Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Ethan Edelman, and this is Psychoactive, a production
Speaker 1: of iHeart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. Psychoactive is the show
Speaker 1: where we talk about all things drugs. But any views
Speaker 1: expressed here do not represent those of I Heart Media,
Speaker 1: Protozoa Pictures, or their executives and employees. Indeed, as an
Speaker 1: inveterate contrarian, I can tell you they may not even
Speaker 1: represent my own. And nothing contained in this show should
Speaker 1: be used as medical advice or encouragement to use any
Speaker 1: type of drug. Hello, Psychoactive listeners. UH. Today's guest is
Speaker 1: Hamilton's Morris. He's a journalist, UH, documentary maker, a scientific researcher,
Speaker 1: and explad lore. He's not even thirty five years old
Speaker 1: as yet, but he's made quite a name for himself
Speaker 1: and had quite an impact, most especially with his TV
Speaker 1: series called Hamilton's Pharmacopeia, which started off as a series
Speaker 1: of columns for Vice magazine and then became something for
Speaker 1: Vice HBO TV. And I have to tell you I've
Speaker 1: been binging on his episodes of LA there's a total
Speaker 1: of twenty of them, and I just can't recommend it
Speaker 1: highly enough. So Hamilton's thanks, so much for for joining
Speaker 1: me today, Thank you for having me. So, I mean,
Speaker 1: I have to tell you, on one level, I feel
Speaker 1: like something that you and I are in some respects
Speaker 1: kindred spirits and in one respect major respect different, and
Speaker 1: that you're really coming in part from a love of chemistry,
Speaker 1: whereas for me that's always been the kind of part
Speaker 1: of the whole drug piece that never quite engaged me.
Speaker 1: But I say, Kendred Spear in the sense of being
Speaker 1: interested in the broad spectrum of psychoactive drugs and of
Speaker 1: their impact and impact of use on culture and society
Speaker 1: and and on prohibition. But I want to ask you
Speaker 1: right now, virtually all of your adult life right has
Speaker 1: been devoted to studying this, communicating about this, teaching people
Speaker 1: about this. What was it you think that grabbed you? Well,
Speaker 1: I would actually say that, you know, I was always
Speaker 1: very interested in the power of psychoactive drugs, even dating
Speaker 1: back to being in kindergarten. I can remember watching the
Speaker 1: news and hearing reports of people overdosing on drugs and
Speaker 1: finding the idea of it, just the very idea that
Speaker 1: drugs could kill somebody totally fascinating as a young child,
Speaker 1: and I would tell other children on the playground about it, saying,
Speaker 1: did you know that if he mix alcohol and sleeping
Speaker 1: pills that can be fatal? It can kill you. And
Speaker 1: this wasn't, you know, something scary to me. It was
Speaker 1: something amazing, the idea that a combination of two substances
Speaker 1: could cause death. Um. You know, it's sort of in
Speaker 1: the same way that a child might find a karate
Speaker 1: move that's like the touch of death fascinating. And there
Speaker 1: was a certain magic to it all that I always
Speaker 1: found really really interesting. Um you know. I read Fear
Speaker 1: and Loathing in Las Vegas as a young child, and
Speaker 1: kind of like the storytelling and artistic elements of people
Speaker 1: describing their psychedelic experiences. But I would say the real
Speaker 1: formative moment was reading an article in the New York
Speaker 1: Times magazine when I was in high school about Alexander
Speaker 1: Shaalgan and thinking, well, this is just about the most
Speaker 1: amazing human being I've ever heard of. This is I
Speaker 1: couldn't think of a fictional character as interesting as this person,
Speaker 1: and I as soon as I read about him, I
Speaker 1: was obsessed. And I read Pekall and t Call and
Speaker 1: that was my entry into I think a deeper understand
Speaker 1: ending of the chemistry and the richness of this world.
Speaker 1: I mean, so, how your teenager when you read that
Speaker 1: article about Sasha Sugun, were you already using psycholic drugs
Speaker 1: at that point or anything else? No. No, My father
Speaker 1: had a psychiatrist named Doris Millman who had published a
Speaker 1: number of medical articles on the dangers of LSD, specifically
Speaker 1: in the context of children using LSD, and he had
Speaker 1: this idea that psychedelics and LSD in particular were very dangerous.
Speaker 1: And he's a rational, permissive person who doesn't ask me
Speaker 1: not to do unreasonable things. And he said, don't take LSD.
Speaker 1: It's just not safe. Don't take it. You know, there's
Speaker 1: mental illness in our family. It's simply not a good idea. Um,
Speaker 1: that's something you absolutely must avoid. And I thought, all right,
Speaker 1: fair enough. So I had this idea that LSD and
Speaker 1: classical serot energic psychedelics were especially risky. But I was
Speaker 1: fascinating did with salvia when I was in high school.
Speaker 1: Probably my first real work with chemistry was extracting and
Speaker 1: purifying salvin or in a from Salvia divinorum leaves, and
Speaker 1: so I had used that, but I had never used
Speaker 1: a classical sertennergic psychedelic like psilocybin containing mushrooms or LSD
Speaker 1: at the time that I found out about Alexander Shalgan.
Speaker 1: I mean, were there other potential issues competing with drugs,
Speaker 1: psychoactive drugs and chemistry for your attention or excitement back
Speaker 1: then or was it just a clear straight shot from
Speaker 1: there up to now? Uh No, not really. I mean
Speaker 1: I think I had this sort of typical high school
Speaker 1: interest in alcohol and that kind of thing, you know, cannabis,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't really a huge part of my life.
Speaker 1: I found it interesting, very very interesting. But I wasn't
Speaker 1: somebody that jumped in head first as a high school student.
Speaker 1: I was neurotic and coustious and um. Although I did it,
Speaker 1: you know, smoke occasionally or drink occasionally, it wasn't a
Speaker 1: huge part of my life. It wasn't until I was
Speaker 1: in college and the gray market research chemical industry made
Speaker 1: it possible to order all of these chemicals that I
Speaker 1: was able to really actually use a lot of the
Speaker 1: psychedelics at Alexander Salgan described, which of course creates an
Speaker 1: even deeper appreciation for his work. It's one thing to
Speaker 1: read the peak call entry for tow CT seven and
Speaker 1: another thing entirely to actually try to CT seven and realize, Wow,
Speaker 1: this is such a fascinating chemical that this man created
Speaker 1: in his backyard in California. Yeah. No, I mean it's interesting.
Speaker 1: I think I first met Sasha. It was and I
Speaker 1: was teaching at Princeton and I got in a significant
Speaker 1: grant to create a Princeton working group on the Future
Speaker 1: of drug use and Alternative to drug prohibition, and Andy
Speaker 1: Wile suggested it that I reach out to Sasha Sugin.
Speaker 1: I didn't know, and he said he had based been
Speaker 1: keeping a very low profile. But then in nine six,
Speaker 1: Congress had passed the Federal Control Substances Act that effectively
Speaker 1: criminalized a lot of the work that Sasha was doing
Speaker 1: in his back backyard lab. And so he and I
Speaker 1: became friendly, and when I would go out to the
Speaker 1: Bay Area, I would go over to his home and
Speaker 1: visit him and his wife Anne, where I was on
Speaker 1: Shulgin Road and Lafayette, California. I mean, he really was
Speaker 1: a truly extraordinary, extraordinary figure. Um. You know, you know
Speaker 1: I watched Um, I guess one of the first documentaries
Speaker 1: you must have done was your visit to uh to
Speaker 1: see Sasha and when you're just in your early twenties
Speaker 1: and sort of your reverence for him just just came through,
Speaker 1: uh you know in that Oh yeah, no, I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean a huge I even would go so far
Speaker 1: as to say I became a journalist as a reason
Speaker 1: to talk to Alexander Shulgan. You know, that was that
Speaker 1: was probably one of the early moode evaders, was you know,
Speaker 1: why would he talk to me? Well, maybe he talked
Speaker 1: to me if I were writing an article about him
Speaker 1: or you know, maybe then that would be some incentive.
Speaker 1: And that was kind of one of the main things
Speaker 1: that interested me about journalism at the beginning was that
Speaker 1: it was a license to be curious about things that
Speaker 1: otherwise you would have no legitimate reason to ask questions
Speaker 1: about why would somebody talk to and annoying college student
Speaker 1: about their work. They have better things to do, they're busy.
Speaker 1: But if he's working for a magazine and he's writing
Speaker 1: an article or making a short documentary, well maybe they'll
Speaker 1: We'll give him a couple hours. So that was one
Speaker 1: of my by early things that I wanted to do
Speaker 1: was just spend time with Alexander Shulgan. And his family
Speaker 1: was very kind to me. They would invite me to
Speaker 1: their home on the fourth of July each year, and
Speaker 1: I did have the opportunity to spend a good amount
Speaker 1: of time with him at the end of his life,
Speaker 1: and their memories that I will always share. Ish m hmm.
Speaker 1: Were there other key people you met at snash this
Speaker 1: place who became imported in your life thereafter? Well, certainly,
Speaker 1: I mean it of course attracted a very interesting group
Speaker 1: of people, and it ranged from clandestine chemists too, scientific researchers,
Speaker 1: many of whom are still part of the world of
Speaker 1: psychedelic research today. Of course, there was Paul Daley who
Speaker 1: was sort of Shellgan's protege and worked with him in
Speaker 1: the lab at the end of his life after he
Speaker 1: had pretty much gone blind. Um and Paul Daily is
Speaker 1: still working in Shulgan's lab and now is the head
Speaker 1: of the Sholgan Research Institute, which is a sort of
Speaker 1: pharmaceutical company aimed at continuing Alexander Shulgan's research. So I've
Speaker 1: you know, remained in touch with him and and Sholgan
Speaker 1: and Tanya Manning and all these great wonderful people that
Speaker 1: were part of Team Shulgin. It was called and of course,
Speaker 1: and yeah, I mean and is you know, a very
Speaker 1: amazing and influential and inspiring person as well. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean really a sort of founder of M d M
Speaker 1: A psychotherapy in many respects. I remember it was unusual
Speaker 1: when I created that working group at Princeton. Sasha was
Speaker 1: the only one I hadn't thought to invite Anne. And
Speaker 1: Sasha said, well, wherever I go, she goes over, she
Speaker 1: goes I go, So she's going to be part of
Speaker 1: the group as well. So they really were this sort
Speaker 1: of dynamic duo, you know, putting and bringing their perspective
Speaker 1: to thinking about the future of drug use. Well, let
Speaker 1: me ask you know, one of the things that comes
Speaker 1: through when I'm watching and binging your episodes is your
Speaker 1: reverence for some of the you know, the the underground chemists.
Speaker 1: You know. I had a Leonard Picard on the show
Speaker 1: a while back and he talked about the brotherhood of
Speaker 1: underground Chemists, and and what I comes through out of
Speaker 1: you as well is really almost a reverence for for
Speaker 1: who these people were and what they were doing. And
Speaker 1: some of them are obviously people who are well known.
Speaker 1: You know, there's Dave Nichols, who was at produced and
Speaker 1: a leading person operating with a government license, producing many
Speaker 1: these chemicals, doing the research, but you also look at
Speaker 1: people who were on the underground and maybe and so
Speaker 1: I remember three of the names that popped up as
Speaker 1: I was watching. One was Ken Nelson, another was Steve
Speaker 1: gil another was Darryl Lemaire. Can you just tell the
Speaker 1: audience a little bit about these three guys and maybe
Speaker 1: reflect on what they shared in common? Yes, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that. You know, there are a very very small
Speaker 1: number of underground chemists who become public figures, and those
Speaker 1: are people like Owsley Stanley or Nick sand and they
Speaker 1: represent a minuscule minority of the people that have actually
Speaker 1: built this world of psychedelics. Because a sort of unspoken
Speaker 1: fact of all of this is that when you go to,
Speaker 1: you know, a psychedelic conference, or you read an article
Speaker 1: about psychedelics, the chances are every single person that is
Speaker 1: there and interested in psychedelics has used them illegally, and
Speaker 1: the psychedelics that they have used have been produced by
Speaker 1: somebody who risked their freedom to make them. But those
Speaker 1: people get no credit for the work that they've done,
Speaker 1: and their names are typically completely unknown. So one of
Speaker 1: the things that I wanted to do in my work
Speaker 1: was find people that made these substances, the people who
Speaker 1: weren't known, and talk to them about what their motivations were.
Speaker 1: And I have had the pleasure of spending time with
Speaker 1: an enormous number of different types of underground chemists from
Speaker 1: around the world, and I think that their stories are
Speaker 1: utterly fascinating and are really foundational to the world of
Speaker 1: psychoactive drugs. It's probably the biggest part of this history
Speaker 1: that has never been told, and so I tried to
Speaker 1: do my part to tell a few of these stories
Speaker 1: that really explain the origin of these substances. Because you
Speaker 1: talk about something like PCP, and you know, if you
Speaker 1: look at it a typical historical gloss of the history
Speaker 1: of PCP, they'll say, Oh, it was developed by up
Speaker 1: John Pharmaceuticals in Detroit and it was used as an anesthetic,
Speaker 1: but then it escaped onto the street. We'll wait a second,
Speaker 1: how did that happen? How did it escape onto the street?
Speaker 1: Who's the person that made PCP, What was their motivation,
Speaker 1: why were they doing it, who did they sell it to,
Speaker 1: what did they think it was, what effect did they
Speaker 1: think it would have on society? And so I wanted
Speaker 1: to answer a few of those sorts of questions. Everyone's
Speaker 1: talking about bouf will various venom, Well, where did this
Speaker 1: come from? I remember Michael Paullen making a sort of
Speaker 1: off hand joke about it on Joe Rogan, like, how
Speaker 1: the heck did anyone think of that smoking toad venom?
Speaker 1: What kind of crazy person would do that? And on
Speaker 1: one hand, it's a joke, but on the other hand,
Speaker 1: it's a serious question. What kind of person would do that?
Speaker 1: Who is that person? What was their name? Why did
Speaker 1: they do it? So I set out to find the
Speaker 1: first person who had smoked well various venom and learn
Speaker 1: about their story. And it was actually an immensely difficult
Speaker 1: investigative task that required years of work, but I was
Speaker 1: able to track down this person. His name was Ken Nelson.
Speaker 1: I interviewed him on his literal deathbed. He died just
Speaker 1: about two weeks after the interview, and the story is
Speaker 1: totally fascinating. So the same is also true of somebody
Speaker 1: like Steve gil This is a name that is not
Speaker 1: widely known. He's a close friend of mine. I talked
Speaker 1: to him to this day. And this is somebody who
Speaker 1: is responsible for what are likely hundreds of thousands of
Speaker 1: M d M A experiences. These are probably, in many
Speaker 1: instances transformative experiences that people had, yet the name and
Speaker 1: the origin of that chemical is not known to those people,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean with the Steve Gil portion of
Speaker 1: one of your shows, I mean, that's a guy who
Speaker 1: was producing M d m A illegally for decades and
Speaker 1: then gets busted. I mean, you have this very powerful
Speaker 1: moment in there, you know about he goes to prison,
Speaker 1: the tragedy of seeing somebody who's been creating you know,
Speaker 1: so much good I mean benefit in the world, just
Speaker 1: being sort of destroyed by that and not able to
Speaker 1: not not destroyed, but really destroyed for a while, and
Speaker 1: and not struggling to come back from that um whereas
Speaker 1: somebody like Ken Nelson, right, I mean his was not
Speaker 1: I guess so much concern about the criminality of it.
Speaker 1: I mean, in this case with five five M e
Speaker 1: O d M T the toad medicine. You know, oftimes
Speaker 1: people think about these things like peyote or or you know,
Speaker 1: whether you also be talking about coca or opium, or
Speaker 1: it could be thinking about on ayahuasca. Sometimes where these
Speaker 1: things go back the use goes back hundreds or thousands
Speaker 1: of years. But with the toad medicine, ken Nelson sort
Speaker 1: of figured out that thing about the toes gland, it
Speaker 1: was not illegal, right, I mean, just tell us a
Speaker 1: little bit of that story right there. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's a very convoluted story that has multiple threads. The
Speaker 1: history of five EMMYO d m T has an indigenous
Speaker 1: thread where there is a history dating back thousands of
Speaker 1: years of people using various traditional snuff preparations from plants
Speaker 1: that contain small quantities of five EMMYO d m T s.
Speaker 1: You could start there thousands of years ago. But the
Speaker 1: experience of using these plants that have complex mixtures of
Speaker 1: tripped to means is not comparable to the experience of
Speaker 1: smoking boof will various venom, which is, for all intents
Speaker 1: and purposes, just five m e O d MT. Yes,
Speaker 1: there are lots of other things in it chemically, but
Speaker 1: in terms of what is responsible for the psycho pharmacological
Speaker 1: effect of the smoked venom, it is a five mm
Speaker 1: EO d m T mediated effect. Based on everything that
Speaker 1: is currently known and so ken Nelson had been reading
Speaker 1: a news report about an anthropologist named Janette run Quest,
Speaker 1: who had excavated a Cherokee midden pile that contained thousands
Speaker 1: of toad bones, and the high pathetical purpose of these
Speaker 1: toadbones was that they were part of a drug ritual.
Speaker 1: As it turned out, this anthropologist had made a mistake.
Speaker 1: It was far more likely, based on contemporary anthropological analysis,
Speaker 1: that these toads were a food source, not a drug.
Speaker 1: And there's even evidence that the same group would consume
Speaker 1: toads as a food source. And on top of that,
Speaker 1: boof Ball various didn't exist anywhere close to the location
Speaker 1: of these thousands of toadbones, and it was a different species,
Speaker 1: so it doesn't really line up. But what's interesting is
Speaker 1: he was inspired by this idea even though it was incorrect.
Speaker 1: He thought, Okay, there's an ancient history of this, an
Speaker 1: ancient history that likely did not exist, and I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go and I'm gonna try to do that thing that
Speaker 1: other people were doing in the past. So he thought
Speaker 1: he was recapitulating a tradition, when in fact he was
Speaker 1: creating something completely new. And he read an article by
Speaker 1: Victorio or Spammer, who's famous for having discovered saratonin, who's
Speaker 1: obsas with the chemistry of various frog secretions and toad
Speaker 1: venoms and things of that nature. And he had found
Speaker 1: that the venom of bouf wal various contained five m
Speaker 1: E O D M T. And he thought, all right, well,
Speaker 1: that's that's a good candidate right there. Let me locate
Speaker 1: this toad. I'll do what the people were doing in
Speaker 1: the past, and I will express the venom and smoke it,
Speaker 1: and had this transcendent experience. But he was actually, based
Speaker 1: on all known history, the first person to have done
Speaker 1: anything like this. Mm hmmm. Why did you think he
Speaker 1: remained kept himself anonymous too? More or less you figured
Speaker 1: out who he was. Because there is a tremendous amount
Speaker 1: of fear. I mean, people are still afraid, as they
Speaker 1: should be. The consequences for ending up on the wrong
Speaker 1: side of the story can be nothing less than the
Speaker 1: complete destruction of your life, and for many people that
Speaker 1: was a risk they did not want to take, especially
Speaker 1: in the nineteen eighties. I mean, like I said, it's
Speaker 1: still scary now. But in the eighties, all of this
Speaker 1: stuff that we take for granted, all of this reform,
Speaker 1: in this sense of progress, I don't think existed. I mean,
Speaker 1: I wasn't alive at that time, but that is certainly
Speaker 1: my impression that it was a darker and more frightening
Speaker 1: time and even though it was technically legal, it's the
Speaker 1: case that people will find out a way to get
Speaker 1: you in trouble for these things if they really want to,
Speaker 1: which was another aspect of my more recent bouf While
Speaker 1: Various documentary from the third season of my show, the
Speaker 1: man Bob Shepherd who was merely keeping the toads as
Speaker 1: pets and was arrested for it and lost everything, lost
Speaker 1: his job, lost all of his money in the legal battle.
Speaker 1: He ended up homeless as a result of simply keeping
Speaker 1: these toads as pets at a time when five mm
Speaker 1: e o d m T was not a controlled substance
Speaker 1: in the United States. They initially charged him with possession
Speaker 1: of boufoton in, but then when the forensic chemist who
Speaker 1: is tasked with analyzing the venom to find boofoten in
Speaker 1: it to charge him, did the analysis, his name was
Speaker 1: Ready Shamakura. He didn't find any boofotening at all. He
Speaker 1: only found five m e O d m T, so
Speaker 1: they couldn't charge him and they was all dropped by then.
Speaker 1: It was too late. The reputational damage had been done
Speaker 1: and there was no coming back. I'm just thinking, you know,
Speaker 1: one of these things you do in your episodes, as
Speaker 1: you sometimes interview the cops, including the cops who are
Speaker 1: busting these people. But the one I most liked is
Speaker 1: you interviewed a d E A chemist and then you
Speaker 1: did this beautiful scene where you're juxtaposing the d E
Speaker 1: A chemist talking about his research with I think Steve
Speaker 1: gil the M d M A producer, I think it
Speaker 1: was him, and you're basically showing the parallels between the
Speaker 1: two of them. I mean, the same the same joy
Speaker 1: in the beauty of chemistry and the fascination with these psychelics.
Speaker 1: But then, of course, you know one of them has
Speaker 1: never tried anything. The d A guy, right, it's all
Speaker 1: about the chemistry and the science. But you didn't press
Speaker 1: him quite as hard about how this was a guy
Speaker 1: who looked up to Sasha shil Again. But then when
Speaker 1: Sashas gets rated by the d A, you know, he
Speaker 1: just kind of expresses a mild regret. What was your
Speaker 1: own personal feeling when you're interacting with him on that.
Speaker 1: My feeling is that they have a very black and white,
Speaker 1: non moralistic view of things. There is a law, you
Speaker 1: break the law, you suffer the consequences. That's the way
Speaker 1: it goes. And I think he also still values you know,
Speaker 1: he was in the military. He values the work of
Speaker 1: the d e A. He doesn't like to criticize the
Speaker 1: d e A. He still speaks at forensic conferences. I
Speaker 1: happen to really like Terry del cass and he's a
Speaker 1: brilliant scientist. That's the d A researcher. Yes, that's the
Speaker 1: d A researcher. And it just happens to be the
Speaker 1: case that he is so interested in exactly the same
Speaker 1: thing in a totally different way. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: that's one of the most puzzling things about forensic chemists
Speaker 1: and narcotics officers is you have people who are obsessed
Speaker 1: with drugs, who have all of the passion for drugs
Speaker 1: of a drug user, but they think about them in
Speaker 1: an entirely different way than the drug user. And I
Speaker 1: think it's really important to talk to people like that
Speaker 1: to try to figure out the psychology of where they're
Speaker 1: coming from. Because, of course I agree with you. If
Speaker 1: you were friends with Alexander Slgan, if you admired Alexander
Speaker 1: Slgan as a scientist, How could you think that there
Speaker 1: is anything okay about arresting that brilliant man for doing
Speaker 1: nothing wrong. But this is one of the complexities of
Speaker 1: this world. People have very different interpretations of the same phenomenon.
Speaker 1: And he happened to work for the government and work
Speaker 1: in law enforcement, and that was how he interpreted it.
Speaker 1: And if he felt differently, maybe he suppressed those emotions
Speaker 1: because it's not an emotion that he could express. And
Speaker 1: do you think did Sasha child can ever have any
Speaker 1: qualms of his own about I mean, he had a
Speaker 1: schedule in license, I guess for quite a while. Did
Speaker 1: you think he ever had his own qualms about his
Speaker 1: interactions with the d e A researchers. I think probably
Speaker 1: he did at the end, especially. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: one of the things that made Shellgan so powerful and
Speaker 1: so important was that he wasn't just a chemist. He
Speaker 1: was so much more than that, and he was somebody
Speaker 1: that brought people together. He didn't take sides. He would
Speaker 1: talk to you. If you were a cop, he would
Speaker 1: talk to you. If you worked for the d A.
Speaker 1: He would talk to you if you were a clandestined chemist.
Speaker 1: He would talk to you if you were a student.
Speaker 1: He would talk to you if you didn't know anything
Speaker 1: about chemistry. He loved to teach people and to include
Speaker 1: people in his world, and that was what made him powerful,
Speaker 1: is that he wasn't judgmental ideologue who felt the need
Speaker 1: to wag his finger at everyone that disagreed with him.
Speaker 1: He was curious about the world. He wanted to learn
Speaker 1: why people were the way they were and try to
Speaker 1: bring people together through knowledge and understanding. I mean, he
Speaker 1: know he wrote an entire book for law enforcement. It
Speaker 1: was actually his first book, so he wanted to share
Speaker 1: what he knew. And I think maybe a lot of
Speaker 1: it came from the perhaps slightly naive hope that through
Speaker 1: the dissemination of information, things would get better. If people
Speaker 1: understood what he understood, things would improve. And I don't
Speaker 1: think long term that was naive at all. Short term
Speaker 1: it was complicated, and I think towards the end of
Speaker 1: his career, after the passage of the Federal Analog Act
Speaker 1: and the controlling of m d m A, and of
Speaker 1: course his own legal struggles after the publication of Pek Hall,
Speaker 1: I think that his opinion of these things probably changed slightly,
Speaker 1: as they would have to, I mean, given the sort
Speaker 1: of harassment that he endured. But I still think that
Speaker 1: his general message and his general effort to make information
Speaker 1: available to everyone and to be as inclusive as possible
Speaker 1: to people who had different perspectives on the subject that
Speaker 1: he valued so much, was the right way to do things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I remember, you know, Hamilton's him thinking about Peak
Speaker 1: all right, which for our listeners stands for Peak calls
Speaker 1: an acronym profen ethelenes I have known and loved, half
Speaker 1: of which is a semi autobiographical love story about him
Speaker 1: and his wife Ann and his friends and their use
Speaker 1: of these substances that he's creating, and the other half
Speaker 1: is the recipes for I think dozens or hundreds of
Speaker 1: these substances. But I remember, I think at one point
Speaker 1: saying that he almost saw this as creating the recipe
Speaker 1: book for the sort of what might be the dark ages,
Speaker 1: of the pharmacological dark ages that might be lying ahead.
Speaker 1: I think when he got in a more sorrowful or
Speaker 1: depressed mood about where things were heading. I mean, obviously
Speaker 1: things have turned around very differently, and impact his influence
Speaker 1: has been enormous, But I also can see why he
Speaker 1: is for you, not just a hero, but I guess
Speaker 1: a role model. I mean, it seems to me in
Speaker 1: the way you've present both in the in the documentaries
Speaker 1: you've done and in the way you present yourself, it's
Speaker 1: the same basic idea of wanting to talk to anybody.
Speaker 1: Is that right? Yes? Absolutely? And I think that you know,
Speaker 1: part of his motivation and publishing that was he was
Speaker 1: very terrified by the destruction of Wilhelm Reich's research by
Speaker 1: the FDA in the nineteen forties because in the case
Speaker 1: of Wilhelm Reich, of course, it turned out that what
Speaker 1: he was doing was by all standards, pseudo science, and
Speaker 1: the FDA said, Okay, this is medically dangerous. We have
Speaker 1: to destroy this because it represents a threat to public health.
Speaker 1: But his feeling was, well, couldn't somebody say exactly the
Speaker 1: same thing about the work that I'm doing. Couldn't they say,
Speaker 1: you know, this is dangerous pseudoscience. These aren't therapeutic medicines,
Speaker 1: these aren't psychotherapeutic adjuncts. These are drugs, and they're dangerous
Speaker 1: and they killed somebody. So we've got to we've got
Speaker 1: to get rid of this stuff. It represents a threat
Speaker 1: to public health, and he was afraid that, like Wilhelm Reich,
Speaker 1: his research could be destroyed if the government decided that
Speaker 1: it was dangerous. And part of the motivation for the
Speaker 1: publication of pek Hall was to ensure that that could
Speaker 1: never be done, that his work couldn't be destroyed. I
Speaker 1: think that also motivated the digitization of his research, which
Speaker 1: was freely available on arrow It and remains freely available
Speaker 1: and arrow It at least in terms of the chemistry.
Speaker 1: Why did he do that because he wanted it to
Speaker 1: be available to as many people as possible. He wanted
Speaker 1: to ensure that there was no way that it could
Speaker 1: be destroyed. Just explain from molitority, it's about Wilhelm Reich's research.
Speaker 1: What was that about. You know, I'm not an expert
Speaker 1: in Wilhelm Reich, but my understanding is that he was
Speaker 1: producing these things called orgone accumulators, which would treat a
Speaker 1: variety of different disorders, ranging from cancer to frigidity. And
Speaker 1: you'd get into this box and these things became quite
Speaker 1: popular with celebrities like William S Burrows, you know, later
Speaker 1: William Stag as well, and you'd get into this box
Speaker 1: that I think was just like a little shack with
Speaker 1: coils on the top of it, and the idea is
Speaker 1: that it would accumulate this imaginary substance called orgone that
Speaker 1: would cure all diseases. So this was in fact pseudo science,
Speaker 1: and one could make a legitimate argument that the dissemination
Speaker 1: of this information was dangerous because of course, selling faulty
Speaker 1: cancer cures or selling faulty treatments to desperate people is
Speaker 1: a perennial way not only to make money but to
Speaker 1: hurt people. So if you're running the FDA, from their perspective,
Speaker 1: it makes sense this is dangerous. We've got to destroy this.
Speaker 1: But the whole problem with you know, whether you're talking
Speaker 1: about the history of eugenics or genocide or psycho surgery,
Speaker 1: the problem is whenever we think we've figured out what
Speaker 1: the bad thing is and what we have to destroy,
Speaker 1: we often make a mistake, and sometimes the bad thing
Speaker 1: that we're destroying actually isn't bad at all. And so
Speaker 1: I think Shulgin was right to have that concern. And
Speaker 1: you know, I think we can all imagine, given the
Speaker 1: caprices of world governments, how things can potentially go. I
Speaker 1: mean they went pretty badly in this country for a
Speaker 1: long time, and you know, they're still not doing all
Speaker 1: that great, but they're getting better. And given the Reagan administration,
Speaker 1: given all of these very restrictive laws that have been passed,
Speaker 1: I mean, the Federal Analog Act, for those that aren't
Speaker 1: familiar with it, was a very frightening development in the
Speaker 1: history of drug policy, because in the past there was
Speaker 1: something closer to what exists in many other countries, where
Speaker 1: you have drugs that are legal that are uncontrolled, and
Speaker 1: you have drugs that are illegal they are controlled substances.
Speaker 1: What the Federal Analog Act said was, well, if you're
Speaker 1: selling a drug that's substantially similar to a controlled substance
Speaker 1: that is in Schedule one or Schedule two, then that's
Speaker 1: also a controlled substance. But the problem is substantially similar
Speaker 1: was never defined in a chemically meaningful that way, and
Speaker 1: so the functional outcome is that it put an enormous
Speaker 1: number of compounds into a gray area. Is five m
Speaker 1: e O d m T and analog of d MT,
Speaker 1: Well apparently not, because they felt the need to schedule
Speaker 1: five mmo d MT separately from d MT. But I
Speaker 1: don't think anyone could meaningfully answer that question, because the
Speaker 1: word analog isn't meaningful in any precise chemical sense, and
Speaker 1: so Sulgan correctly recognized that this was an enormous threat.
Speaker 1: This could render vast swaths of his research illegal without
Speaker 1: a single law being passed other than the Federal Analog Act.
Speaker 1: You know, there's another person you described early on is
Speaker 1: one of your heroes, and it's just sort of not
Speaker 1: a chemist, I don't think, and sort of complimentary to Sasha,
Speaker 1: And that was way Davis say. Why oh, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think Wade Davis is you know, he's a great
Speaker 1: storyteller first of all, you know, um, and I think
Speaker 1: that he was able to bring the magic of a
Speaker 1: lot of these different cultures into the lives of people
Speaker 1: who would never have the opportunity to visit them. Going
Speaker 1: to Haiti and seeing the work that is done in
Speaker 1: the Voodoo religion and the power of that belief system,
Speaker 1: or San Pedro shamanism in Peru, or so many different
Speaker 1: indigenous traditions. He I think, really was very good at
Speaker 1: appreciating traditional knowledge understanding how it could be applied to
Speaker 1: Western medicine. But also I think that he had a
Speaker 1: you know, a deep respect for the cultures that he
Speaker 1: interacted with and was incredibly skilled at writing about them
Speaker 1: in a way that would allow people to recognize why
Speaker 1: they were important. We'll be talking more after we hear
Speaker 1: this ad. So watching your episodes of Hamilton's Pharmacopeia, I
Speaker 1: see this kind of bouncing back and forth. They're not
Speaker 1: just bouncing, sort of integrating and sometimes tension between the
Speaker 1: episodes and the parts that focus on the modern day scientists,
Speaker 1: whether underground or operating above ground, but then in other
Speaker 1: episodes going and looking at traditional uses, whether it's eboga
Speaker 1: and gabon, whether it's something in Argentina, whether it's something
Speaker 1: in Mexico or peyote, what have you. And I see,
Speaker 1: as I said before, some of the reverence I sometimes
Speaker 1: see when you're talking to the kind of modern day chemists,
Speaker 1: both you know, illegal and legal. And then there's this
Speaker 1: kind of rye look you have when you're engaged in
Speaker 1: some of the more indigenous practices. In particular, they're great
Speaker 1: belief that the plant is somehow fundament only different then
Speaker 1: the drug that it contains, and that can be easily
Speaker 1: synthesized in a laboratory. Am I reading you right? There
Speaker 1: is there something in particular that you're referring to. There's
Speaker 1: part of this whole debate or discussion between the natural
Speaker 1: versus synthetic. You and I were both at this Horizons
Speaker 1: conference in New York in late and you know that's
Speaker 1: part of what goes there, you know, is is there
Speaker 1: something fundamentally different between peyote and mescal in between psilocybin
Speaker 1: produced synthetically and mushrooms the issue of five M e
Speaker 1: O d M T And you're making the case, you know, like,
Speaker 1: let's save the toad, right if all human beings descend
Speaker 1: on the Sonoran desert or Arizona or whatever and destroy
Speaker 1: the toad, so just people should shift to the synthetic,
Speaker 1: and people are having very strong reactions against that. And
Speaker 1: then I think maybe the other part of that is
Speaker 1: is some of your skepticisms sometimes about the role of
Speaker 1: the shaman shame it. What do you think? Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: these are all very very complicated issues that have to
Speaker 1: be assassed on a case by case basis, because there
Speaker 1: are definitely instances where a single alkaloid does not effectively
Speaker 1: replicate the effect of a plant, and there are other
Speaker 1: instances where it does. So it really depends on what
Speaker 1: you're talking about. In the case of buffo al various venom,
Speaker 1: it's clear to me, based on all published chemical analyzes
Speaker 1: that the only tripped to me in present in that
Speaker 1: venom that could be responsible for the effect that people
Speaker 1: are describing is five mm o d mt bfot is
Speaker 1: present in trace concentrations. And I say this as somebody
Speaker 1: who has actually used pure analytically confirmed bufton. It does
Speaker 1: not produce the sort of visionary experience that most people
Speaker 1: look for when they take a psychedelic. Nobody talks about
Speaker 1: boufotonin and nobody is saying, oh, boutin, that's my favorite psychedelic.
Speaker 1: And the reason is that it's incredibly nauseating. It doesn't
Speaker 1: have the same visionary characteristics of something like d mt
Speaker 1: or silicin or five mm e o d mt, And
Speaker 1: so what people are interested in is a five mmo
Speaker 1: d m T mediated effect. Then, at the same time,
Speaker 1: you have this massive demand for toad venom that will
Speaker 1: easily have catastrophic ecological consequences if everybody starts doing this,
Speaker 1: and it's gonna look bad and it's going to be unnecessary.
Speaker 1: And then you have this easy to synthesize chemical five
Speaker 1: EMMYO d MT, and in this instance the choice is clear.
Speaker 1: In other instances it's a bit more complicated. For example,
Speaker 1: in peyote, there actually are other alkaloids that likely contribute
Speaker 1: to the psychopharmacology in a meaningful way. The same is
Speaker 1: true of eboga. In the case of psilocybin containing mushrooms,
Speaker 1: it's actually closer to toad venom. Again where people say, oh,
Speaker 1: but there's a study that found one femptogram of some
Speaker 1: beta carbonene in a mushroom once, therefore, silicon or psilocybin
Speaker 1: could never replicate the mushroom experience. Well, I don't think
Speaker 1: that there's strong evidence that any of the other trip
Speaker 1: to means present in silosabin containing mushrooms are major contributors.
Speaker 1: So it's like I said, it's just you have to
Speaker 1: look at it at a on a case by case basis.
Speaker 1: And then the same is true when it comes to
Speaker 1: the contributions of shamans. It depends on what the purpose is,
Speaker 1: how it's being done, what culture you're in, why you're
Speaker 1: doing it. I would never for a moment suggest that
Speaker 1: the guidance of shamans is unimportant, especially in the cultures
Speaker 1: where this is their way of life, in their way
Speaker 1: of medicine. But I think that there is an idea
Speaker 1: that became very popular, especially in New York um around
Speaker 1: maybe let's say two thousand seven, eight nine, tenn twelve,
Speaker 1: when ayahuasca was really gaining popularity, that in order for
Speaker 1: this experience to be valid and authentic, it had to
Speaker 1: be mediated by a scare quote traditional shaman. But why
Speaker 1: why is it that, uh, somebody couldn't make their own
Speaker 1: ayahuasca or make a sort of ayahuasca derivative with synthetic
Speaker 1: d MT and a pharmaceutical m A o I. And
Speaker 1: there's one really crucial component about this that doesn't get
Speaker 1: brought up very much, and that is dosage. I think
Speaker 1: the two most important issues when anybody uses a drug
Speaker 1: are knowing what the drug is, the chemical identity of
Speaker 1: what they're consuming, knowing that it actually is the drug
Speaker 1: in question, and knowing what dosage of that drug they
Speaker 1: have consumed. Sometimes people will you approach me and they'll
Speaker 1: act like I'm some kind of you know, super advanced
Speaker 1: psycho knots who has great powers of being able to
Speaker 1: withstand psychedelic experiences. And I assure you that is not
Speaker 1: the case. The only power I have is being a
Speaker 1: neurotic jew who is too afraid to use unmeasured doses
Speaker 1: of things. And that one small protective attribute of not
Speaker 1: wanting to consume unmeasured doses of unknown substances has made
Speaker 1: all of my experiments infinitely more safe and comfortable. And
Speaker 1: so when you're talking about plant drive substances, you lose
Speaker 1: that ability to know exactly how much you're consuming and
Speaker 1: the exact chemical identity of what is contained. And that
Speaker 1: has you know, in some circumstances, that might be a
Speaker 1: good thing. In many circumstances, that might be the only option.
Speaker 1: But if the hope is to help as many people
Speaker 1: as possible in a way that is repeatable, then I
Speaker 1: think understanding the dose and identity of what is being
Speaker 1: consumed is of paramount importance. Like just to give one
Speaker 1: more example, suppose I go to an ayahuasca group at
Speaker 1: a yoga studio in Manhattan, and I drink some brew
Speaker 1: given to me by some guy, and lo and behold,
Speaker 1: I have the most amazing experience of my life. I
Speaker 1: unwind all of my problems. I suddenly feel energized and
Speaker 1: rejuvenated and motivated and filled with love, and I'm ready
Speaker 1: to to do what I have to do. And not
Speaker 1: only that, I want the people that I love to
Speaker 1: have the same experience. I want my father to have
Speaker 1: this experience. I want my mother to have this experience.
Speaker 1: But I can't give them that experience because I have
Speaker 1: no idea what I took. And that's a problem. I think.
Speaker 1: I think, you know, if, on the other hand, I
Speaker 1: take let's say, sixty milligrams of synthetic DMT free base
Speaker 1: one hour after taking three grams of mirams of miklobemide,
Speaker 1: then that's repeatable, that's reproducible as far as these things
Speaker 1: can be. And I can say, listen, that dosage was really,
Speaker 1: really good. It was just right. It was the porridge
Speaker 1: that's just right. I was for a moment in a threatening,
Speaker 1: difficult place, but it didn't last too long and I
Speaker 1: came out of it feeling strengthened. And I think those
Speaker 1: data points are really useful. I think that this is
Speaker 1: one of the great attributes of synthetic substances are working
Speaker 1: with isolated chemicals, is this ability to know the dose
Speaker 1: that you've consumed. It sounds boring and pedantic, even as
Speaker 1: I'm saying this to you. I think, oh, this is
Speaker 1: kind of boring to say, But despite it being slightly boring,
Speaker 1: I think it's immensely important. Well you know, it's also
Speaker 1: I mean, you brought up a few points that I
Speaker 1: came across. Well, you've talked about like the use of
Speaker 1: I began in low doses in France some decades ago.
Speaker 1: I mean, we think about I began as one the
Speaker 1: most powerful psycholic substances there is. Or you talked about
Speaker 1: people using m dm A like substances as antidepressants and
Speaker 1: low doses. So there's these I mean, just say a
Speaker 1: little more about those sorts of things which even I
Speaker 1: had never heard about those ones. Oh yeah, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think it's really interesting that the pharmaceutical history of psychedelics,
Speaker 1: uh pretty much has only existed in the realm of
Speaker 1: micro dosing. This is something you never hear people talk about.
Speaker 1: But the two let's say, psychedelic adjacent chemicals that have
Speaker 1: been approved for psychiatric use, namely lambourne which was I
Speaker 1: be gained that was used in France, and alpha ethel
Speaker 1: tripped to me and, which was an antidepressant used in
Speaker 1: the United States, were low doses of in the case
Speaker 1: of alpha ethyl tripped to me in a sort of
Speaker 1: m d M, a type serotonin releaser. And in the
Speaker 1: case of ibgaine, it's ibegaine. And these were used at
Speaker 1: low doses precisely because it was believed that some benefit
Speaker 1: could be conferred without the disruptive effects of a high dose.
Speaker 1: And now people talk about micro docing LSD or psilocybin, right,
Speaker 1: And obviously there's you know with was micro docing taking
Speaker 1: an amount fits so low you don't even a barely
Speaker 1: aware of it, or taking a slightly higher dose it
Speaker 1: might people a mini dosing. But what about what I began,
Speaker 1: I mean, is micro docing I begain something that might
Speaker 1: make some sense as far as you're concerned, Yes, it does.
Speaker 1: And I say this with caution because it's it's hard
Speaker 1: to talk about these things from a place of personal
Speaker 1: experience or my intuitive beliefs without sounding like I'm saying, yeah,
Speaker 1: I begain, everyone go out and micro dose at that
Speaker 1: the way, And that's not what I want to say,
Speaker 1: because I think that you know, there are dangers associated
Speaker 1: with the use of ib gain, most of them are
Speaker 1: limited to high dose use. Low doses probably do not
Speaker 1: pose the same risk of cardio toxicity. And when I
Speaker 1: say low dose, I'm talking about twenty milligrams of iby
Speaker 1: gain hydrochloride or something of that nature. But I have
Speaker 1: used low dose ib gain for long periods of time
Speaker 1: in the past, and I did feel that it was beneficial.
Speaker 1: Did I do a double blind, placebo controlled study. No,
Speaker 1: this is just an intuitive feeling in the placebo effect
Speaker 1: is very strong. So I don't want to make any
Speaker 1: kind of grand claims about micro dosing or I begain
Speaker 1: micro dosing in particular, but that is something that has
Speaker 1: been reported by a number of people like Tim Ferris
Speaker 1: as well. And I think that at low doses I began,
Speaker 1: it's not psychedelic at all, you know, it really feels
Speaker 1: more like a stimulant at those doses. So this is
Speaker 1: not really the same as a sort of effect that
Speaker 1: people described from low doses of psilocybin or LSD, where
Speaker 1: at least in my experience, you often do get a
Speaker 1: low psychedelic type effect, but even that's debate. Well, that's
Speaker 1: one problem with micro dosing is there's a precise definition.
Speaker 1: For some people. Micro dosing is a sub perceptible dose
Speaker 1: where there is no psychedelic effect by definition, and for
Speaker 1: other people the whole point is having a low psychedelic
Speaker 1: effect with maybe a little bit of supposed increase in
Speaker 1: creativity or empathy or something of that nature. It makes
Speaker 1: me wonder, you know, I think, you know one of
Speaker 1: the issues involving because you don't get that much into
Speaker 1: the issue of opioids and heroin, opium and all that
Speaker 1: sort of stuff. But you know, one of the questions
Speaker 1: with heroin was for people who had predicted to street
Speaker 1: heroin and for whom methanon main inance was not working,
Speaker 1: boupern orphane was not making as a substitution. Uh, that's
Speaker 1: they thought about, Well, when I try pharmaceutical heroin and
Speaker 1: then you know, heroin is so demonized as a name
Speaker 1: and has all that kind of you know, fear around it.
Speaker 1: So people did controlled double blind studies where they tried
Speaker 1: injectable heroin versus injectable method on everybody can tell the difference.
Speaker 1: Injectible heroin versus injectable morphine. Everybody can tell the difference.
Speaker 1: Then they did injectable heroin versus injectable hydromorphone, which is
Speaker 1: commonly known as deluded and experienced heroin users who have
Speaker 1: been using heroin off and on illegally for years, if
Speaker 1: not decades, who swore they could always tell which was
Speaker 1: which in a controlled double blind study, cannot tell the difference. Now,
Speaker 1: I wonder has that happened? Did all these sorts of
Speaker 1: control double blind studies with experienced users comparing some of
Speaker 1: these psychedelic substances either in a synthetic form or in
Speaker 1: a specifically dosed natural form. Yes, Actually there is a
Speaker 1: brilliant study that was done. I think it was done
Speaker 1: at Johns Hopkins where they actually did exactly what you're describing.
Speaker 1: They took not normal people experience drug users. They didn't
Speaker 1: use the word psychoat but psychonaut types, people who in
Speaker 1: some instances had I think close to a hundred experiences,
Speaker 1: and they said, can you tell the difference between d
Speaker 1: x M, the active ingredient in robotas in and psilocybin,
Speaker 1: and believe it or not, even among experienced people, they
Speaker 1: sometimes could not tell the difference between the two of them.
Speaker 1: Sometimes sometimes yeah, I think it was maybe, um, maybe
Speaker 1: like something like thirty or forty percent of the time
Speaker 1: people mistook d x M for a classical psychedelic and
Speaker 1: I think that that's a really and don't quote me
Speaker 1: on that, but I think that's a really interesting finding
Speaker 1: because you often hear people talking about these miniscule differences. Oh,
Speaker 1: I can tell the difference between Soloso by cubens has
Speaker 1: grown on brown rice flower versus Soloso by cubense is
Speaker 1: grown on ry berries or something like that. And then
Speaker 1: I look at the study and think, Wow, people, uh,
Speaker 1: in many instances can't tell the difference between completely different
Speaker 1: chemicals in completely different pharmacological classes. So I think that
Speaker 1: people dramatically overestimate their ability to distinguish these things. And
Speaker 1: that's normal. I mean, that's just the way it goes. Right.
Speaker 1: You take LSD one time and you have a great experience,
Speaker 1: and you take LSD another time and you have a
Speaker 1: bad experience, and maybe you think, oh, that was bad
Speaker 1: LSD because you're not recognizing your own contribution to the experience.
Speaker 1: You know, you also make some very powerful points, and
Speaker 1: that once again going back to the dose issue and
Speaker 1: also the context. You know, good old drugs set and setting.
Speaker 1: You know, the phrase coined I think by Timothy Leary
Speaker 1: and developed by Andy While and then really researched by
Speaker 1: Norman Zinberg at Harvard. But I mean, in the issue
Speaker 1: of stimulants, you're not just looking at psychedelics. You're looking
Speaker 1: at things like amphetamine, meth amphetamine. And I think you're
Speaker 1: making the point which I've made over the years as well,
Speaker 1: but you did in a really nice way that amphetamine
Speaker 1: meth amphetamine. I mean, the truth is millions of teenagers,
Speaker 1: especially boys, and it sounded like yourself when you talk
Speaker 1: about your old friend riddle In, you know, have been using,
Speaker 1: have been given these drugs to deal with their A
Speaker 1: D D and all this sort of stuff, sometimes correctly prescribed,
Speaker 1: sometimes not so much. But that basically, if I have
Speaker 1: this right, if you were to take that riddle In
Speaker 1: or these other stimulants that they give, you know, teenage
Speaker 1: boys to help them behave better and focus better, and
Speaker 1: if you were to smoke them or inject them, they
Speaker 1: would be a lot like we perceive of meth amphetamine
Speaker 1: and the big bad myth amphetamine being used out in
Speaker 1: the world, crank what have you. And conversely, if you
Speaker 1: were to take that meth amphetamine that people are smoking
Speaker 1: and injecting and supposedly is instantly addictive, all this sort
Speaker 1: of stuff, but to use it orally at the dose
Speaker 1: level that teenagers are using it in a prescribed way
Speaker 1: that it essentially would be no different than the riddle,
Speaker 1: and they're taking Did I get that right? Oh? Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: and and I think again people dramatically overestimate their ability
Speaker 1: to tell the difference between these things. When people talk
Speaker 1: about meth amphetamine, they talk about the effects as if
Speaker 1: they are intrinsic pharmacological properties of the molecule, as opposed
Speaker 1: to products of the culture in which they're used. So
Speaker 1: if you take adderall, first of all, that means that
Speaker 1: you're affluent and have your life organized enough that you
Speaker 1: are going to a psychiatrist and receiving a prescription for
Speaker 1: something and filling that prescription at a pharmacy and taking
Speaker 1: measured doses that have been dispensed to you. Well, that
Speaker 1: already says something about the sort of person that you are.
Speaker 1: If you're taking methamphetamine, you're somebody who's comfortable finding a
Speaker 1: drug dealer, who will use a substance that has not
Speaker 1: been analyzed at an unmeasured dose, and you're going to
Speaker 1: smoke or snort it. That also says something about you.
Speaker 1: There was a study that showed that there was some
Speaker 1: brain damage associated with continuous high dose use of ketamine.
Speaker 1: And I was looking at the study and the person
Speaker 1: I think had used ketamine continuously for something like two
Speaker 1: years and to begin, I wouldn't be all that surprised
Speaker 1: if using ketamine every day for two years did some
Speaker 1: kind of damage. I could also see it not doing damage.
Speaker 1: I think it would really depend on the dose and
Speaker 1: the circumstances. But the first question that has to be
Speaker 1: asked is, well, what kind of person uses ketamine every
Speaker 1: day for two years? Might there already be something neurologically
Speaker 1: different about that person before the onset of the drug use.
Speaker 1: The same is also true for somebody that uses m
Speaker 1: d M A every day for years. Might that be
Speaker 1: a different type of person because a normal person wouldn't
Speaker 1: want to do that even if they had the opportunity.
Speaker 1: So there are so many variables that have to be
Speaker 1: considered when talking about the toxicity of these substances, and
Speaker 1: when it comes to methamphetamine and emphetamine, I think the
Speaker 1: primary variable as a cultural one. One is a substance
Speaker 1: that's used by affluent people. The other is used by
Speaker 1: people who are probably in a little bit of a
Speaker 1: difficult place in their life and they're potentially going to
Speaker 1: be using it in a slightly more self destructive manner,
Speaker 1: if only because it's not done in the context of
Speaker 1: medical use, which also changes the way that people think
Speaker 1: about their drug use. I mean, this is a immense
Speaker 1: fractal of complexity, which is sometimes why when people talk
Speaker 1: about the subject of drugs as if it's some kind
Speaker 1: of like niche issue, I think, no, this is this
Speaker 1: is like the interplay of society and culture and history
Speaker 1: and psychology and neurology and everything else. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: like nothing less complicated than the entirety of human consciousness.
Speaker 1: It's a big deal. So there's no you know, reductive
Speaker 1: answer like, oh, well, it's the methyl group. It's the
Speaker 1: methyl group on the nitrogen that makes it slightly more
Speaker 1: lipophilics so that it crosses the blood brain barrier more quickly,
Speaker 1: and it causes release of a little bit of serotonin,
Speaker 1: and that's why it's different. No, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: there are so many other factors at play, even if
Speaker 1: the things that I just said are true. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean was just saying about the interdisciplinary nature of
Speaker 1: drugs and drug studies as well. I mean, if you
Speaker 1: think about it in the university you could probably have
Speaker 1: an entire course on psychoactive drugs in the large majority
Speaker 1: of the departments in the humanities, the sciences, and the
Speaker 1: social sciences. Right. I mean, this subject just crosses so
Speaker 1: many boundaries in part of what comes through your show.
Speaker 1: And let me ask you a little more about this
Speaker 1: because and I have to ask you this. I mean,
Speaker 1: here you are making these twenty fantastic episodes of Hamilton's Armacopeia,
Speaker 1: you know, for Vice HBO, which I strongly encourage our
Speaker 1: listeners to watch. And if I ask why you l
Speaker 1: ended up becoming a documentary maker as opposed to say
Speaker 1: going for a pH d and researching and in that
Speaker 1: way or something like that, there is the fact that
Speaker 1: you're the only child of a pretty famous documentary maker,
Speaker 1: Errol Morris. I remember, for seeing his thing Fog of
Speaker 1: War about Robert McNamara, the Secretary of State under Kennedy
Speaker 1: and Johnson, and then the one about Rumsfield, you know,
Speaker 1: the Secretary of State for the second George Bush. Do
Speaker 1: you think you would have embarked pursuing this issue the
Speaker 1: way you have if you hadn't had a dad who's
Speaker 1: documentary maker. I think it's possible, believe it or not,
Speaker 1: because this was never what I wanted to do. In
Speaker 1: the early documentaries, I was actually really thinking of myself
Speaker 1: as a writer, and I think it was partially because
Speaker 1: I was resistant to the idea of doing this, because
Speaker 1: I didn't want to enter the same arena of my father.
Speaker 1: So I was thinking, yeah, I'm I'm interested in the science,
Speaker 1: I'm interested in writing about this. Documentaries are not really
Speaker 1: what I want to do. But the reality was that
Speaker 1: this was at a time when YouTube was just starting
Speaker 1: to take off, when the Internet was going from a
Speaker 1: place it was primarily text based to something that was
Speaker 1: very much video based, and there were huge amounts of
Speaker 1: resources being dedicated at many different media organizations, but vice
Speaker 1: in particular to pivoting to video, that was, you know,
Speaker 1: the big thing. And what I quickly realized was that
Speaker 1: if I wanted to tell a story, there would be
Speaker 1: more resources to tell that story if I made a documentary.
Speaker 1: So at first it was a purely pragmatic decision, but
Speaker 1: as I continued doing it, I started to really appreciate
Speaker 1: the artistic elements of it, and yeah, I think it's,
Speaker 1: you know, a great way to tell stories. I think
Speaker 1: that it reaches a lot more people. It's sort of
Speaker 1: like podcasts for that matter, you know. It's people are
Speaker 1: more likely to listen to something than they are to
Speaker 1: read something these days, and so it was a way
Speaker 1: to reach tens of millions of people that probably would
Speaker 1: not have read an article about the same subject. He
Speaker 1: got me wondering whether if the father didn't influence the
Speaker 1: son that much, did the son influenced the father because
Speaker 1: two of your dad's recent productions. One was the multi
Speaker 1: part episode called Wormwood right about the CIA scientist who
Speaker 1: was given unknowingly to himself a psychedelic and lands up
Speaker 1: either committing suicide or being killed. And then more recently
Speaker 1: his Peace Psychedelic drug story about one of Timothy Leary's
Speaker 1: lovers and her story. Do you think that you had
Speaker 1: an impact or do you know if you had an
Speaker 1: impact on your dad? Getting a little more curious, Yes,
Speaker 1: I certainly had, and I worked on both of those projects,
Speaker 1: so yes, he certainly did how of an impact, And
Speaker 1: I did play a big role in making my father
Speaker 1: interested in psychedelics, And he also played a big role
Speaker 1: in making me interested in psychoactive drugs because he's interested
Speaker 1: in that subject as well. So I think you know,
Speaker 1: I'm very close with my father, and we talk every
Speaker 1: day and we talk about these things. So yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that there's been an interplay between both of us.
Speaker 1: The one reason that I'm sometimes hesitant to talk about
Speaker 1: him is that he's usually brought up in the context
Speaker 1: of diminishing the work that I've done. People will say
Speaker 1: something like, oh, he's only doing this because his father
Speaker 1: made documentaries, And that's all fine and good. If somebody
Speaker 1: wants to, you know, try to take me down a notch,
Speaker 1: that's fine, whatever. But the reason that I don't like
Speaker 1: it is that I'm afraid it's sort of discouraging to people.
Speaker 1: They might think, oh, I can't make a documentary about
Speaker 1: this unless my father has made documentaries, And I assure
Speaker 1: you that's not the case. Advice published hundreds and hundreds
Speaker 1: and hundreds of drug documentaries and continues to do so
Speaker 1: to this day, and the vast majority of them were
Speaker 1: not made by people whose fathers were documentary filmmakers. So
Speaker 1: I assure you that that is not a a prerequisite
Speaker 1: to getting involved in this world. And although I won't
Speaker 1: deny that it played a role in my own interests,
Speaker 1: and that I of course learned an enormous amount growing
Speaker 1: up around him and watching him make so many of
Speaker 1: his documentaries, But I don't think it's you know, necessary.
Speaker 1: I learned a lot, but I think that I also
Speaker 1: primarily learned about these processes on my own because I
Speaker 1: was doing it in a way that was so different
Speaker 1: from anything that he was doing. I mean, he had,
Speaker 1: you know, huge crews and sound stages and all sorts
Speaker 1: of resources. My early work was done, you know, single
Speaker 1: camera on mini DV tapes with just me and two
Speaker 1: other people. So it was a very different type of
Speaker 1: filmmaking and a very different style of production as the
Speaker 1: son of a famous documentary maker. But obviously there must
Speaker 1: have been other influences in the way you've proceeded to
Speaker 1: become a documentary Who were those and how so. There's
Speaker 1: a filmmaker named Jason Cone who made a documentary called
Speaker 1: Manda Bolla that I really admire because it tells this
Speaker 1: strange story worry about corruption in Brazil, tying it into
Speaker 1: a plastic surgeon and a frog farm and a private
Speaker 1: security force and all these different superficially unrelated topics, and
Speaker 1: it figures out a way to tie them into a
Speaker 1: richer fabric of this strange phenomenon of corruption and frogs
Speaker 1: and kidnapping. And I was really inspired by that movie
Speaker 1: in many ways because I think that you often find
Speaker 1: similar phenomena in the world of drugs, where they're all
Speaker 1: these superficially unrelated topics that then merge in this hub
Speaker 1: of a single psychoactive drug. One instance would be the
Speaker 1: episode about man dracks or kalude in South Africa, where
Speaker 1: you have this substance, but it's also intimately connected to
Speaker 1: the chemical and biological weapons program of the apartheid government.
Speaker 1: It's also connected to the poaching of abalone and to
Speaker 1: the Chinese trade in the Abylonia as a luxury item
Speaker 1: and aphrodisiac, which then connects back to the clandestine synthesis
Speaker 1: of metha loan. So it's all these strange things, but
Speaker 1: when you weave it all together, it's all connected. And
Speaker 1: I really admire that film in particular, but there's so
Speaker 1: many different filmmakers that I admire, but in terms of
Speaker 1: documentary filmmaking, I think that's a really stand out example.
Speaker 1: And of course I am very influenced by my father's work.
Speaker 1: I am a great admirer of his films, I've watched
Speaker 1: all of them many many times. I was present while
Speaker 1: he was making a good number of them, and I
Speaker 1: think that he's, you know, a really brilliant filmmaker. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I gotta say, I just thought you were
Speaker 1: incredibly gutsy, I mean, even courageous with a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff you do. I mean, you know, you're going you're
Speaker 1: interviewing some guy in his meth lab and it looks
Speaker 1: like you're partly where he's gonna blow you all up.
Speaker 1: And then you go into Mexico and interviewing some very
Speaker 1: illegal meth producer in places of the world where things
Speaker 1: can get quite violent, and you're doing drugs. You know,
Speaker 1: you say how important it is to know that does
Speaker 1: so what you're doing. But you're doing these plant drugs
Speaker 1: and having people just put stuff into your mouth and
Speaker 1: just going along with it. I mean, were you ever
Speaker 1: scared when you were doing this stuff? Yes, I was,
Speaker 1: But my primary fear was not for myself, but for
Speaker 1: the people that I was interviewing. That was always the concern,
Speaker 1: because the reality was, in most of these instances, I
Speaker 1: was okay. There were times that I took risks. For example,
Speaker 1: when I synthesized a large quantity of five mmy o
Speaker 1: d MT in Mexico. You know, five mmy o d
Speaker 1: MP is not explicitly a controlled substance in Mexico. And
Speaker 1: I did a lot of legal review and consulted with
Speaker 1: many lawyers before embarking on that project. But the reality was,
Speaker 1: as I was saying earlier, if people want to funk
Speaker 1: with you, they'll figure out a way, and you don't
Speaker 1: want to depend on precise interpretation of the law if
Speaker 1: you're in a Mexican prison or an American prison for
Speaker 1: that matter, Because I've known people that were arrested and
Speaker 1: convicted for synthesizing drugs that they never synthesized. I mean,
Speaker 1: this happens. I had a friend who was a chemist
Speaker 1: who was synthesizing a psychedelic called two C C and
Speaker 1: his lab was rated. They seized everything and they said, well,
Speaker 1: you were synthesizing two C B. They didn't say you
Speaker 1: were synthesizing to C C and it is an analog
Speaker 1: of tow C B under the Federal Analog Act. They
Speaker 1: just said, this is to C B. This is a
Speaker 1: chemically different substance, where the chlorine is a bromine. In
Speaker 1: the case of two C B. It's totally different molecule,
Speaker 1: but they just said it's the same and he went
Speaker 1: to prison for it. So trying to go by the
Speaker 1: rule of the law doesn't always work in your favor,
Speaker 1: and there are always risks associated with this work. And I,
Speaker 1: of course I am not a self destructive person. I
Speaker 1: never wanted to get in trouble for any of this,
Speaker 1: and sometimes I did have to take risks, but I
Speaker 1: genuinely believe that the greatest risks were those taken by
Speaker 1: the people that spoke with me. And my greatest fear
Speaker 1: was not for myself, but for them, that they might
Speaker 1: get in trouble as a result of sharing what they knew.
Speaker 1: Because sure, I might get in trouble, but I'll get
Speaker 1: a lawyer. I'll figure out a way to get out
Speaker 1: of it, most likely, because essentially everything I did was
Speaker 1: technically legal. I mean, that was one line that I drew.
Speaker 1: There's little things that you can look at throughout the process.
Speaker 1: For example, I'm never helping anyone do anything. If I'm
Speaker 1: in a lab, I don't touch anything, because if I
Speaker 1: so much as hand them a glass of water, then
Speaker 1: that could be legally construed as me somehow, you know,
Speaker 1: aiding and abetting the manufacturing and controlled substances. But it's
Speaker 1: legal to be in the presence of somebody committing a
Speaker 1: crime as long as you are in no way assisting
Speaker 1: that process. So I was protected. But if something had
Speaker 1: gone wrong, things could have been very bad for the
Speaker 1: people that spoke with me, and I'm grateful that that
Speaker 1: did not occur. TOD just be spending a lot of
Speaker 1: time with vices or HBO's legal departments, so that you know,
Speaker 1: it was an enormous, enormous amount of time arguing with
Speaker 1: lawyers who had never taken a chemistry class, where they'd say, well,
Speaker 1: five m O d m T is the same thing
Speaker 1: as d MT and I'd say, no, it isn't. It's
Speaker 1: five methoxy d m T and The'd say, well, that's
Speaker 1: that contains d MT and I'd say, no, it doesn't.
Speaker 1: It doesn't contain d m T at all, and they'd say, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: it does. It as d m T in the name,
Speaker 1: and I'd say, okay, Well what if I call it, uh,
Speaker 1: what if I call it h O N N trimethyl serotonin?
Speaker 1: Then is it legal? Then is it okay? And I
Speaker 1: realized that all that mattered was the name. Because O
Speaker 1: N N trimethyl serotonin and five mm O d m
Speaker 1: T are the same chemical. The only difference is that
Speaker 1: when you're naming them, one doesn't include d m T,
Speaker 1: and that was what they were afraid of. So it
Speaker 1: was a mess. It was very complicated. It required endless
Speaker 1: negotiation about what could and could not be done. Um
Speaker 1: and one of the reasons that I stopped making the
Speaker 1: show was because it was so complicated and my fear
Speaker 1: that something might go wrong. You know. I feel that
Speaker 1: I was very lucky to have done all the things
Speaker 1: that I did, and to have done it in such
Speaker 1: a way that not only were people not hurt, that
Speaker 1: many people benefited from it, but I think that it
Speaker 1: was maybe only a matter of time before something bad happened.
Speaker 1: When it came to picking the twenty different subjects, was
Speaker 1: that basically your decision or a team effort. It was
Speaker 1: my decision, and there was a brilliant team that I
Speaker 1: worked with who played a huge role in the construction
Speaker 1: of these projects. I mean, it was certainly not me
Speaker 1: alone at the end, you know, there were lots of
Speaker 1: brilliant editors and producers and cinematographers, sound people, lots of
Speaker 1: people played a big, big role in the creation of
Speaker 1: these projects. But often there were ideas things that I
Speaker 1: wanted to do, but for whatever reason, they were impossible,
Speaker 1: and so it was a hunstant reshuffling and renegotiation of
Speaker 1: how to tell these stories. And sometimes the stories just
Speaker 1: couldn't be told. There were lots of stories that I
Speaker 1: wanted to tell or things that I wanted to film.
Speaker 1: For example, wanting to film the clandestine synthesis of LSD
Speaker 1: simply was impossible, So I filmed David Nichols making an
Speaker 1: LSD derivative at u n C Chapel Hill. So yeah,
Speaker 1: there were things that couldn't be done, and for what
Speaker 1: it's worth, I do plan to continue with this documentary
Speaker 1: work at some point in the future. I've now just
Speaker 1: decided to shift my emphasis to lab work and chemistry
Speaker 1: because also not to mention the fact that making these
Speaker 1: projects during the pandemic was a nightmare. I will never
Speaker 1: forget and it would be nice for the world to
Speaker 1: stabilize a little bit before getting back into that sort
Speaker 1: of work. Maybe that's a naive hope. I don't know
Speaker 1: what are the one or two your most itching to
Speaker 1: do when you get back into documentary making or filmmaking. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, there's so there's so many. I was very
Speaker 1: interested in doing something about two c B and the
Speaker 1: use of two c B in South America because most
Speaker 1: of the clandestine chemists that I interviewed were in the
Speaker 1: United States or Europe, and this culture of admiring the
Speaker 1: work of clandestine chemists doesn't exist in a lot of
Speaker 1: the world. Yet there are people in those places as
Speaker 1: well who are making the same sacrifices. And I was curious, well,
Speaker 1: what is the two ce B chemist in South America
Speaker 1: think about what they're doing? And also seeing different instances
Speaker 1: of people making the same drugs in different countries. What
Speaker 1: is it to find somebody in Russia who's making synthetic cannabinoids.
Speaker 1: What is it like to talk to somebody who's making
Speaker 1: methamphetamine in China. Let's take a break here and go
Speaker 1: to an ad. Let me ask you this. I mean,
Speaker 1: I know it's always a crazy question to ask you
Speaker 1: what are your favorite drugs? Because so much is dependent
Speaker 1: upon drugs set and setting in context. The one that
Speaker 1: you just you know, exalted about was Zeno. Tell me
Speaker 1: about Zeno? Well, Zeno is very interesting to me. I
Speaker 1: was friends with somebody named Matt Bowden. Who are you
Speaker 1: familiar with Mat Bowden? I know that name, yeah, but
Speaker 1: tell me more. He was a very fascinating figure, really
Speaker 1: a drug policy advocate in New Zealand who was responsible
Speaker 1: for what was an immensely progressive change in the law
Speaker 1: where people could sell psychoactive drugs without any medical pretense
Speaker 1: whatsoever in New Zealand. So this wasn't uh, synthetic cannabinoids
Speaker 1: to treat glaucoma or PTSD or treatment resistant depression. This
Speaker 1: was synthetic cannabinoids to get high. And he created a
Speaker 1: pharmaceutical company with the intention of creating better recreational drugs
Speaker 1: with no medical pretense whatsoever. And I thought, wow, that
Speaker 1: is so progressive, that is so amazing. I was ready
Speaker 1: to move to New Zealand to work in his lab
Speaker 1: because it was so revolutionary. I mean, to this day,
Speaker 1: nothing like that has ever been done. And when I
Speaker 1: was in New Zealand at his lab, he had this
Speaker 1: brilliant pharmacologist who work for him. I really liked. It
Speaker 1: was sort of a you know, very much like Alexander
Speaker 1: Shulgin type. And he had bought a tank of zen
Speaker 1: on gas. This was in two thousand fourteen, and he said,
Speaker 1: have you heard of this stuff? And I had, I'd
Speaker 1: read about it. I knew that it was an anesthetic.
Speaker 1: I knew that it was an n MDA antagonist like
Speaker 1: nitrous oxide. And I also knew that it was immensely expensive.
Speaker 1: It's so expensive that a single inhalation of this gas
Speaker 1: could cost hundreds of dollars. So not the kind of
Speaker 1: thing that you typically have the opportunity to use. And
Speaker 1: I was so excited. You know, it was right before
Speaker 1: I was in New Zealand. And he said, all right, um,
Speaker 1: do you have a balloon or do you have anything
Speaker 1: that you can fill up? And we were looking around
Speaker 1: for anything, a balloon, a glove that we couldn't find anything. Eventually,
Speaker 1: our soundman had a condom because all sound people typically
Speaker 1: carry condoms with them to keep the lavalier protected from
Speaker 1: rain when you're filming in the rain. This is like
Speaker 1: a sound person trick. And so he said, all right,
Speaker 1: we'll use a condom and build this condom with zene
Speaker 1: on gas and inhaled it. And it was, you know,
Speaker 1: on one hand, very similar to nitrous oxide, but also
Speaker 1: this amazing, amazing experiences, almost as if a switch of raw,
Speaker 1: unadulterated euphoria were flipped and suddenly you felt kind of
Speaker 1: maximal pleasure. And to think that this is coming from
Speaker 1: a gas that is present in every breath that we take.
Speaker 1: This is a natural component of our atmosphere. It's point
Speaker 1: zero zero zero zero zero five percent of earth atmosphere.
Speaker 1: And so it was this rare treat I got to
Speaker 1: inhale zing on gas. I'll never get to do that again.
Speaker 1: And then one day I got an email from somebody
Speaker 1: who said, Hey, I was in the sauna at the
Speaker 1: gym and I was talking with some guy who runs
Speaker 1: a zen on gas clinic. Have you ever heard of
Speaker 1: that before? And I said, a zenon gas clinic? What
Speaker 1: is that? And can you get me this man's contact information?
Speaker 1: I must talk to this person and and he said like, well,
Speaker 1: I don't know, like what you want me to find him?
Speaker 1: I don't think i'll ever see him again. I was like,
Speaker 1: we'll just try. If you ever see him at the gym,
Speaker 1: please tell him that I want to talk to him.
Speaker 1: And then a few weeks later he got back in
Speaker 1: touch and he said, okay, all right, the guy, this
Speaker 1: is his phone number if you want to talk to him.
Speaker 1: So I called him up, and as described, this person
Speaker 1: had built and opened a zenon gas clinic in the
Speaker 1: Czech Republic where people could inhale this gas, both for
Speaker 1: essentially recreational purposes but also for pseudo medical purposes. And
Speaker 1: I went to the Czech Republic like knowing very little.
Speaker 1: I mean, at that time and really to this day,
Speaker 1: there was almost nothing written about this practice in the
Speaker 1: English language. This existed in Russia and in the Czech
Speaker 1: Republic and in a few other places, but in terms
Speaker 1: of English language reporting, there was nothing on it. And
Speaker 1: everything that I observed in that clinic was something I
Speaker 1: knew nothing about. I mean that that was kind of
Speaker 1: one of the great pleasures of working on these projects,
Speaker 1: was going somewhere to learn about something that I knew
Speaker 1: nothing about and seeing this entire world unfold before me.
Speaker 1: But you know, when you go to the policy issue,
Speaker 1: I mean, you haven't focused as much on policy. I mean,
Speaker 1: you're very critical of the drug war, but a zeen
Speaker 1: on one of those things where you say, thank god,
Speaker 1: this isn't so cheap that it could be made available
Speaker 1: over the counter or anybody wants it. That's an interesting question,
Speaker 1: and I think this kind of has reverberations. And you know,
Speaker 1: whenever anybody talks about legalizing all drugs, then the next
Speaker 1: question is, so, wait a second, you're saying that heroin
Speaker 1: should be available at the corner store. Well, you know
Speaker 1: what's next. And I think that the assumption when people
Speaker 1: make that, or when people ask that question, is if
Speaker 1: heroin were available at the corner store, wouldn't we all
Speaker 1: become heroin addicts? Wouldn't we all run directly to the
Speaker 1: corner store and get heroin and injected into our veins
Speaker 1: and ruin our lives right then and there. But I
Speaker 1: think the more measured responses that the answer is probably
Speaker 1: not right. As things currently stand, you can buy all
Speaker 1: sorts of drugs, ranging from robotus into nitrous oxide, and
Speaker 1: the majority of people feel no need to buy those
Speaker 1: things and develop substance abuse disorders as a result of
Speaker 1: their freedom to acquire them. But in the case of Xenon,
Speaker 1: what's really interesting, and I think this also has some
Speaker 1: broader implications in drug policy. We talk about the addictiveness
Speaker 1: of a drug as if it is an intrinsic pharmacological factor.
Speaker 1: But back to the cultural dimensions of this. What if
Speaker 1: the most addictive drug in the world is also the
Speaker 1: most expensive drug in the world, then what well, then
Speaker 1: people just can't use it because nobody, unless they are
Speaker 1: a millionaire or a billionaire, could afford to become addicted
Speaker 1: to zenon. This is why you never hear about zeno addiction.
Speaker 1: This is why there isn't a single case report in
Speaker 1: the medical literature of zenon addiction. It's not because zenon
Speaker 1: isn't addictive. It most certainly is, but nobody has access
Speaker 1: to it, and I don't think there are circumstances where
Speaker 1: large numbers of people could have access to it. And
Speaker 1: I'm not suggesting that if zenon clinics opened up then
Speaker 1: that we'd have an epidemic of zenon inhalation. I really
Speaker 1: just don't think we would because it's prohibitively expensive and
Speaker 1: that alters the way that people interact with a substance. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, look at the thing I've struggled with is
Speaker 1: somebody's oftentimes identified as an advocate of drug legalization, but
Speaker 1: you know, my resistance or reluctance to embrace some more
Speaker 1: sort of free market approach is that you don't need
Speaker 1: everybody to run out the story. You just need a
Speaker 1: lot of people to run out and to eventually get
Speaker 1: in trouble with that drug. And I look at something
Speaker 1: like fentonyl obviously the great danger there now is that
Speaker 1: it is highly unregulated, and I think we should be
Speaker 1: looking at ways in which people who are you know,
Speaker 1: going to buy drugs from the street if they can't
Speaker 1: get illegally, should be able to obtain what they want
Speaker 1: in a legal, regulated way. And that should include um
Speaker 1: fentanyl in aappropriate dose that's that's relatively safe, or heroin
Speaker 1: or what have you. But I do still have still
Speaker 1: my reluctance about making these things you know, so easily available.
Speaker 1: And that's why I asked you if xenon were dramatically cheaper,
Speaker 1: where you could buy it for the same as a
Speaker 1: price of coffee or a joint or something like that,
Speaker 1: and it is as delicious as you describe, you know,
Speaker 1: what would happen? Well, I mean, okay, a brief story
Speaker 1: about this. So I was at the clinic and and
Speaker 1: one of my journalistic tendencies is I don't like to
Speaker 1: say mean things about people I've never gotten into this
Speaker 1: with the intention of trying to attack people or hurt
Speaker 1: people or take them down a notch, simply because there's
Speaker 1: enough stuff out there that I like that i'd prefer
Speaker 1: to talk about that. So in the instances where I
Speaker 1: have said something mean or critical, it was typically because
Speaker 1: I felt I had no choice, and zenon was one
Speaker 1: of those instances. So, like I said, I go to
Speaker 1: this clinic and I know nothing about any of this.
Speaker 1: I'm approaching it with a genuinely open mind and a
Speaker 1: charitable interpretation of everything that's going on. They have already
Speaker 1: said some pseudo scientific things to me, but that's okay.
Speaker 1: I don't need to police the scientific validity of everything
Speaker 1: that everyone around me says. They say that the mechanism
Speaker 1: of zenon is that the atom is so dense that
Speaker 1: it warps space time around the user. Okay, I don't
Speaker 1: think that that is the case. And if that were
Speaker 1: the case, wouldn't the wouldn't the tank itself have some
Speaker 1: kind of powerful gravitational field. But but that's fine. So
Speaker 1: we go to the clinic and they're giving zenon to children. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's a bit of a red flag right there. But
Speaker 1: people also give nitrous oxide to children, and nitrous oxide
Speaker 1: is far more toxic than zenon, although it's not very
Speaker 1: toxic as well when used under appropriate circumstances, given that
Speaker 1: you don't have certain genetic or dietary susceptibilities to be
Speaker 1: twelve depletion. So I think, okay, this is you know,
Speaker 1: probably actually safer. And they give nitrous oxide as a
Speaker 1: dental anesthetic to children all the time. I can think
Speaker 1: of a charitable interpretation of what's happening here. It's done
Speaker 1: with the consent of the parents. It's a short duration,
Speaker 1: low dose. You know, it wouldn't be something I would
Speaker 1: ever do, but maybe it's not necessarily bad. But that's
Speaker 1: the first red flag. Then the second red flag is
Speaker 1: that a group of breath arians come to the clinic,
Speaker 1: and despite the fact that this is a general anesthetic,
Speaker 1: nobody is fasting before using. This is a general anesthetic
Speaker 1: that can cause vomiting. And one of the breath arians
Speaker 1: these are people who claim to subsist on nothing but
Speaker 1: the uh. The chi or prana or energy of the
Speaker 1: universe is a scientific pseudoscientific belief that if you are
Speaker 1: sufficiently enlightened, you can sustain yourself with pure energetic ether
Speaker 1: that surrounds you in some way, and one of them
Speaker 1: almost asphyxiates on his vomit and dies. So that's red
Speaker 1: flag number two. And that's when I start to think, Okay,
Speaker 1: maybe there's something dangerous. Maybe it's irresponsible for me to
Speaker 1: report on this as if it's just a fun, little,
Speaker 1: uh weird thing that's happening in the Czech Republic. Then
Speaker 1: in the clinic, because you know, it is so expensive.
Speaker 1: It has to be administered in a recirculating breathing apparatus
Speaker 1: that scrubs c O two out of the line because
Speaker 1: with each excellation you introduce c O two. So they
Speaker 1: have special beads that absorb the CEO two that have
Speaker 1: a color changing indicator. So I want to film a
Speaker 1: time lapse of the beads changing color, just as a
Speaker 1: transitional shot to show the passage of time. So I
Speaker 1: asked my producer, Francis Lyons, I say, would you mind
Speaker 1: breathing into this mask for thirty minutes while I film
Speaker 1: a time lapse of the beads changing color. And one
Speaker 1: of the proprietors of the clinic comes and he says,
Speaker 1: you know, why doesn't he have some zenon as well?
Speaker 1: While he's doing it, and I say, oh, no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: you know, I recognize how expensive this is. I recognize that,
Speaker 1: you know, this is a precious substance. You don't need
Speaker 1: to feel obligated to give it away to us. It's
Speaker 1: totally fine. He says, no, No, I insist. I insist
Speaker 1: that he has some zenon. So I asked the producer,
Speaker 1: do you want zenon? He says yes, So I say, okay,
Speaker 1: if everybody wants this, then that's fine. You can, you know,
Speaker 1: give him some zenon and I'll film the time laps.
Speaker 1: So I'm filming the time laps in that room, and
Speaker 1: then I go into a different room to film something
Speaker 1: else with a different camera. I come back twenty minutes later,
Speaker 1: and my producer is unconscious inhaling zenon, and the person
Speaker 1: from the clinic who is supposed to be watching him
Speaker 1: is unconscious as well, inhaling zenon too. Both of them
Speaker 1: are in the room simultaneously unconscious, with nobody watching either
Speaker 1: of them. And that's when I thought, Okay, this is
Speaker 1: a problem. This is a serious problem. And we were
Speaker 1: about to leave. We were maybe twenty minutes from leaving
Speaker 1: for good, and I thought, if you can't wait twenty
Speaker 1: minutes to inhale Zenon. This is indicative of a problem.
Speaker 1: And then two weeks after that, that same person died
Speaker 1: inhaling Zenon. So I felt actually bad about the depiction
Speaker 1: of the clinic because the proprietors, Susanna was someone who's
Speaker 1: very generous to me, someone who I think was a
Speaker 1: genuinely good intention person, not someone that I would want
Speaker 1: to publicly attack or hurt her business. But when you
Speaker 1: talk about these things publicly, you have a responsibility to
Speaker 1: tell people the truth of what you found, even if
Speaker 1: it's negative. And I was in such a position at
Speaker 1: that time. Yeah, I mean, how when you think about
Speaker 1: because remember you also talked I think about a friend
Speaker 1: of yours in college, a good friend who had a
Speaker 1: schizophrenic break under the influence of psychedelics, and that that
Speaker 1: that didn't he didn't come back from it. How do
Speaker 1: you think about, you know, the casualties from some of
Speaker 1: this innovative psychedelic production. It's something that you know, I'm
Speaker 1: sure you share this feeling. If you think about this enough,
Speaker 1: you've already integra arated the negative dimensions of it into
Speaker 1: your understanding of the subject. So when something bad happens.
Speaker 1: It's not necessarily like a total revision of everything that
Speaker 1: I thought, because I already was aware that bad things happen.
Speaker 1: But you know, this year, I've lost for dear friends
Speaker 1: in either drug overdoses or drug adjacent circumstances, and it's
Speaker 1: been immensely painful for me, and it gives me some
Speaker 1: empathy for the way people respond in the wake of
Speaker 1: these these terrible tragedies. It's horrendously painful to lose someone
Speaker 1: you love, and I understand why that makes people anti drug.
Speaker 1: I get it. I get it completely. It's horrifying and
Speaker 1: you want to do anything that you can to prevent
Speaker 1: it from happening. But the problem is, I think that
Speaker 1: a lot of people use that grief and that energy
Speaker 1: in the wrong way and end up actually making things worse. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm curious, you know, because there's the reality of what's
Speaker 1: going on, and then there's the way it's being presented
Speaker 1: in the media. Right, and we seem to be in
Speaker 1: this psychedelic renaissance, and it's a period maybe like the
Speaker 1: late fifties were, of almost all the media coverage being
Speaker 1: positive and you've actually been you know, you get going
Speaker 1: on this around or something like that. So you've been
Speaker 1: doing it for ten or more years, there's been this
Speaker 1: major transition. I mean, how do you see what's happening
Speaker 1: or less ten years? And what are your thoughts about
Speaker 1: where this may likely be headed? As it inevitable the
Speaker 1: pendulum swings. Are there ways to keep it from swinging
Speaker 1: too harshly back the other way? It is inevitable, the
Speaker 1: pendulum is gonna swing. You can't stop that swinging, right.
Speaker 1: It's not easy. And I am concerned. I'm concerned because
Speaker 1: I am already seeing the backlash starting and I felt
Speaker 1: that there was a palpable sense of dread among many
Speaker 1: people that were speaking at the recent Horizons conference, and
Speaker 1: it worries me. It worries me because I see a
Speaker 1: lot of infighting emerging in the psychedelic community. I've heard
Speaker 1: from people that were activists in similar spaces not related
Speaker 1: to psychedelic drugs, that at the cusp of some kind
Speaker 1: of major breakthrough and their activism. They've also reported similar
Speaker 1: things happening where there's a dramatic increase in in fighting
Speaker 1: as people get closer and closer to the finish line.
Speaker 1: And I think that maybe that's something that will happen
Speaker 1: out of necessity. But it worries me to see how
Speaker 1: people externalize their anxieties. I mean, another example I think
Speaker 1: would be the way people treated the Sackler family and
Speaker 1: the opioid epidemic. Right, everybody hates the Sacklers. You go
Speaker 1: on Twitter and you say I think Arthur Sackler is
Speaker 1: an asshole, and everyone will applaud you for it, and
Speaker 1: that's all finding good. We stripped their names off of
Speaker 1: every institution they ever donated to. But one thing that
Speaker 1: concerned me about the activist emphasis on destroying the Sackler
Speaker 1: name was that it didn't focus on things that would
Speaker 1: actually help people who were struggling with addiction. It wasn't
Speaker 1: until one month ago that New York opened a supervised
Speaker 1: injection site, the first in the country. So if you
Speaker 1: want to strip the Sackler's name off the Guggenheim, that's
Speaker 1: all fine and good. And I'm sure it actually did
Speaker 1: hurt Arthur Sackler's feelings. I'm sure that he felt really
Speaker 1: bad about that. But I don't care about Arthur Sackler's feelings,
Speaker 1: for good or bad. I don't care about how he feels.
Speaker 1: What I care about is ensuring that people don't die,
Speaker 1: and hurting Arthur Sackler's reputation won't necessary. It certainly won't
Speaker 1: bring back the dead, and I don't think it will
Speaker 1: prevent future overdoses. So that's one of the the conflicts
Speaker 1: that I've felt, is this emphasis on sort of vindictive
Speaker 1: call out activism as opposed to constructive activism. So you
Speaker 1: have and I say this actually with genuine admiration for
Speaker 1: Nan Golden, both as an artist and an activist, but
Speaker 1: there's something kind of off putting to me about how
Speaker 1: much praise there is for attacking the philanthropic work of
Speaker 1: the Sackler's, while, for example, I have a friend named
Speaker 1: Mark Cross who lives in Brooklyn who's dedicated himself to
Speaker 1: the distribution of Nelocks one and Hailers and figuring out
Speaker 1: ways to get them to people for free and to
Speaker 1: teach people how to use them. But that doesn't get
Speaker 1: any press at all. You know, I'll tell you, I
Speaker 1: mean Hamilton, because to the earlier episodes of Psychoactive One,
Speaker 1: what I did with Patrick rad and Keith the you know,
Speaker 1: brilliant New Yorker writer who wrote the book about the
Speaker 1: Sackler family Empire pain, and I gave them a bit
Speaker 1: of a hard time about placing so much of the
Speaker 1: blame on the Sacklers, not that they are blame us
Speaker 1: by any means. I think they deserve a lot of
Speaker 1: the criticism and the lawsuits and all that's coming after
Speaker 1: them because they did drastically, dramatically overpromoted drug that was
Speaker 1: a miracle drug for some, but not appropriate in the
Speaker 1: ways that they were promoting it. But then I also
Speaker 1: had Kate Nicholson, who has created an organization specifically to
Speaker 1: deal with the pendulum being swinging so far backward against
Speaker 1: opia prescribing that now you have people who are using
Speaker 1: opioids responsibly and who needed for their proper functioning, but
Speaker 1: where doctors won't prescribe it, where their family is coming
Speaker 1: down on them. So I think we're we're exactly on
Speaker 1: the same page about this. I'll say, with respect to
Speaker 1: the activism, my sense even at the Risings conferences, that
Speaker 1: we're still in that first generation period, and typically in
Speaker 1: our first generation. I've seen this in many different areas
Speaker 1: of drug policy reform. The first generation generally has a
Speaker 1: fairly high what you might call mensh kite quota. In
Speaker 1: other words, a substantial number that people are in it
Speaker 1: for the right reasons and doing it for the right things.
Speaker 1: And inevitably, of course, your biggest battles are with your allies,
Speaker 1: because those are the ones that you know intimately, the
Speaker 1: ones you fight with over crediting girlfriends and funding and
Speaker 1: and all that sort of stuff. But I think as
Speaker 1: you move into the second generation, as it becomes more commercialized,
Speaker 1: as people start to go into it for reasons that
Speaker 1: are not the kind of first generation impulse, that's where
Speaker 1: it becomes a little more challenging. Okay, so three last
Speaker 1: quick questions about particular drugs. One of their episodes focused
Speaker 1: on something called LSD Ultra to allay audience, how could
Speaker 1: you explain what's so potentially exciting about that? Well, this
Speaker 1: is yes, there's a an acronym that the brilliant scientist
Speaker 1: Brian Roth uses. He calls this project ultra l s
Speaker 1: D and LSD in this instance does not stand for
Speaker 1: lysergic acid diathyle amide. It stands for large scale docking.
Speaker 1: And his idea is that if you can know the
Speaker 1: exact structure of a drugs receptor using X ray crystallography
Speaker 1: or cryo E M or something of that nature, and
Speaker 1: you can build a computer model of that receptor. You
Speaker 1: can develop programs that will virtually dok non existent drugs
Speaker 1: in silico to do all of the drug design on
Speaker 1: a computer, and then when you have a number of
Speaker 1: promising hits, you synthesize those things and validate the process
Speaker 1: using conventional pharmacological techniques. So it's a brilliant idea, and
Speaker 1: he has already demonstrated its effectiveness in the design and
Speaker 1: of novel ligands for melatonin receptors. At the time that
Speaker 1: I interviewed him, he was focusing on five h T
Speaker 1: two a agonist. I don't believe that that research has
Speaker 1: been published yet, but I don't doubt that he's going
Speaker 1: to find something really amazing. His technique is brilliant. Brian
Speaker 1: Roth is a brilliant person, and I think this represents
Speaker 1: a futuristic direction that all of this research can move
Speaker 1: toward in the future. The work that I do currently
Speaker 1: is effectively identical to the work that Alexander Shulgan was
Speaker 1: doing in the sense that it's not really hypothesis driven.
Speaker 1: It's exploratory work where you simply make things and you
Speaker 1: look at their pharmacology and you make another thing, and
Speaker 1: you look at the pharmacology, and you examine trends and
Speaker 1: you try to understand chemical space. But it's a slow process.
Speaker 1: Even a dedicated chemist can only make so many molecules.
Speaker 1: You know, let's say one a week, creating one new
Speaker 1: molecule a week. Maybe if you're really dedicated, it could
Speaker 1: be two or three if it's the only thing that
Speaker 1: you do. But using these in silico drug design techniques,
Speaker 1: millions of different hypothetical drugs can be screened. And I
Speaker 1: think that there's a lot of potential in these techniques.
Speaker 1: That said, I think that there's a beauty to the
Speaker 1: old way, and I of course have a romantic appreciation
Speaker 1: of the old techniques of chemistry, of working in a
Speaker 1: lab and the colors and the smells, and the beauty
Speaker 1: of growing crystals and all of that. And the idea
Speaker 1: of losing that is slightly sad to me, but you know,
Speaker 1: maybe it's part of progress. Okay, next question. I remember
Speaker 1: having books on my shelf going back thirty years ago
Speaker 1: called smart drugs. What does that mean? What's happened with them?
Speaker 1: Have you used them? Or is there a big future? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean, when I was a freshman in college, I
Speaker 1: got a prescription for adderall and I took it as
Speaker 1: prescribed every day, and by the end of my freshman year,
Speaker 1: I was completely emaciated. I waged twenty pounds less than
Speaker 1: I weigh right now. And it was clear to me
Speaker 1: that there was no way this was an abuse. This
Speaker 1: was as directed medical use of you know, something like
Speaker 1: twenty milligrams have em fetamine a somewhat low dose daily,
Speaker 1: And I realized, there is no way that this is sustainable.
Speaker 1: This is gonna probably kill me if I keep doing it,
Speaker 1: so I had to stop, and I became very interested
Speaker 1: in new tropics. I read a lot of literature. I
Speaker 1: tried an enormous number of new tropics myself, and I
Speaker 1: did not find that any of them, you know, solved
Speaker 1: the problems of a d h D, or made me
Speaker 1: hyper intelligent or anything like that. Um. I think that
Speaker 1: they offer some benefits for some people under some circumstances,
Speaker 1: sort of like nicotine, where you know it might help sometimes,
Speaker 1: but then you might become tolerant, or it might have
Speaker 1: a side effect that limits the applicability for long term use.
Speaker 1: But I think that as an idea, it's a very
Speaker 1: powerful one, because who wouldn't want a drug that improves
Speaker 1: their memory or concentration or makes them more reasonable and smart.
Speaker 1: It's a wonderful idea that has been explored at great
Speaker 1: length in science fiction. I think the issues that we
Speaker 1: simply have not found such a drug yet. Now you
Speaker 1: just mentioned the third drugg I was going to ask
Speaker 1: you about nicotine. I mean, we know, on the one hand,
Speaker 1: it's associated with the massive millions and millions of deaths
Speaker 1: each year from people smoking consuming nicotine in a smokable form.
Speaker 1: We know that it has a rich history. There's a
Speaker 1: book I think called Tobacco and Shamanism, you know, where
Speaker 1: you see descriptions of tobacco consumption in South America that
Speaker 1: resemble some of the most powerful, you know, psychedelic consumption.
Speaker 1: And now we have a new world of tobacco harm
Speaker 1: reduction where people are consuming nicotine, including smoking by consuming
Speaker 1: either a vaping form or in oral forms or in pouches.
Speaker 1: No this thing. Have you looked into nicotine any depth
Speaker 1: as yet Hamilton's or can you imagine doing so in
Speaker 1: the future. Yeah, I think nicotine is absolutely fascinating, and
Speaker 1: I think that nicotine is almost the prototypical neotropic or
Speaker 1: cognitive enhancer, and and so it doesn't meet the strict
Speaker 1: definition of the new tropic. But the problem, of course
Speaker 1: is that it is immensely habit forming. And so if
Speaker 1: you use nicotine for the first time and you have
Speaker 1: no tolerance to the effect. I mean, I've had instances
Speaker 1: where I use nicotine and you know, wrote an entire
Speaker 1: article in a single setting. That's kind of the best
Speaker 1: case scenario. But of course that type of effect is
Speaker 1: not sustainable, and you rapidly become tolerant, and then after
Speaker 1: a little while, the effect of the nicotine is simply
Speaker 1: curing the withdrawal from not using nicotine. A very similar
Speaker 1: thing happens with caffeine. Anyone that has gone weeks or
Speaker 1: months without using caffeine and uses it again for the
Speaker 1: first time, we'll have this kind of uh, incredible explosion
Speaker 1: of concentration and focus and energy. But for most people
Speaker 1: it's just the way you deal with caffeine withdrawal, first
Speaker 1: thing in the morning. Yeah, I mean sorry. I discussed
Speaker 1: this with Michael because Michael Pollan in his last book,
Speaker 1: Caffeine was the whole chapter and he described it the
Speaker 1: way you do. Although I wonder if a hundred percent
Speaker 1: of effect for long time users is simply warding off withdrawal,
Speaker 1: or if there's not still some effective stimulant thing that happens.
Speaker 1: You know that it's a combination of those two. Last thing,
Speaker 1: you don't get that much into people altering their consciousness
Speaker 1: through non drug means. There is that fascinating episodes you
Speaker 1: have where you're you go to visit Amanda Fielding, the
Speaker 1: founder of the Beckley Foundation outside Oxford, and you get
Speaker 1: her to share her experience with a trepidation um, which
Speaker 1: was a way of altering consciousness and maybe enhancing longer
Speaker 1: term health that people, you know where you put a
Speaker 1: little hole in your head. But I wonder know you're
Speaker 1: very open to Amanda sharing your experience with trepidation. Do
Speaker 1: you think you could see yourself doing a lot more
Speaker 1: research into the alterations of consciousness that don't involve taking
Speaker 1: these chemicals? Yes, of course. The problem is that I
Speaker 1: think that starts to rapidly include the entirety of human life.
Speaker 1: We're constantly trying to alter our consciousness through non pharmacological means,
Speaker 1: whether it's entertaining ourselves by listening to podcasts or reading
Speaker 1: a book, or watching a movie or a YouTube video,
Speaker 1: or falling in love or trying to fall in love,
Speaker 1: or breaking up with somebody, or eating a meal. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's that the problem is that this rapidly expands into
Speaker 1: everything because and I think this also is one of
Speaker 1: the issues with the way that people talk about addiction.
Speaker 1: They talk about addiction as if it is heroin addiction
Speaker 1: and nothing else. But the reality is that these sorts
Speaker 1: of addictions exist throughout human life, whether it's food or
Speaker 1: entertainment to her avoidance of suffering through various social behavioral patterns,
Speaker 1: and so on and so forth. So of course I'm
Speaker 1: interested in it. The problem is that it just becomes
Speaker 1: an enormous subject, very very quickly. And the nice thing
Speaker 1: about drugs is they are single entities with histories that
Speaker 1: can be studied and understood, and they allow you to
Speaker 1: narrow the focus on a infinitely expansive field of consciousness alteration.
Speaker 1: Sometimes people would talk about these episodes as if they
Speaker 1: were about a drug, but the drug was typically just
Speaker 1: a a single focal point in a larger issue where
Speaker 1: you know, the LSD episode, was it really about LSD? Know?
Speaker 1: Was about Amanda Fielding and the history of her research
Speaker 1: and the future of drug discovery that was guided in
Speaker 1: part by historical research on LSD, and it rapidly expands
Speaker 1: into this very big topic. And so part of the
Speaker 1: reason that I've emphasized drugs is They've been a way
Speaker 1: to encapsulate this enorm its enormous subject that can rapidly
Speaker 1: get out of control if you don't focus yourself. You're
Speaker 1: reminding me though, the part of that episode where you
Speaker 1: get into misth amphetamine and then you go visit some
Speaker 1: people in recovery and you basically keep pushing them, aren't
Speaker 1: you just substituting an addiction to mith amphetamine with an
Speaker 1: addiction to Jesus? And their response is kind of interesting
Speaker 1: in a way. I mean, on one hand, they're saying yes,
Speaker 1: But it also gets to the distinction between addiction and dependence, right,
Speaker 1: where one something you become dependent on in your life,
Speaker 1: but that dependence is causing little or no harm, as
Speaker 1: opposed to addiction, which involves a dependence plus a lot
Speaker 1: of harm. Right. And when people saw that, I think
Speaker 1: they sort of misinterpreted what I was doing and they
Speaker 1: thought it was like a snarky attack. But I'm genuinely
Speaker 1: very interested in how well religiosity seems to help certain
Speaker 1: people with substance abuse disorders. I mean that what they
Speaker 1: were doing is not uncommon. That's not something that you
Speaker 1: only see in you know, Arkansas or ten See. This
Speaker 1: is something that you see in New York City. It's
Speaker 1: actually very common for people who are addicted to drugs
Speaker 1: to find solace in the concept of a higher power
Speaker 1: and use that to help their sobriety. It's, you know,
Speaker 1: a foundational concept in a A and a lot of
Speaker 1: other addiction treatment programs. So I think it's it's a
Speaker 1: valid question, and I think some people were thought it
Speaker 1: was a snarky remark when one of the I said,
Speaker 1: what would you do if you didn't believe in God
Speaker 1: but you wanted to experience this benefit that you know,
Speaker 1: seems to be very real for these people. How would
Speaker 1: an atheist or somebody who is agnostic or resistant to
Speaker 1: the traditions of Christianity still experience this in a materialist mindset?
Speaker 1: And I don't think it's a good answer to that question. Unfortunately.
Speaker 1: I think that it may be the case that this
Speaker 1: alternate belief system really does confers and benefit, and it
Speaker 1: might be incompatible with atheist materialism. So I don't know
Speaker 1: that there's an easy solution for that problem. Hey Hamilton,
Speaker 1: I think we should just go on and on forever.
Speaker 1: So for our listeners, I strongly encourage you to take
Speaker 1: a look at you know, Hamilton's twenty part series of
Speaker 1: documentaries about drugs, Hamilton's Pharmacopeia. He has a podcast as well,
Speaker 1: in fact that he had me on as a guest
Speaker 1: not long ago, even as he's working at the university
Speaker 1: and doing research in the following the footsteps and the
Speaker 1: traditions of Sasha Shulgin. So Hamilton's thank you ever so
Speaker 1: much for taking the time to be on this and
Speaker 1: I look forward to our crossing paths for many years
Speaker 1: to come. Yes, thank you. We love to hear from
Speaker 1: our listeners. If you'd like to share your own stories,
Speaker 1: comments and ideas, then leave us a message at one
Speaker 1: eight three three seven seven nine sixty that's eight three
Speaker 1: three psycho zero, or you can email us at psychoactive
Speaker 1: at protozoa dot com or find me on Twitter at
Speaker 1: Ethan natal Man. You can also find in contact information
Speaker 1: in our show notes. Next week I'll be talking with
Speaker 1: Daniel Wolfe, who's played a pivotal role in global harm
Speaker 1: reduction in his role as headed the Harm Reduction program
Speaker 1: at George Soros's Open Society Foundations. When public health agencies
Speaker 1: talk about harm reduction, or even when some public health
Speaker 1: programs discuss harm reduction, they're really thinking about it as
Speaker 1: a set of approved interventions to reduce the risk of
Speaker 1: HIV or other blood borne infections, and they're really not
Speaker 1: thinking about it the way I think about it now,
Speaker 1: because I see harm reduction, including needle exchange, as a
Speaker 1: sense of personal restoration and enfranchiseman, not just as a
Speaker 1: way to stop disease. Subscribe to Psychoactive now, see it,
Speaker 1: don't miss it. Psychoactive is a production of I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio and Protozoa Pictures. It's hosted by me Ethan Naedelman.
Speaker 1: It's produced by Noam Osband and Josh Stain. The exact
Speaker 1: to the producers are Dylan Golden, Ari Handel, Elizabeth Geesus
Speaker 1: and Darren Aronofsky from Protozoa Pictures, Alex Williams and Matt
Speaker 1: Frederick from my Heart Radio and me Ethan n Edelman.
Speaker 1: Our music is by Ari Blucien and a special thanks
Speaker 1: to Abbvi Briosef, Bianca Grimshaw and Robert Beebe