Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Ethan Edelman, and this is Psychoactive, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. Psychoactive is the
Speaker 1: show where we talk about all things drugs. But any
Speaker 1: views expressed here do not represent those of I Heart Media,
Speaker 1: Protozoa Pictures, or their executives and employees. Indeed, Heed, as
Speaker 1: an inveterate contrarian, I can tell you they may not
Speaker 1: even represent my own and nothing contained in this show
Speaker 1: should be used his medical advice or encouragement to use
Speaker 1: any type of drugs. Hello Psychoactive listeners. So today my
Speaker 1: guest is somebody who's really famous. UM, her name's Chelsea
Speaker 1: Handler and she's got her own podcast. You're Chelsea and
Speaker 1: had me on a little while ago and very graciously
Speaker 1: accepted invitation to join me on Coactive. So so Chelsea,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for doing this. Oh thank you, Evan,
Speaker 1: no problem, my pleasure. You know, I am pretty removed
Speaker 1: from like what's going on in pop culture in all
Speaker 1: sorts of ways. So I'll tell you the truth. And
Speaker 1: also for listeners that when you know our folks have
Speaker 1: arranged for me to be on your podcast. I I
Speaker 1: heard your name, but I didn't really have a clear
Speaker 1: idea of who you were, and so I did a
Speaker 1: little research, so I know why I was being on
Speaker 1: your podcast. But I have to say, you know, doing
Speaker 1: this deep dive and preparing for this thing, you're fucking amazing.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know I'm looking at you. You're a
Speaker 1: world famous comedian. This is for the audience of my audience,
Speaker 1: who doesn't know you are. She is a actress. She
Speaker 1: is a podcast host. She is a talk show host.
Speaker 1: In fact, I think she was only the second woman
Speaker 1: ever after Joan Rivers, to e her own late night
Speaker 1: talk show. She's been doing documentaries on increasingly serious subjects
Speaker 1: while still interweaving holes. It's a humor in it. She's
Speaker 1: a political activist, she's a social just as activist. She's
Speaker 1: currently at the end of two on tour with a
Speaker 1: comedy show called Vaccinated and Horny. So I mean say,
Speaker 1: I don't know how you do it all, um, but
Speaker 1: you're amazing. Well, thank you, what a nice introduction. I
Speaker 1: love it. So I take it that your success is
Speaker 1: all about your drug use, Is that right? Yes? Yes,
Speaker 1: one leads very nicely into the other. Uh yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I have a very storied history with my affinity
Speaker 1: for drugs and the legalization of all sorts of things,
Speaker 1: And yes, I like to share that on TV and off. No,
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess part of your whole stick right
Speaker 1: is that you're very out there about almost everything right.
Speaker 1: And one of the things I saw was that one
Speaker 1: of the things that first got you into comedy was
Speaker 1: when you after you first got arrested with a d
Speaker 1: u I or something like that. Yes, I was arrested
Speaker 1: when I was twenty one years old for a d
Speaker 1: u I, and I had been using my sister, my
Speaker 1: older sister's fake i D. So when I got pulled
Speaker 1: over for my d u Y, I gave them my
Speaker 1: sister's i D because my practice had been to use
Speaker 1: her i D for anything involving alcohol. And so that
Speaker 1: got me into double trouble because of that, because I
Speaker 1: got a d u I and I was impersonating somebody else,
Speaker 1: and my sister was Mormon at the time and she
Speaker 1: was very very much against drinking and me using her
Speaker 1: i D for such activities. So all in all, I
Speaker 1: got in a lot of trouble and I had to
Speaker 1: go to this d U I class for about eight
Speaker 1: weeks where you meet every Wednesday night and the guy
Speaker 1: running the class basically explains to you how to get
Speaker 1: out of your next du I So I'm not really
Speaker 1: sure why why this is a thing, But anyway, in
Speaker 1: that time I had to make a speech and get
Speaker 1: up and kind of tell my story. And it was
Speaker 1: my first experience publicly speaking, and I was terrified, and uh.
Speaker 1: I kind of waited and waited and avoided being chosen
Speaker 1: and sat in the back of the class every night
Speaker 1: until the very last class where I was called to
Speaker 1: get up and tell my story. And in telling that story,
Speaker 1: it was pretty ridiculous. I mean, I called the cop racist.
Speaker 1: We were both white. I spent seventy two hours in
Speaker 1: Civil Brand College, which for a Jewish girl from an
Speaker 1: upper middle class neighborhood in New Jersey is a hot
Speaker 1: mess nightmare. But because of that class, everyone I told
Speaker 1: my story and everyone was loving it and laughing and
Speaker 1: I could not get off stage. I just thought this
Speaker 1: was the best feeling in the world. And when I
Speaker 1: did get off, Everyone's like, oh, you have to become
Speaker 1: a stand up comedian. And I had never thought about
Speaker 1: that before because I just it just seemed like something
Speaker 1: that I don't know. I just had never considered it.
Speaker 1: It seems scary, and yeah, that's how I decided to
Speaker 1: become a stand up comedian. So thankfully that was my
Speaker 1: first and last d U. I I learned my lesson
Speaker 1: the first time, so I didn't have to learn it
Speaker 1: a second time, and uh yeah, it kind of led
Speaker 1: to my career in stand up. So the irony is
Speaker 1: all over the place. So doing drugs growing up, I mean,
Speaker 1: did you start when you were like twelve or thirteen
Speaker 1: or what was your doing. I was very anti drugs.
Speaker 1: I was very against them until I tried them and
Speaker 1: then I was like, oh, I'd like this. But I
Speaker 1: didn't really start doing drugs until I was like eighteen,
Speaker 1: nineteen years old. And then it was booze or I
Speaker 1: mean acid or yeah, lots of lots of LSD. We
Speaker 1: go to the Limelight in New York City. We take
Speaker 1: a lot of LSD, mushrooms, you know, like psychedelics mostly
Speaker 1: and yeah, some alcohol, but not really alcohol as much
Speaker 1: until later once I was, you know, in my twenties
Speaker 1: and moved to Los Angeles. I moved to Los Angeles
Speaker 1: when I was nineteen, but in high school it was
Speaker 1: much and more about mushrooms and LSD. Yeah, m hmmm.
Speaker 1: And I mean with any of this particularly memorable or
Speaker 1: was it just kind of doing it for yucks at
Speaker 1: the time, you know, we I wasn't using it as
Speaker 1: a therapy, and it wasn't therapeutic. I mean, it was
Speaker 1: probably therapeutic, unbeknownst to me, but it was more of
Speaker 1: a party, you know. It was more to laugh and
Speaker 1: to Dad's and to just kind of be free and like,
Speaker 1: you know, it was a great It was a great feeling.
Speaker 1: I connected with the feeling right away. I don't think
Speaker 1: I've ever had a negative experience. I know some people have,
Speaker 1: but with psilocybin or LSD, it was always the same
Speaker 1: kind of vibe, you know, very I felt very in control.
Speaker 1: I didn't feel out of control, but I felt great.
Speaker 1: I love to laugh, you know, on mushrooms make you laugh,
Speaker 1: and LSD can do the same thing. Sometimes it kind
Speaker 1: of hits me differently. But it just gave me a
Speaker 1: sense of um uninhibitedness that I hadn't felt without it.
Speaker 1: M hm. That you were the youngest of six growing up,
Speaker 1: but I wanted growing up. I mean, were you getting
Speaker 1: high with your siblings as well, or was this all
Speaker 1: the stuff you did separate from that. Uh No, I
Speaker 1: wasn't getting high with them. I definitely started taking mushrooms
Speaker 1: with my brothers around nineteen or twenty because I'm the
Speaker 1: one who had them, so you know, then I was
Speaker 1: able to share with them and they didn't really have
Speaker 1: a choice of the matter. So yeah, I took mushroms
Speaker 1: with my brothers on several occasions, and you know, smoked
Speaker 1: pot with them, but not until I was about nineteen.
Speaker 1: Uh huh. And I take it with your parents, zero
Speaker 1: drug used together. No, my parents weren't. Yeah, they didn't
Speaker 1: do drugs, but my dad and my mom really didn't
Speaker 1: have any judgment on that. They just thought, you know,
Speaker 1: that's part of being a kid. My brothers and sisters
Speaker 1: who were older than be grew up in the seventies,
Speaker 1: so I was born in seventy five, so my parents
Speaker 1: were kind of used to, like, you know, drug exploration.
Speaker 1: They didn't have a big problem with that, even though
Speaker 1: I mean, I really you went to a synagogue, you
Speaker 1: were bought miss as. Your dad Jewish, but your mom
Speaker 1: like was Mormon. Yeah, she came over from Germany, so
Speaker 1: there's a big Mormon contingency over Germany or there was,
Speaker 1: and after the war she came over. I mean she
Speaker 1: was about six or seven when World War two ended
Speaker 1: and her father was served in the German military, so
Speaker 1: he had been taken as a pow uh in the
Speaker 1: first year of the war to Iowa, and so he
Speaker 1: was in Iowa for many years. And then the war
Speaker 1: ended and he returned, and then they lived in Germany
Speaker 1: for about ten more years, and then my mom came
Speaker 1: over to visit New Jersey when she was about nineteen
Speaker 1: years old. I met my father and went back home
Speaker 1: to Germany to tell them she was moving to America.
Speaker 1: And then shortly after my mom and dad got married,
Speaker 1: they got pregnant, or probably before they got married, quite frankly,
Speaker 1: and then my grandparents came over. So my grandparents and
Speaker 1: my mother were all Mormon, and they came over and
Speaker 1: my dad was like, listen, I'm going to raise my
Speaker 1: family Jewish, so you have to get on board with that.
Speaker 1: There's not gonna be any Mormonism in this family. And
Speaker 1: my mom said, sure, no problem. And so I thought
Speaker 1: my mom was Jewish until I was nine years old,
Speaker 1: because she was at temple with us every weekend, and
Speaker 1: she would, you know, she knew all the Hebrew prayers,
Speaker 1: and we celebrated all the Jewish holidays. Um. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: I didn't find out she wasn't Jewish until my brother
Speaker 1: died when I was nine, and we found out she
Speaker 1: couldn't been buried in the same cemetery as my brother
Speaker 1: because she wasn't Jewish and she would have to convert
Speaker 1: to Judaism. So this was a conversation I overheard in
Speaker 1: my kitchen with Rabbi Kasd. In the affrementioned Rabbi Kasden,
Speaker 1: we got mitzvahed, your ex wife, and myself, and he
Speaker 1: was talking to my father saying, well, we would have
Speaker 1: to convert Rita to Judaism. And I remember going, what
Speaker 1: do you mean convert? I thought mom was Jewish and
Speaker 1: my Dad's like, no, Mom's Mormon. And I was like,
Speaker 1: what's Mormon? And my Dad's like, don't worry about it
Speaker 1: right now. And then I read the Book of Mormon
Speaker 1: about a year later, and you know, I just threw
Speaker 1: it at my mother. I go, you can't be serious
Speaker 1: with this nonsense. Yeah, well, it's interesting. So your grandfather
Speaker 1: served in the German army in World War Two. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they sent him to the Russian Front because he
Speaker 1: was one of those soldiers, like many German Men, who
Speaker 1: wanted no part of it, but they didn't. You know,
Speaker 1: your family was at risk, so you had to serve
Speaker 1: in some way. But when they tested you to get
Speaker 1: in army, you know, he just he was a very
Speaker 1: physically strong guy. He kind of just didn't demonstrate any
Speaker 1: of that so that he would be you know, really
Speaker 1: relegated to some kind of desk job or something. But
Speaker 1: they ended up setting him to the Russian Front, and uh,
Speaker 1: that's where he was taken as a pow. Interesting origins here,
Speaker 1: and you know, in factually did an episode not long
Speaker 1: ago about Hitler, the Third Reich and drugs and would
Speaker 1: a pivotal role drugs play like in the Blitz Creek
Speaker 1: and amphetamine not weed or anything like that, you know,
Speaker 1: when the Germans invaders so quickly through Belgium in France.
Speaker 1: But you know, going back, Chelsea, yourman being a Mormon,
Speaker 1: I mean, the Mormons are so like you know, not
Speaker 1: just no weed or alcohol. It's not even any coffee
Speaker 1: or anything like that. Ye, your mom was still kind
Speaker 1: of open minded about that stuff. Uh My mom I
Speaker 1: think was tired mostly. I mean she had had six children.
Speaker 1: I was the youngest, and I was like a hellion,
Speaker 1: Like I came on the scene and was, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: just challenging them at every turn. I was, you know,
Speaker 1: but three years old, telling my parents what I've thought
Speaker 1: of them, asking them if I had a dowry, what
Speaker 1: the game plan was for savings. I just constantly was
Speaker 1: challenging them, and being the youngest, that's typically what happens.
Speaker 1: You know, you absorb your older siblings sensibilities and you
Speaker 1: pick up on everything and you're listening to everything. So
Speaker 1: you grew up very quickly. And I've had a strong
Speaker 1: personality in my whole life. So my mom wasn't going
Speaker 1: to challenge me on any of that stuff. She only
Speaker 1: returned to Mormonism after my brother died. He had a
Speaker 1: terrible accident and he was the oldest, and then she
Speaker 1: became religious again, as one does. She kind of returned
Speaker 1: to her Mormonism to find solace there within the grieving process,
Speaker 1: I think, and you remained Mormon throughout the rest of
Speaker 1: her life. But yeah, she wasn't sanctimonious or you know,
Speaker 1: trying to instill her beliefs in me. She just was
Speaker 1: doing her thing and wanted to be left alone doing that.
Speaker 1: And I remember also that she struggled with breast cancer
Speaker 1: for a long time. Was there any thought of her
Speaker 1: using medical merl wanted to deal with NOI your from
Speaker 1: chemotherapy and all that sort of thing. No, that was
Speaker 1: pretty much before that was you know, thought to be acceptable. Really,
Speaker 1: you know, that never even came up. So it was
Speaker 1: a long time ago, but I guess, yeah, it feels
Speaker 1: like it was before the advent of people understanding that
Speaker 1: you know, marijuana comes from that ground and that it's
Speaker 1: from Mother nature. M you know, just to shift away
Speaker 1: from the drug thing for a second. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: I was wondering about this. I mean, you just talked about,
Speaker 1: you know, you're Jewish growing up and such, and I
Speaker 1: think about, you know, the so many of the famous comedians,
Speaker 1: both male and female, but with the female commediany. Think
Speaker 1: about Joan River, you know, Goldie Hawn or Sarah Silverman,
Speaker 1: who I guess comes up just a little before you,
Speaker 1: or Amy Schumer more recently. I mean, when you think
Speaker 1: about it, do you how do you think you're growing
Speaker 1: up Jewish? And this, I mean does it shape comedy?
Speaker 1: Is there a reason why there seems to be a
Speaker 1: disproportionate number of Jews doing comedy in America. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I would say, so you have a sharper sense of
Speaker 1: humor by being you know, persecuted. You have that feeling.
Speaker 1: Whether that happened to our generation per say, where we
Speaker 1: grew up or not. I mean, I think that's intergenerational.
Speaker 1: You know, you always feel like as a Jew until
Speaker 1: you come to Hollywood, that you're in the minority, even
Speaker 1: though I grew up in a very Italian Jewish neighborhood
Speaker 1: and Livingston like it was very there was lots of
Speaker 1: Jewish people, but it's just a very kind of I
Speaker 1: don't know, there's something very self deprecating about being Jewish
Speaker 1: because there's humility in it. Hm and um, you know,
Speaker 1: before we get into cannabis, because I can just I mean,
Speaker 1: you're all over the place in the media. You're on
Speaker 1: more popular programs and news programs talking about how wonderful
Speaker 1: Merril winter is almost that I can think of. But
Speaker 1: before we go there, you know, it seems like alcohol
Speaker 1: was pretty much the dominant drug in your life throughout
Speaker 1: your twenties, and that on the one hand, it seemed
Speaker 1: like it almost became a problem, but never really and
Speaker 1: maybe it was great and you stand by it, but
Speaker 1: there was I mean, just talk about your relationship with
Speaker 1: especially in your younger years, and had that evolved. Well.
Speaker 1: I was very much a party girl, and I talked
Speaker 1: about it and made a living talking about it. Like
Speaker 1: you know, I was rewarded for talking about it. My
Speaker 1: first book was called My Horizontal Life, a collection of
Speaker 1: one night stands, and you know, people were like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, I can't believe you got away with writing
Speaker 1: a book about that. I'm like, why, what's the problem.
Speaker 1: You know, I got a TV show where I talked
Speaker 1: about alcohol and drug use openly, and I think for
Speaker 1: a while I was probably over using alcohol because of
Speaker 1: what happened with my brother. The trauma of you know,
Speaker 1: my brother dying at that young age and never really
Speaker 1: having the tools to access or articulate that pain, you know,
Speaker 1: and react to it. My parents didn't have the wherewithal
Speaker 1: to get us into therapy and to get us into
Speaker 1: you know, trauma grief, and I think that turns into
Speaker 1: I don't think I know from going to therapy as
Speaker 1: an adult, that that kind of delayed grief. You know,
Speaker 1: you use drugs or you use alcohol to, you know,
Speaker 1: cover up your pain, and you don't think that there's
Speaker 1: a problem. You just think you're a fun person. So uh,
Speaker 1: I think that's in my twenties and the abuse of alcohol,
Speaker 1: probably to certain degrees, I never was a problem where
Speaker 1: I had to, like you know, go to rehab or anything.
Speaker 1: I was always able to cut it out if I
Speaker 1: had needed to, or tone it down when I needed to.
Speaker 1: But I have to say, no one really ever even
Speaker 1: asked me to tone it down because I was doing
Speaker 1: well in all facets of my life. If that are measurable,
Speaker 1: you know, it's kind of an inside job for you
Speaker 1: to take a look at why you want to drink
Speaker 1: so much or why you lean on alcohol in the
Speaker 1: way you do. So nobody ever brought it to my attention.
Speaker 1: It was definitely part of my persona and it still is.
Speaker 1: I still drink, Obviously, I don't drink like I did
Speaker 1: my my twenties because now I understand you know the
Speaker 1: ill effects of drinking and the deleterious impact it has
Speaker 1: on you, and you know how to use it more responsibly.
Speaker 1: Plus I'm forty seven years old. It doesn't feel good
Speaker 1: to drink like that, Like I don't have a desire
Speaker 1: like that anymore, but I can still tiwan on ethant
Speaker 1: uh huh. I saw someplace you said, Josie said, if
Speaker 1: I was an alcoholic, I'd be a functional alcoholic. And
Speaker 1: I guess you would never have describe yourself an alcoholic,
Speaker 1: even if you were drinking too much of times, because
Speaker 1: you could always stop when you wanted to, and you
Speaker 1: would just clean out and clean out and all that,
Speaker 1: and it never really cost your professionally. It's not as
Speaker 1: if you're out there doing sets and you realize that
Speaker 1: you were screwing up or forgetting lines or this sort
Speaker 1: of stuff, for being off. Although you also talked about
Speaker 1: sometimes not you know, next morning, not remembering the last
Speaker 1: that you did. Yeah, well, yes, that definitely did happen.
Speaker 1: And so there were instances. It just wasn't a comment,
Speaker 1: It wasn't a recurring theme, like it didn't happen over
Speaker 1: and over again. It happened a couple of times, and
Speaker 1: you know, they very much kind of woke me up
Speaker 1: and said, okay, this is you're going a little too
Speaker 1: far here. Now you have to get yourself under control.
Speaker 1: So I've always had a very like um decent, you know,
Speaker 1: sense of self awareness with regard to my drinking and
Speaker 1: how it's affecting my career. And if it was so, yeah,
Speaker 1: it never got to a place where where that you know,
Speaker 1: where anybody had to sit me down and say, okay,
Speaker 1: you know, let's get a grip here. And did you
Speaker 1: have a favorite? I mean, I think the second book
Speaker 1: was called are you there Vodka? It's meat, Chelsea? I mean,
Speaker 1: with vodka your favorite booze? Or were you like anything?
Speaker 1: You know, what could be? Wine, beer, could be I
Speaker 1: basically just only drink vodka, uh huh, straight like no,
Speaker 1: I put a little soda water in it. Uh huh,
Speaker 1: you know, like martinis with that kind of thing. No, No,
Speaker 1: I like vodka and soda. That's pretty much. And that's more.
Speaker 1: I mean, the genesis of that is more for dietary
Speaker 1: and you know, vanity than anything else. It was like
Speaker 1: the one drink you could drink without bloating or putting
Speaker 1: on weight. You know, vodka was supposed to be the
Speaker 1: cleanest alcohol. Now they say tequila is, but I'm still
Speaker 1: devoutly vodka drink drink okay, okay? And would you ever
Speaker 1: drink on stage when you're performing? Was that party all
Speaker 1: the time, of course. Yeah, that's part of that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that while you're on stage. I have been. I have
Speaker 1: been on stage where I didn't remember absolutely. I I
Speaker 1: used to go on tour. I remember my last stand
Speaker 1: up tour. I had to be doing two shows at
Speaker 1: Arena's back to back at the same night, and the
Speaker 1: second show I would barely remember. And I was exhausted.
Speaker 1: I had been doing like eight years of my television
Speaker 1: show or seven years. I had four books come out
Speaker 1: back to back to back, So that's a book tour,
Speaker 1: which is a stand up tour, and I had just
Speaker 1: worked myself into the ground and it became my coping mechanism,
Speaker 1: which is one of the reasons I stopped doing my
Speaker 1: show and I stopped doing stand up. I had just
Speaker 1: had had it. I was exhausted, and I was, you know,
Speaker 1: using alcohol to like get me through the next show,
Speaker 1: to give me energy. And so yeah, that was a
Speaker 1: big turning point. We'll be talking more after we hear
Speaker 1: this ad for alreadience you. A few years ago, Chelsea
Speaker 1: did a series of FOD documentaries on Netflix, like on Chelsea,
Speaker 1: does the Internet, Silicon Valley Matter? When, on marriage, when
Speaker 1: a racism and one on drugs, and you spent about
Speaker 1: a quarter of the episode talking to people who had
Speaker 1: been in rehab being addicted. Um, I mean, you know
Speaker 1: it felt like I mean, part of other parts of it.
Speaker 1: Of course, we're about you know, we'll get into your
Speaker 1: ayahuasca trip and other types of elements of drug using.
Speaker 1: Getting high in marijuana much more celebratory, and so when
Speaker 1: you were doing that part of it, the rehab thing,
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously you're trying to show the spectrum of
Speaker 1: people's relationship with drugs, but when you see people who
Speaker 1: struggle that way, do you just feel like, there but
Speaker 1: for the grace of guy though I or that you
Speaker 1: just simply can't relate, or I mean, you know, what
Speaker 1: did you think about those elements of it. I just
Speaker 1: remember someone saying to me at a very early age,
Speaker 1: or overhearing a conversation, saying, I don't ever want to
Speaker 1: have to give up alcohol, so I'm never going to
Speaker 1: abuse it. And that just stayed with me. So I
Speaker 1: I could relate to these people. But I thought, oh, like,
Speaker 1: I never let it get me, you know, I never
Speaker 1: felt that I had let it get me. I'm sure
Speaker 1: other people would disagree. By the way, I'm sure other
Speaker 1: people would be like, oh my god, she's a lush
Speaker 1: or she was a lush or whatever. But that's not
Speaker 1: really that doesn't matter to me. It's what I you know,
Speaker 1: it's how I experienced it. And whenever I felt like
Speaker 1: it had gotten out of control or it could get
Speaker 1: out of control, I rained it in because I didn't
Speaker 1: ever want to have to give something up completely. I
Speaker 1: didn't ever want to have to go to rehab, you know,
Speaker 1: or do something like that. And yeah, and I don't
Speaker 1: think I have that addictive personality. I just I like
Speaker 1: to have fun. But I don't have that addiction gene,
Speaker 1: luckily because neither of my parents had it either. Mm hmm, yeah, No,
Speaker 1: I'm not sort of the same way I mean I've been.
Speaker 1: I think I basically enjoyed the vast majority of drugs,
Speaker 1: and most almost every drug been a kind of benefit
Speaker 1: of my life. And anytime it seems like if I
Speaker 1: get high three or four days in a row, I
Speaker 1: just only want to get high the next, you know,
Speaker 1: the next fuhile, I just want to kind of clear out.
Speaker 1: It's always been the same way with alcohol. But you
Speaker 1: threw another drug in the mix back then, which I've
Speaker 1: never really played around with that much, which is ambient
Speaker 1: and sleeping pills. What was that about? Oh yeah, we
Speaker 1: were demonstrating what happens to people when they're on ambient
Speaker 1: and what happens when you drink on ambient, because ambient
Speaker 1: can be such a dangerous sleeping pit hill. So we
Speaker 1: did that. We showed you know, how how people act
Speaker 1: when they have one ambient, when they mix it with alcohol,
Speaker 1: when they have two ambient. Uh. We were just kind
Speaker 1: of going through what drugs we could legally do on television,
Speaker 1: and that fell under that category right now. I mean,
Speaker 1: and I think it was an interesting point because one
Speaker 1: of the things that people I think, you know, don't
Speaker 1: or do realize is that when you're combining alcohol with
Speaker 1: a sleeping pill like ambient. I think on the TV
Speaker 1: show you did at ten look Zambi and a couple
Speaker 1: of cocktails as well, when you're combining it with alcohol
Speaker 1: and opioids, that basically, if you combine it in quote
Speaker 1: unquote the right amounts, there's a mist amounts, it can
Speaker 1: actually be a great high, but that if you sort
Speaker 1: of do too much of it, it can actually stop
Speaker 1: your breathing. So it's got A. It's got a high
Speaker 1: danger risk level, but you can understand why people do
Speaker 1: it because it feels good. But what about in your
Speaker 1: own life. I thought there's a point where you were
Speaker 1: sort of getting into the sleeping n till a night
Speaker 1: thing and all this and beginning to wonder if that
Speaker 1: would be a problem. Uh yeah, I mean I've probably
Speaker 1: been through that experience with almost every drug. Like I
Speaker 1: I've always experimented. Yeah, there was a period of time
Speaker 1: where I used a man I don't know, maybe a
Speaker 1: year or something where I experimented with ambient. There was
Speaker 1: a year when I experimented with xan X. Sometimes I
Speaker 1: take xan x, you know today, like to go to
Speaker 1: sleep if I'm traveling and back and forth. I just
Speaker 1: came home from my worka for a month, so yeah,
Speaker 1: I use xan X to get me back on track.
Speaker 1: But again, it's about using these things judiciously and not
Speaker 1: becoming you know, reliant on them. That's where cannabis comes
Speaker 1: in in such a helpful way, because because cannabis is
Speaker 1: a great alternative to almost any you know, drug that
Speaker 1: you're going to get from a pharmaceutical company. You know,
Speaker 1: it can relax to you, it can help you sleep,
Speaker 1: It can help you focus if you're taking the right strain.
Speaker 1: There are so many benefits to it. So yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean that's why I'm such an advocate for cannabis use
Speaker 1: because I mean, what the pharmaceutical companies have done to
Speaker 1: this country. You know, we can't be trusting them, and
Speaker 1: and and having a reliance on any of these substances
Speaker 1: is terrifying for a lot of people. And you know,
Speaker 1: when you get your genealogy tested, they do tell you
Speaker 1: whether you have that addiction gene They do when you
Speaker 1: do twenty three in me, they can tell you that
Speaker 1: and if you do have it. I mean, you look
Speaker 1: at people with the opioid crisis, people who have done
Speaker 1: who did you know oxycodone or not oxycodone? What? What's
Speaker 1: the drug? The ones name? OxyContin was the brand name, right,
Speaker 1: I mean people would take three of those and be addicted.
Speaker 1: And there are other people who did it for three
Speaker 1: weeks and weren't addicted. So it's it's also a measure
Speaker 1: of what you know your constitution is made up. That's
Speaker 1: a huge factor that nobody had been factoring in for
Speaker 1: years before we had this genetic testing. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it's interesting but by the way, just to finish the
Speaker 1: THEELI drugs before cannabis, you never really got into the opioid.
Speaker 1: It sounds like not clear if you ever got much
Speaker 1: into stimulants, you know, the amphetamine or stuff like that,
Speaker 1: or into tobacco. I mean basically, is that basically right,
Speaker 1: that those three drug categories you generally avoided or just smoked.
Speaker 1: I smoked a little bit of cigarettes. I smoked a
Speaker 1: little bit for a few years, and then I got hypnotized.
Speaker 1: I gave that up. Uh, stimulants, amphetamines. No, I mean
Speaker 1: I've definitely done cocaine. Uh, no heroin or anything like that.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, I mean I've tried pretty much everything that's
Speaker 1: out there, probably minus heroin or crack or you know,
Speaker 1: crystal math. I have never done those things, or I
Speaker 1: have again, I would bet. I don't know what that is.
Speaker 1: What's oh well, I don't know. If I tell you what,
Speaker 1: you got something to look forward to. But I begain
Speaker 1: is the to the few psychedelic things that comes from
Speaker 1: a plant actually a root in Africa and gabone called eboga,
Speaker 1: and it's the one that people use. Nobody does it
Speaker 1: for fun or for yucks. Um. Some people do it
Speaker 1: for greater spiritual insight, but it's more commonly associated with
Speaker 1: people who have a very serious addiction to opioids or
Speaker 1: alcohol or other things using it to basically clear their
Speaker 1: system of that. And there's you know, the beginnings amount
Speaker 1: of research on it may turn out to be one
Speaker 1: of the most amazing of all the psychedelics in terms
Speaker 1: of really being helpful to people. But it's a long
Speaker 1: long it's it's longer than LSD. It's intense, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean when you talked about doing ayahuasca and you know,
Speaker 1: weariness about you know, the diarrhea and the nausea and
Speaker 1: throwing up. I mean, I begains for many people has
Speaker 1: the same thing, if not even you know, more challenging.
Speaker 1: But you know so, I guess so when you had
Speaker 1: me on your podcast, right you interviewed me for the
Speaker 1: first half hour, and then you and I took questions
Speaker 1: from your audience, you know, about drugs, and they were
Speaker 1: looking for drug use. And either us are doctors, but
Speaker 1: we both have a lot of experience and knowledge, and
Speaker 1: I was very impressed at the way you're handling a
Speaker 1: lot of those questions. And at one point I saw
Speaker 1: yourself not when we were talking. But someplace else describe
Speaker 1: yourself as a pharmacological into it. There's somebody with natural
Speaker 1: intuition when it comes to drug years. Um is that
Speaker 1: just based on experience? So you find that, you know,
Speaker 1: people are valuing your advice in terms of what you're
Speaker 1: telling them about this. I mean, I just have a
Speaker 1: pretty good read on people. I can meet somebody and
Speaker 1: I understand if they're a person that can handle cannabis,
Speaker 1: that can handle alcohol, that can handle you know, mushrooms.
Speaker 1: Like people come to me all the time, my friends
Speaker 1: and relatives, and they're always like, what do I take
Speaker 1: for this? What do I take for that? I just
Speaker 1: have a vast experience and interest, you know, I think
Speaker 1: when you're interested in something, and the same with pharmaceuticals,
Speaker 1: I'm very interested in pharmaceuticals. I'm very interested in anti
Speaker 1: aging stuff. I'm very interested in peptides. Like when you
Speaker 1: have a natural curiosity about something, you know, you absorb
Speaker 1: a lot of the information around it. So I'm an
Speaker 1: open book and a like, you know, a reliable sort
Speaker 1: when when it's something I've had experience with or I've
Speaker 1: seen other people have, you know, positive outcomes with so
Speaker 1: on the psychedelic stuff. I mean, you did a lot
Speaker 1: of acid back then. Are you still doing asset? No?
Speaker 1: I haven't done LSD in a really long time. M h, yeah,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't. I wouldn't mind doing some. Actually, yeah, it's funny.
Speaker 1: I have this lessons. I like micro dose it, but
Speaker 1: it's never been my thing. I think for both you
Speaker 1: and me, mushrooms, you know, plays big time and I've
Speaker 1: I've read about you doing you know, mushrooms and your staff.
Speaker 1: I think mushrooms this, and that's tell us say something
Speaker 1: more about you and mushrooms. Oh well, I love mushrooms.
Speaker 1: I like micro dosing mushrooms. I have something called fund it.
Speaker 1: My friend grows her own mushrooms and she just grounds
Speaker 1: them up and then it gives them to me and
Speaker 1: you just like put your finger in, take a little,
Speaker 1: you know, and put it in your tongue and it's
Speaker 1: just like a little pick me up. And you know,
Speaker 1: you're talking about ten milligrams or something at most, so
Speaker 1: you're not dosing yourself like you know, it would take
Speaker 1: five grams to have an actual ushroom sit, which some
Speaker 1: of my friends in Whistler, Canada are doing this winter,
Speaker 1: which I said I would join them in, which is
Speaker 1: one of those guided kind of you know, journeys that
Speaker 1: you take with somebody there journaling with you, and you know,
Speaker 1: where you put ice shades on and you put your
Speaker 1: headphones on and you actually have a sit So that
Speaker 1: would be like five grams where you and they say
Speaker 1: you get rid of your ego, you know. I was like, well,
Speaker 1: what about two and a half gram She's like, you'll
Speaker 1: still have your ego, It'll still but you'll be laughing,
Speaker 1: like you want to get past the ego part. And
Speaker 1: I was like, okay, I'm interested in that because you
Speaker 1: can get rid of, you know, really old patterns of
Speaker 1: behavior and you can actually see yourself outside of yourself,
Speaker 1: which is much like my experience doing ayahuasca when I
Speaker 1: went to Peru and one of the episodes of Chelsea
Speaker 1: does on Netflix, we did ayahuasca and Peru and um,
Speaker 1: that was an experience where I understood what it felt
Speaker 1: like to be outside of yourself and looking at your
Speaker 1: life and it it was like watching a phantasm megoria
Speaker 1: of my own experiences like as an like playing like
Speaker 1: an iPod shuffle, just all my childhood memories with my
Speaker 1: sister and me just playing like back and forth like
Speaker 1: dogs that we had that I had forgotten about, repressed
Speaker 1: or suppressed memories that just came alive. You know. It
Speaker 1: opens up those neural pathways where you can remember these things.
Speaker 1: And it was a really powerful experience, which is what
Speaker 1: would draw me to do that with either. I mean,
Speaker 1: they the options have recently been ketamine or psilocybin, and
Speaker 1: I feel like ketamine sounds a little bit more disassociative
Speaker 1: and that's not my preference. So I think I might
Speaker 1: do that mushroom sit when I get up to Whistler
Speaker 1: this winter for skiing season. Well, I mean, I'll tell
Speaker 1: you something. You know, So watching the episode, right the
Speaker 1: Chelsea does the aahuasca and so you know, you go
Speaker 1: down to Peru, right, you got this shan in there.
Speaker 1: You with two friends, a guy and and and a
Speaker 1: younger woman and the first night you all drink and
Speaker 1: the guys having a terrible experience. At least that's what
Speaker 1: he describes it, you know, on Emera and the younger
Speaker 1: woman she has a powerful one about childhood stuff and
Speaker 1: you're just sitting there like I'm not feeling anything, and
Speaker 1: I could almost like empathize you as like a holy
Speaker 1: sh it. I mean, first of all, here's my two friends.
Speaker 1: They're both having big experience, one bad, one good. You know,
Speaker 1: Netflix just paid for the whole camera crew to have
Speaker 1: come down here. I'm down here and I took the
Speaker 1: same doses them, and I'm not feeling anything. And it
Speaker 1: sounds like the next day you said to the sham
Speaker 1: and lay it on me and give me, you know,
Speaker 1: the dose. I want to make sure I have an
Speaker 1: experience and then you know, so I is that more
Speaker 1: or less what was happening that first night when you
Speaker 1: didn't feel anything or barely? Yeah, well, I think by
Speaker 1: both of my friends that I had dragged down to
Speaker 1: Peru to do Ayawaska with me, we're having such kind
Speaker 1: of histrionic reactions to the drug, I mean, which is
Speaker 1: par for the course. So I guess I shouldn't use
Speaker 1: that word because that lends itself to think that they
Speaker 1: couldn't handle it. I mean a lot of people have
Speaker 1: those kinds of reactions, and they were very emotional and
Speaker 1: they were very sick, and it just kind of took
Speaker 1: me out of mine because you know, I was responsible
Speaker 1: for them, So I mean, I just couldn't relax and
Speaker 1: let the drug take a hold of me. I felt
Speaker 1: it coming on, and then when I saw my friends
Speaker 1: and heard my friends bawling and crying, I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I have to be there for them. So the next
Speaker 1: day that they were like, okay, no friends, and you know,
Speaker 1: let's cut the cameras in half. Instead of having four cameras,
Speaker 1: we had one. And I went into a room alone
Speaker 1: with a shaman and he gave me a double dose
Speaker 1: of what I had tried the night before, and then
Speaker 1: I was able to really focus on my own experience.
Speaker 1: Have you done it since? No? I haven't. I don't
Speaker 1: really have a desire to do that drug again. I would.
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of my friends are always asking
Speaker 1: me to do it with them because there's people that
Speaker 1: do it here and to Panga Canyon, and you know,
Speaker 1: all over the country people are doing ayahuasca now. But uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't have a strong urge to
Speaker 1: do that again. M h. You mentioned to paying you
Speaker 1: I'm one of your shows. I saw you talking about
Speaker 1: doing the toad medicine five mm O d n T.
Speaker 1: Yeah was it you talk about that one? I was
Speaker 1: not pleasant. That is called an ego killer, but it was.
Speaker 1: It's like an eight and ten minute experience, and I
Speaker 1: was just it was, it was awful. I was immediately
Speaker 1: had to I was recovered in my own sweat within
Speaker 1: thirty seconds. I had to lie back. It was dark, dark, ominous.
Speaker 1: All I remember black clouds and black clouds, And I
Speaker 1: had never felt that on drugs before. I'd always felt
Speaker 1: hopefulness and enlightenment, you know, and positivity and twinkling and
Speaker 1: things looking like, you know, more beautiful than they would
Speaker 1: look in my natural state. But I had never experienced
Speaker 1: that reaction where everything just felt odious and and calamitous.
Speaker 1: And so I just was telling how my please make
Speaker 1: the stop, make the stop, make the stop, and she
Speaker 1: was just kind of rubbing my arm and holding my
Speaker 1: hand and it was over quickly, thankfully, but I was not. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was not a pleasant experience. So you're not gonna
Speaker 1: do that one again? No, I am not, because I
Speaker 1: mean so many just people describe smoking his stuff and
Speaker 1: having these fifteen minutes of wondrous universal, you know, some
Speaker 1: feeling like his last thing a lifetime in a positive
Speaker 1: sense of the term, and you know, then coming back
Speaker 1: and you know, life transformative trips. I mean, in my case,
Speaker 1: I was intrigued by it, and I was kind of
Speaker 1: scared of it. And I finally got up the guts
Speaker 1: to tell a friend of mine who has laid a
Speaker 1: lot of people on their first five you know, five
Speaker 1: M O D M T toy medicine things, Okay, I'm
Speaker 1: ready to do it. And he says, actually, Ethan, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. I don't actually have the smokable version. I
Speaker 1: only have the snortable version. And I said, well, okay,
Speaker 1: how it will be different? He goes, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: not exactly sure as how long the last he goes,
Speaker 1: maybe twice as long, maybe thirty minutes. So he lays
Speaker 1: out two long lines and I snort these two lines
Speaker 1: of the stuff and a burn like hell going down.
Speaker 1: Finally settled down, and I gotta tell you five hours later,
Speaker 1: I mean, I was like, but it was kind of
Speaker 1: like a mushroomy sort of thing. But I mean at
Speaker 1: one point I had energy. Shoot, you got my legs.
Speaker 1: I'm lying on my back with their dog licking my
Speaker 1: face while I'm doing this thing, and I like, and
Speaker 1: afterwards they sit to me from you in Condalini excerci,
Speaker 1: I said, what's Condalini because my legs were like zapping
Speaker 1: outward all this sort of stuff, and even when I finished,
Speaker 1: I was, you know, trying to talk and other you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, I literally couldn't get words out of my
Speaker 1: mouth coherently until the next morning. So that is definitely
Speaker 1: a very very powerful thing, which I think you will
Speaker 1: do again. I think I want to try the smokable
Speaker 1: version and see what that's like, because it wasn't apart
Speaker 1: from how much it burned going down, it was not
Speaker 1: an unpleasant experience, you know. I mean, you know when
Speaker 1: I think when I was a guest on your show,
Speaker 1: we talked to some people calling in and I said,
Speaker 1: you know, some people say there's never no such things
Speaker 1: as a bad trip. Other people have horrifying experiences, whether
Speaker 1: it's on mushrooms or peyote, mescal in ayahuasca. Part of
Speaker 1: it's how you interpret it. I know people who felt
Speaker 1: like they went through hell and they come out of
Speaker 1: it and saying it was the best thing that ever
Speaker 1: happened to them. Um, So you know, a lot of
Speaker 1: it's in the definition. And I'll also tell you in
Speaker 1: terms of doing that megados like you're thinking of doing
Speaker 1: with your friends, and mushrooms. I've done it at like
Speaker 1: that five six milligram level where you know you can't
Speaker 1: let me out in public because I look a bit psychotic.
Speaker 1: I don't get the ego dissolution. I stay pretty centered
Speaker 1: the whole time. But it's a very powerful, somewhat spiritual,
Speaker 1: moving experience, very memorable. UM so yeah, I mean I
Speaker 1: definitely encourage you. I think I think you'll really uh
Speaker 1: you know. Oh well that's good to know. So, you know,
Speaker 1: we talked then You're Brokeram about m d M A,
Speaker 1: and I was a little surprised when you said that
Speaker 1: you've you've never done it in a romantic situation, just
Speaker 1: you and your romantic partner. That you've done it with friends,
Speaker 1: You've done it partying. I wonder, since you've done that,
Speaker 1: have you had a chance to do it in a
Speaker 1: more intimate environment. I mean, now, I've done m d
Speaker 1: M A with a romantic partner, but not in a
Speaker 1: therapy setting, which is what we were talking about on
Speaker 1: my podcast, Like you were talking about couples having problems
Speaker 1: and doing m d M A guided therapy, which I
Speaker 1: would have I would have loved to do with several partners.
Speaker 1: I didn't even know that was a thing. But yeah,
Speaker 1: of course I've done it with romantic partners. It's fun
Speaker 1: to do with anybody. Okay, Okay, gotta gott got it,
Speaker 1: So listen, sonata cannabis. I mean you're out there all
Speaker 1: over the place. You had a funny story you were
Speaker 1: telling about getting your your sister who was a recovering
Speaker 1: Mormon you described or I mean, what what what was
Speaker 1: that like when she did was her first cannabis experience
Speaker 1: when she did it or she done it when she
Speaker 1: was younger or what? H No, No, my sister is
Speaker 1: very uh yeah, she's very inexperience when it comes to
Speaker 1: drinking or drug use. So I just kind of got
Speaker 1: my whole family on board with edibles. We go to
Speaker 1: a Whistler, Canada each year to see and they started
Speaker 1: baking us cannabis infused cookies up there about ten or
Speaker 1: eleven years ago, and we just started handing them out
Speaker 1: before we went to dinner, and it made our family
Speaker 1: vacations just that much more fun. We all just seemed
Speaker 1: to get along great, have great time, laugh our asses off,
Speaker 1: and then we just developed this great affinity for cannabis.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I serve it up every every Christmas. Now,
Speaker 1: I see, I see, have you ever overnosed unanedable? I mean,
Speaker 1: like we all have those stories from college about having
Speaker 1: too much in a you know, marijuana brownie or something
Speaker 1: like that. Yeah, I mean I've had situations where I
Speaker 1: felt high for a couple of days. But again, I'm
Speaker 1: not one of those people who freaks out like I
Speaker 1: don't get like a paranoid that that that's not my
Speaker 1: my bag. I've seen lots of my friends react in
Speaker 1: that way when you have a brownie or you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, I had a cannabis infused dinner that we
Speaker 1: filmed for Netflix, a dinner party one night that was
Speaker 1: on my Netflix talk show, and I was high for
Speaker 1: three days after that because they're just serving you one
Speaker 1: meal after another that's cannabis infused, so there is no
Speaker 1: way to recover from that. I mean one of my
Speaker 1: eyes didn't open for like twenty four hours I was
Speaker 1: so high. So that was not a great feeling. But again,
Speaker 1: I don't have you know, freakouts. Yeah, I gotta say,
Speaker 1: the only time they ever happened to me I was
Speaker 1: in college. I I think I had smoked some very
Speaker 1: strong marril wine just before I've ever done edibles. And
Speaker 1: then sometimes you can do that. And we go to
Speaker 1: the sauna and we'd sit in the sauna and we
Speaker 1: played backgamut, and it would almost be like this contest, like,
Speaker 1: you know, how long can you stay in the sauna,
Speaker 1: how far I can you get through the back gamut?
Speaker 1: And and I was so baked from the cannabis already
Speaker 1: and being in the sauna just doubly baked it into
Speaker 1: my head and I almost passed out, almost fell over.
Speaker 1: God home, and I'll say it took a good thirty
Speaker 1: six hours to clear out and never done that again.
Speaker 1: I mean, that was a highly unpleasant experience. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that sounds unpleasant. I don't like the idea of sauna
Speaker 1: and being high. I'm not having a version to extreme heat.
Speaker 1: Mm hm. So you know, you also see, let me
Speaker 1: see if I got this right. One of the things
Speaker 1: I heard you say, it's surprised me it was cannabis.
Speaker 1: I thought you said that it's not something you particularly
Speaker 1: enjoy with sex, Is that right? I hear you're wrong.
Speaker 1: I mean, I just don't think of it as a
Speaker 1: sexual drug. I definitely had sex on cannabis, but I
Speaker 1: don't think of it as an aphrodisiac. That's so interesting, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, because it's got such a reputation for that.
Speaker 1: You know, there's the Polster Prize winning writer Natalie Angier
Speaker 1: Rights from New York Times, and she did this book
Speaker 1: that When the Poets Here, and she talked about how
Speaker 1: herself and and everyone in her family had their first
Speaker 1: full blown orgasm and influence of marijuana. I mean, I've
Speaker 1: heard many of these things were for so many, both
Speaker 1: men and women, but especially women. It's the thing that
Speaker 1: just kind of settles all the chatter, helps them get
Speaker 1: more connected into it. But that's not really been your
Speaker 1: experience and this. Yeah, no, I would say the opposite,
Speaker 1: and I think I find it try harder to orgasm
Speaker 1: on cannabis has been my experience. Wow, that's interesting. I
Speaker 1: wonder what that is not impossible difficult? Yeah? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's just how your receptors in just the drug.
Speaker 1: You know, some of us have like a certain reaction,
Speaker 1: and I think some people become calmer, some people become
Speaker 1: less engaged, some people become hyperactive. You know, it's like,
Speaker 1: what are your genes gonna do with that information? That
Speaker 1: and the drug being the information, so I think we
Speaker 1: all react differently to all sorts of things. Let's take
Speaker 1: a break here and go to an ad. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about two prior episodes I did en Psychoactive.
Speaker 1: One was about Jews in cannabis. It was based on
Speaker 1: an exhibit at the Center for Jewish History in New York,
Speaker 1: and I'm thinking you should have been one of the
Speaker 1: stars in this exhibit. But the other one that's just
Speaker 1: gone up recently is about um jazz and drugs, based
Speaker 1: on a book by a phone name Rnintorial Bop Apocalypse,
Speaker 1: and it gets all into the various dimensions, you know,
Speaker 1: the question about why so many of the famous jazz
Speaker 1: musicians used we there's a whole big phase of using heroin,
Speaker 1: you know, Charlie Parker and a lot of the other musicians.
Speaker 1: Alcohol as oftenime as being a destructivelopment. But in your case,
Speaker 1: when you think about the creative process and you're writing
Speaker 1: your material and such, what role do the various drugs play,
Speaker 1: if any, in all of that. I mean, I definitely
Speaker 1: used cannabis and mushrooms when I'm writing books. I've written
Speaker 1: six books. I'm working on my seventh right now, which
Speaker 1: will have all been number one New York Times bestsellers.
Speaker 1: I should add, just because we're in the age where
Speaker 1: you have to kind of sing your own praises, So
Speaker 1: I'll do that. Um and I definitely use that. Like
Speaker 1: I when I write everything, I just kind of spit
Speaker 1: it all out or vomit it all out. I should say,
Speaker 1: I put everything down, and then I have to go
Speaker 1: back and finesse it and and infuse it with humor
Speaker 1: and infuse it with all of the fun stuff. And
Speaker 1: I find that cannabis or mushrooms are a rate aid
Speaker 1: in doing that. You know, if I had the other night,
Speaker 1: I was at my girlfriend's house and we smoke to joint.
Speaker 1: I came home and I wrote for an hour, you know,
Speaker 1: because I was I was like, oh, okay, let me
Speaker 1: go through this chapter. So it helps. I don't think
Speaker 1: it's for me. It's not part of the initial process,
Speaker 1: but it's part of the process. And when you write
Speaker 1: for an hour under the influence, how does it look
Speaker 1: the next morning? Some of it's great and profound, and
Speaker 1: some of its garbage. Yeah. I sometimes find that when
Speaker 1: I when I'm getting high and weed, I'll have all
Speaker 1: these great ideas, but then the next morning, they just
Speaker 1: seem like they're just blown away in the wind, Whereas
Speaker 1: with mushrooms, there have been times on mushrooms where I
Speaker 1: find myself writing, you know, a very personal letter to
Speaker 1: a friend, a former lover, or whatever it might be,
Speaker 1: and then the next day, sitting down, it's still totally
Speaker 1: clear as a bell, and I can write it out
Speaker 1: and send it to the person, and it's probably the
Speaker 1: best letters I've ever written in my life. Had been
Speaker 1: under the influence of mushrooms. But do you see something
Speaker 1: similar in that in the difference between the two. Uh,
Speaker 1: I mean, I have there ever been ones where you think,
Speaker 1: like a real serious ah ha moment that's come with
Speaker 1: one drobe or the other. Yeah, mushrooms, I think is
Speaker 1: more that way, because mushrooms are more realistic. It's just
Speaker 1: accentuating the beauty that lies there anyway, you see things
Speaker 1: in a more kind of magical way. You know. That's
Speaker 1: why they're called magic. Mushrooms. Uh, hot can just make
Speaker 1: you think things are funny when they aren't, or you know,
Speaker 1: you have good ideas when you don't. Mushrooms are pretty.
Speaker 1: I think they run parallel to your nature as is.
Speaker 1: It's just an augmentation of of the beauty of things
Speaker 1: and the use of language. You know, you can write
Speaker 1: more elegantly when you're on mushrooms, you can think more elegantly,
Speaker 1: and you perceive more elegantly. H So, now when you're
Speaker 1: out there, I mean, you're so frank in talking about
Speaker 1: so much UM. And I'm curious what has been the
Speaker 1: reaction like of Netflix, of HBO or the theaters where
Speaker 1: you perform and how is that evolved over time? Mean,
Speaker 1: do you have to sign agreement to say you won't
Speaker 1: say certain things where there ever constraints on what you
Speaker 1: could say yours about stuff? Did? Uh? Yeah, they got
Speaker 1: on my ass, but I you know, I always argued
Speaker 1: and fought for being able to speak the truth of
Speaker 1: my experience. So you know, I guess after a while
Speaker 1: of doing that. You know, people don't understand when they
Speaker 1: hire me what that comes with and what I'm going
Speaker 1: to say, and that I'm not good with a lot
Speaker 1: of parameters about certainly about the truth and my own experiences.
Speaker 1: You know, UM, language you can edit and you know,
Speaker 1: use of bad language or language that's not welcome on
Speaker 1: you know, network television, but behaviors I've never been able
Speaker 1: to pretend on anything other than what I am. So
Speaker 1: anytime I'm doing business with somebody, you know, they know
Speaker 1: what they're signing up for. Mm hmmm. And I see
Speaker 1: people are always pressing you to apologize for something you
Speaker 1: said and are rare occasions you have, but you've never
Speaker 1: had to do that around drugs, right, No, No, Well,
Speaker 1: you know the other thing I admire about you is
Speaker 1: you're not just talking about your own drug use and
Speaker 1: giving pretty good advice to people about this, but you've
Speaker 1: also become increasingly political. I mean, part of your life
Speaker 1: is being being a social justice activists and political activists
Speaker 1: and on issues around gay rights and a lot of
Speaker 1: other progressive issues, but you've increasingly been stepping out about
Speaker 1: the drug war, and I think more recently a few
Speaker 1: years ago, you did a documentary on white privilege, and
Speaker 1: there was a fascinating personal story where you go back
Speaker 1: and visit, you know, your boyfriend from when you were
Speaker 1: in high school and just share a bit of that
Speaker 1: story and some of the realization from that with the audience. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I went. I went and visited my high school boyfriend
Speaker 1: whose name was Tayshan, and I had dated him for
Speaker 1: two years and we got caught with marijuana two or
Speaker 1: three times, and each time we got caught, the police
Speaker 1: arrested him because he was black and I was white,
Speaker 1: and they told me just to go back to my neighborhood.
Speaker 1: Like I was let off immediately, and he was, you know,
Speaker 1: sent to jail. And he was the captain of the
Speaker 1: football team. He was I think the captain of the
Speaker 1: basketball team too. He had a big future ahead of him,
Speaker 1: and once you get into that system, it's very hard
Speaker 1: to get out, and he ended up spending I think
Speaker 1: eleven or twelve years in prison. Um, and while I
Speaker 1: was able to just go on my merry way, you know,
Speaker 1: I never thought twice about him after we broke up,
Speaker 1: you know, every once in a while it would come up.
Speaker 1: So I was able to visit him during this documentary
Speaker 1: just to demonstrate kind of my naive te and entitlement
Speaker 1: and you know, being able to walk into a community
Speaker 1: like his and walk out when I was done with it,
Speaker 1: versus him being targeted, you know, and us being caught
Speaker 1: for the same same act, and one of us being
Speaker 1: punished and one of us being you know released. So
Speaker 1: it was pretty obvious back in the day, but I
Speaker 1: wasn't thinking on those terms. You know, when you're sixteen
Speaker 1: years old, you're not thinking about that kind of racial
Speaker 1: inequity or discrimination. You know, it's not until you get
Speaker 1: older that you're able to reflect and have a more
Speaker 1: responsible recollection of things. And through that recollection and reflection,
Speaker 1: you know, I wanted to really examine it and examine
Speaker 1: all of the things that go with that. So listen, now,
Speaker 1: I'm wondering, you know, I'm looking about what you're doing
Speaker 1: your in your life now. And you guys, you've got
Speaker 1: another book coming out, You're on tour um, You've hosted
Speaker 1: a late night talk show before you know, I see,
Speaker 1: you know, just recently Trevor Nor saying he's leaving The
Speaker 1: Daily Show, And I'm thinking, wow, I mean, Chelsea would
Speaker 1: be amazing, you know, in that role to step into
Speaker 1: those shoes that he and John Stewart had. And I wonder,
Speaker 1: is that something you're like, not either that specifically you're
Speaker 1: generally interested in doing. Now, do you think your openness
Speaker 1: about so much stuff, both drugs and other stuff might
Speaker 1: still be a barrier? Would you be expected to pull
Speaker 1: your punches a bit on all that type of stuff?
Speaker 1: I mean, what does it look like from where you
Speaker 1: sit right now, I mean, we're definitely having conversations about
Speaker 1: me going back to TV and doing a late night show. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, Trevor Noah quitting is definitely a conversation my
Speaker 1: agents and I are having around it. You know, Yes,
Speaker 1: I would be interested in pursuing conversations around that. I
Speaker 1: am definitely. I hosted Jimmy Kimmel for a week a
Speaker 1: couple of months ago, and I really just didn't realize
Speaker 1: how much I had missed it. I loved commenting on
Speaker 1: everything that's going on politically and you know, kind of
Speaker 1: culturally what's happening, and and I'm very good at it.
Speaker 1: You know, It's a skill set that I have, and
Speaker 1: I would love to go back to TV. Now now
Speaker 1: that I've had some time away from it, I can
Speaker 1: appreciate it a lot more. Being in the thick of
Speaker 1: it and kind of working relentlessly for seven or eight
Speaker 1: years makes you kind of just want to bow out
Speaker 1: from all things. So now I'm in a different state
Speaker 1: of mind for sure. Mm hmmm. So the last question,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, you're obviously very much of a feminist.
Speaker 1: You're talking about some of the issues of sexism and
Speaker 1: like who gets to be big talk show hosts in
Speaker 1: the you know, in the media world and stuff. But
Speaker 1: you'll also make some observations about men and women and drugs,
Speaker 1: Like at one point you noticed that, for example, men
Speaker 1: are much less inhibited in lighting up and such. And
Speaker 1: I wonder if you've got other thoughts about differences between
Speaker 1: men and women when it comes to their cannabis or
Speaker 1: other drug use, or is that about it. I mean,
Speaker 1: I just think that women, you know, like anything, it's
Speaker 1: a little bit more stigmatized when it comes to women.
Speaker 1: Men with all things, have a greater sense of freedom
Speaker 1: and a greater sense of liberation, whereas women, you know,
Speaker 1: you find us hiding in the corner. You know, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of shame attached to drug use, and especially
Speaker 1: female cannabis use. It's just not the same as male
Speaker 1: cannabis use. So it's a big, you know, point of
Speaker 1: talking or talking point for me with regard to because
Speaker 1: I you know, I want women to be loud and
Speaker 1: proud and men don't get this drug for themselves. Like,
Speaker 1: you know, it's a lot like watching you know, Johnny
Speaker 1: Depp and Amber heard on trial and you're sitting there
Speaker 1: He's being lauded as being this cool guy who drinks
Speaker 1: you know, a half corraftive burlow in the mornings and
Speaker 1: his snorting lines of cocaine with Marilyn Manson, like and
Speaker 1: people love it. They're like, oh, she's a terrible woman.
Speaker 1: Look at him, He's so fun. Like that would just
Speaker 1: never happen, you know, if that were a woman, a
Speaker 1: female who was snorting lines of cocaine. And I mean
Speaker 1: it's so you know, hypocritical, and there's such a double
Speaker 1: standard for women and drugs that yeah, I'd like to
Speaker 1: I like to talk about you can you can do
Speaker 1: drugs and have a hugely successful life. I'm here to
Speaker 1: prove that, like, you can be a functioning person and
Speaker 1: also have a good time on the side. That doesn't
Speaker 1: just get to happen for men. Yeah, but I think
Speaker 1: when it comes to prominent women, if I google on
Speaker 1: on your name and drugs and video and you pop
Speaker 1: up on every single major talk show talking about this
Speaker 1: in addition to a host of other places, Um, so
Speaker 1: I really credit you. I mean I think actually when
Speaker 1: you know, in terms of you know, my life's cause,
Speaker 1: which was ending marijuana prohibition and rolling back the broader
Speaker 1: war on drugs, I think the role that you've been playing,
Speaker 1: and also by getting out there, you know, not just
Speaker 1: two years ago, but six, seven, eight years ago, more
Speaker 1: years ago. About that, I really think you've made a
Speaker 1: positive contribution to shifting the culture and also to helping
Speaker 1: move along political sentiment in this way. So for that,
Speaker 1: I want to thank you. Oh my god, well, thank you.
Speaker 1: I appreciate that. Yeah, and I also want to thank
Speaker 1: you Chelsea for joining me and my listeners on Psychoactive
Speaker 1: for this most enjoyable conversation. Absolutely, what a pleasure. Thank
Speaker 1: you for having me. Okay, okay, well take care. If
Speaker 1: you're enjoying Psychoactive, please tell your friends about it, or
Speaker 1: you can write us a review at Apple Podcasts or
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts. We love to hear from
Speaker 1: our listeners. If you'd like to share your own stories,
Speaker 1: comes and ideas, then leave us a message at one
Speaker 1: eight three three seventh of nine. That's eight three three
Speaker 1: psycho zero, or you can email us at Psychoactive at
Speaker 1: protozoa dot com, or find me on Twitter at Ethan
Speaker 1: natal Man. You can also find contact information in our
Speaker 1: show notes. Psychoactive is a production of I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and Protozoa Pictures. It's hosted by me Ethan Nadelman. It's
Speaker 1: produced by Noam Osband and Josh Stain. The executive producers
Speaker 1: are Dylan Golden, Ari Handel, Elizabeth Geesus and Darren Aronofsky
Speaker 1: from Protozoa Pictures, Alex Williams and Matt Frederick from My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio and me Ethan Nadelman. Our music is by
Speaker 1: Ari Blucien and a special thanks to a Brio s
Speaker 1: F Bianca Grimshaw and Robert bb. Next week I'll be
Speaker 1: talking with Martin Lee all about c b D. He's
Speaker 1: the founder and head of Project CBD dot org. We're
Speaker 1: at this precipice as over nine d clinical trials now
Speaker 1: in effect with CBD. There's a massive amount of preclinical
Speaker 1: data that suggests that CBD shows utility and effectiveness and
Speaker 1: significant benefits in a number of areas for neurological diseases
Speaker 1: for certain mood disorders like anxiety I mentioned, also depression
Speaker 1: for pain. Also it's it's clear that those are the
Speaker 1: big three pain, anxiety, and depression. Subscribe to Cycleactive now
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