They would say, I'm seeing they're way too liberal. But I think, yeah, I see them fairly often meeting every one or two weeks, because they moved for me to Frankfurt, and I'm in Frankfurt quite regularly. So they again, they still complain, but I think it's fairly regularly. But the actually, the real problem is not how often you see them, but how is the time you spend with them. So you come home, meaning I try to stay with sometimes with my parents, and then you come home, and you're busy, and you'd come home late and you are tired, you want to go to bed? And sort of that changed a lot. So I try to say, sort of, and not in a negative way it sounds I think that's the thing is always as you know, very hard to talk about psychedelic experiences to it, not the negative way I realize that time is. And again, by the way, for all the ones who watch now and maybe haven't done a lot of the things I think people realize and for them, it's very important realization is very painful, I think so you might say, Jesus, I could have told you that I realized like, life is ending someone life has a limit and sort of you have to To cherish the people you love in a quality way while they still there. Yeah. It's sort of so that the way I spent time with my parents changed extremely positively again, not that it was negative before I just like try to put more effort in, if that makes sense. Yeah. And they realize that parents are very sensitive for that.
Anne Philippi
And you invest a lot in this you try to come up with in your companies with solutions with medication that will kind of engage with their problems. So why do you think today, maybe you can talk a little bit about this incredibly big mental health crisis that might as we hear from a lot of scientists, also Robin, cut Harris that might even increase in the next couple of months after the main COVID crisis has passed?
Christian Angermayer
Well, where do we start, because it's such a big problem, meaning first of all, factually seen it became the number one disease actually even even bigger in terms of overall burden costs, whatever patients suffering, then that heart and cardiovascular disease, this is so so so that's a fact. And interestingly, negatively. Interestingly, I think, if you look at the numbers of people suffering from mental health issues, they actually growing every year, which sort of is, is kind of weird, because it's not an infectious disease, meaning if you look at that, I had one scientist, which interesting article, which I read, which he said, like if you look at it, it looks like an infectious disease or something like, which is spreading, although it's sort of in the maybe in the, in the, in the main definition of all infectious diseases. It's obviously not, but it's actually very worrisome. Why is mental health spreading? And I, I think scientists have two explanations, and I think the work has just started. So I could take, it might take away, but it's not scientific, but like, I think, factually, my guess is that, that there is two reasons. On the one side, we diagnose mental health issues more. So meaning, if you look back in the 50s, or generally look back in 20 3040 years ago, I think, various mental health always has been a stigma, it's still a stigma, but thank God, it's losing a little bit of a stigma. And obviously, the more it loses the stigma, the more people are openly talking about it, and also go to the doctor and get diagnosed with it. So there's this one effect that we sort of more precisely diagnose it, because people are more open, because we have the tools. We understand these things. But it's another thing like 50 years ago, we didn't understand the brain after the war, as you say, if people were what we would maybe call now had post traumatic stress disorder. Maybe the people would have said, Hey, you survive, be happy man up, go to the gym, do something. Yeah, push it away. That's up to one dinos. But I also do think, an absurd thing, because I do think that the world we live in, is inherently not good for our rain. Which is actually absurd. Because when you can say we had COVID, and we recording that while we see all the riots in America. But still, if you leave these two things out, which are blinks, I think if we factually, and I'm a very, very big optimist for the world, if you look at the world, as it is today, it is better in any sort of any measure how you measure better from nutrition for people from way less child mortality, way more people who have access to education and all of that, like so. But still, although we live in a better world than maybe people after the war. Yeah. Which is, I think, definitely even if you look at America, people are complaining and I do see all the problems, but it's still better than after the Second World War Germany. Yeah, and stuff like that. I think the world we created, and I think social media and the whole online, artificial world is not a good place for our brain. And even more really to think about it because it won't go away social media is there for stayed, the world is there and it's actually getting, I wouldn't like to say worse again, because I'm an optimist, but the world world will be more technologized every day, every week, every month, every year. So we need to think about how can humanity sort of, if I say, say be saved in that it sounds so dramatic, but how can we preserve our, our human core in that technologized world. And I do think that psychedelics can play a very important part in that.
Anne Philippi
I think that you can almost see why psychedelics will become more important, because to really make that connection, again, between people that they have lost because of technology or obviously, other horrible reasons that we're just witnessing in America. So but I mean, obviously, your venture capital...
Christian Angermayer
I don't know, when the podcast will be, will be released. But like, I saw a lot actually last night, because, again, when people are watching, like we recording that, in that week, where the whole riots in America flew out. And and very obviously, I think that's a lot. It's a very broad and very complicated topic, because I think there are so many things which are wrong and wrong for a very long time. But But I think, and by the way, that what I think is, is a problem in many, many conflicts. And you can take a small conflict in a relationship, for example, if a couple over decades, sort of is fighting and nagging to conflict within a society, like if you if you look at the ethnic conflicts now in America, to conflict between countries, whatever any form of conflict, sort of results in, in deep trauma. And the problem is, it's like a vicious circle, the longer this, this goes on. And one sort of, again, I'm super simplifying, and people might watch it and say, hey, it's too simplifying, but like to look at Israel and Palestine. Yeah, that's a trauma for maybe 2000 years. And the problem is, or think about a marriage. Yeah, when people can go in to a fight. And it's actually not about I don't know, the toilet, which hasn't been put down or whatever, it's actually it's just the occasion, but you have that whole history of hurt, and, and trauma and pain and whatever, which is in your bag. And like you, you flooded it all, but like 10 years ago, you said that. And so, and the same, I think, again, is on a more societal basis. Yeah. And one beautiful thing psychedelics Can, can do they heal trauma. Now, this is why in the 60s, they were actually used very, very successfully, MDMA and psilocybin, for couples therapy, with very low success rate, meaning it never had, it was never actually sort of used as a medication because sort of having marriage problems is not defined as a is an illness. Yeah. So but it was used for that. And we have great record, and studies showing so and so. So if you don't on a societal basis, I would say we have so much trauma in our world. That, yes, there there needs to be some sort of, let's say economic change, and really to include people or whatever, I think, if we don't address the deeper trauma in all of that, we will not be able to really come to solutions. So it's a very, from a medical point of view. It's a very sort of complicated discussion, because obviously, you just can approve, if I go back to our sort of endeavor, trying to make psychedelics legal, again, as a medical solution, you can just approve it for an illness, and illness, depression, wherever you cannot say, Oh, our society has an illness, but in a certain way, our society does have an illness, yeah, or has a lot of them. And one is the trauma and the pain we inflicted on each other. So maybe I visually, I look 20 years ahead, maybe we sort of even approach psychedelics. With this broader view, or last sentence on that. I thought a lot about like, you take all the refugees coming to Europe, everybody is talking about. And it's great that we're talking about it talking is over. It's the first step to solution, but like that we have to sort of work and we have to think about how to integrate these people. But my bet is a big part of that people are my guess is that they have PTSD. And if you're coming from a warzone, yeah, and if you're a child in a war zone, you do most likely have what we call post traumatic stress disorder. So and this will hinder actually proper integration and not because this is the sort of the political wrong takeaway. You have sort of the one side who's just saying, Oh, it's, let's say in Germany, it's out there. You have sort of rather Neff to saying how the Germans need to work harder to integrate these people. It's sort of the it's the fault of the hosts. And then you have the right wing people who say, no, no, no, these people don't want to integrate. Yeah. And maybe it's neither nor maybe it's nor the, the fault of the hosts, nor that those people don't want to, it's maybe that they have really trauma and PTSD or whatever, which just makes it not possible for them to integrate. And we would need to approach that discussion, from a totally different level,
Anne Philippi
There is already one study in the context of MAPS with an African American doctor, and she, I think she started already to first study for PTSD, through racism in African Americans. And so I think she has started already, but just very shortly. So integration in this, like, in a bigger context of a society, I think this will become much bigger, if it comes to with psychedelics, if it comes to racism, if it comes to discrimination, and even like, if I mean, they're already kind of possibilities for big CEOs to undergo, let's say, a psychedelic experience. And I heard from somebody who does that with people who actually are leaders from other company, that even their whole relationship to their kind of coworkers are there, the team completely changes after this. And they kind of reset the company, and they reset their relationships to anybody who works with them. So which might be an interesting thought for the times that are coming. But I mean, you can totally, totally understand, I mean, which you basically did to in a way, right? I mean, you, you had different ideas about companies after you've done this. So, and I mean, what I would like to talk about also is, we kind of talked about psilocybin, basically, but a tie is also working on other substances like ketamine and Ibogaine, which most people maybe haven't heard so much about. So maybe, what does that have again? What is ketamine? Could you explain?
Christian Angermayer
Yeah, so so so yeah, in general, we so far, we always talked about the word psychedelics, which is sort of actually not even fully defined in terms of some people would argue and actually, some people argue very passionately, and I think it doesn't matter. But like, what's exactly falling into it, there is MDMA. Is it a psychedelic not even kept them in people will already start, but I think we call definitely, communism, but like, there are so so as you mentioned, so there is the whole sort of group name psychedelics, we work as a tie with our portfolio company complex pathways on psilocybin, which I think is always the most famous sort of household magic mushrooms. Psilocybin is the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, to the most household sort of psychedelic so that the two sort of other main ones in a tie, as you said, ketamine, actually a new version of ketamine. Iboga let's, let's start with ketamine. So ketamine, also called receiving ketamine is actually very old and not everybody, but a lot of people will have had it in the hospital because this is actually ketamine. The receiving ketamine is a good example of what we want other psychedelics to be again, meaning ketamine, your original version already today is legal in hospitals. Yeah. And it's illegal still outside of hospitals, because it can have psychoactive effect. It's just legal if you have it under medical supervision. But interestingly, ketamine was originally not used as a mental health drug, but in a high dose is actually a tranquilizer, up to an anesthetic. So it was used to put people down and operations to sedate and whatever. And then the short version was that sort of anecdotally, by the way, side note, which I think will become thanks to the internet and because we I sort of mentioned that technology can have a negative effect technology can have multiple, very positive effects. Yeah. And sort of one positive effect is actually that by technology, meaning by communicating online exchanging idea, so doctors found out that hey, people who take ketamine and might have been depressed before, especially actually patients, they found out we had like a suicide attempt and then they get ketamine to calm them, whatever, that they the next day, they were sort of not depressed anymore. Very simple. They were like what's happening like we gave them a tranquilizer and sort of the depression was gone. So over the years, the realization came that ketamine also has an extremely good antidepressant effect, because ketamine is out of patterns. And that shows by the way, and I know it's very controversial topic. Yeah, but like you're always to explain it because I think it's so important that you originally kept them in because it's out of pattern. Nobody's investing money because Patent means nobody owns it. But if nobody has ownership in terms of responsibility, so nobody was sort of putting money behind this finding, so it stayed anecdotal. So people can use it technically, so called off labor. But the risk is very high. Doctors don't do it. So and then, actually, the some, when they found out this was sort of the positive moment that kept the receiving ketamine consists of two isomers. And they called one art ketamine, and the other one s ketamine, and they were patentable, because it was sort of a new discovery. And so then actually, Johnson Johnson was working on s ketamine, for various reasons they saw back then, like, You mean, like, no, they they thought that this is the more profit, the more profitable in terms of more promising one. And we actually took our ketamine and hindsight, you took the right choice, because our ketamine actually seems to have we're about to prove that in a FDA way, but our ketamine seems to have a higher actually potency for or against depression. Yeah, and at the same time, actually a lower disassociate effect, which could even lead, actually, that this could be the first ketamine you can administer at home, and don't need a doctor doing it with you, which would be important because obviously, the costs for the healthcare system are much higher, if you if you have to administer it with a doctor, this is what we're working on.
