Speaker 1: When it comes to drug addiction. If we know that
Speaker 1: the vast majority of users of any drugs do not
Speaker 1: meet criteria for addiction, then it tells us we have
Speaker 1: to look beyond the drug in order to try and
Speaker 1: understand what's going on with addiction. Hello, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the Psychology Podcast. Today we welcome Carl Hart to the show.
Speaker 1: Carl is the ZIF Professor of Psychology in the Department
Speaker 1: of Psychology and also a Professor of Psychiatry at Columbia University.
Speaker 1: He is known for his research on neuro's psychopharmacology and
Speaker 1: his advocacy for the decriminalization of recreational drugs. He's the
Speaker 1: author of High Price and has co authored the introductory
Speaker 1: textbook Drugs, Society and Human Behavior with Charles Kucerer. His
Speaker 1: most recent book is called Drug Use for Grown Ups,
Speaker 1: and that's the focus of my conversation today with Carl.
Speaker 1: I really like Carla, have a great respect for him
Speaker 1: as a scientist as well as really just a cool dude.
Speaker 1: I loved nerding out with him about the latest data
Speaker 1: and facts surrounding the responsible use of drugs and how people,
Speaker 1: especially adults, can have more responsible use of drugs. But
Speaker 1: also ways in which society, policies, and the police have
Speaker 1: created a lot of racist narratives that are not grounded
Speaker 1: in the actual facts of drug use. So what I
Speaker 1: really like about this episode is being able to really
Speaker 1: dive into the realities of the matter, and a lot
Speaker 1: of things blew my mind. You know, a lot of
Speaker 1: things might surprise you too, a lot of things you
Speaker 1: took for granted that you thought you knew about drug use.
Speaker 1: And just how many people actually get addicted to drugs
Speaker 1: by itself is very very few in number compared to
Speaker 1: the narratives we learn, And instead we talk about the
Speaker 1: actual predictive factors that are most likely to make people
Speaker 1: addicted drugs, and also, very importantly, we discuss very concrete
Speaker 1: changes we can make in our society to lessen deaths
Speaker 1: and lessen the discrimination and stigmatization we have surrounding drug
Speaker 1: use among adults. So I really hope you enjoy this
Speaker 1: conversation as much as I did. And without further ado,
Speaker 1: I bring you Carl Hart Ah heart so great to
Speaker 1: have you on the Psychology Podcast. I'm happy to be here, man. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're you're I've been following your career and it's been
Speaker 1: it's been credible, and I love your spirit you bring
Speaker 1: to the field, and you're so evidence based, data based.
Speaker 1: I want to kind of trace a little bit of
Speaker 1: the development of this, thinking, what was your PhD topic?
Speaker 1: Maybe we'll start there. I'm trying to think we do
Speaker 1: we start when you're ten or now, let's start with
Speaker 1: your PhD topic? What was your PhD? So what was
Speaker 1: the what was the title of your PhD? The title
Speaker 1: of my PhD was something like nicotine effects on L
Speaker 1: channel calcium L type channels and it has something related
Speaker 1: to dopamine. Is a long title. You you know how
Speaker 1: we do those low complicated titles. That explains everything. But
Speaker 1: the bottom line is that I was looking at the
Speaker 1: effects of nicotine behaviors of rat and the effect in
Speaker 1: the nucleus that cumbents on dopamine cells. So why do
Speaker 1: you get interested in that topic? In particular? I was
Speaker 1: interested in drugs, so called drugs of abuse, and I
Speaker 1: wanted to know something about the new biology. And so
Speaker 1: one of the things that hadn't been done. A lot
Speaker 1: of things had been done, but one of the things
Speaker 1: that hadn't been done that was related to the lab
Speaker 1: which I was in this's got Charlie Casir. He was
Speaker 1: doing work with nicotine, but he hadn't really delved into
Speaker 1: the new biology as well. He certainly hadn't focused on
Speaker 1: L type calcium channels, and he hadn't focused on nucleus
Speaker 1: that comments dopamine, and so it was an area that
Speaker 1: that can make a contribution that he hadn't fully investigated.
Speaker 1: So it was a good place for me to start
Speaker 1: to learn some things. Yeah, for sure. For sure. And
Speaker 1: what was the predominant narrative at that time that you've
Speaker 1: since challenged? Because I saw a quote you said something.
Speaker 1: I was ignorant. I was believing anecdote. You said that
Speaker 1: in one of your talks, and I thought that was
Speaker 1: really interesting. Yeah, you know, there was a lot that
Speaker 1: I believe. It was a lot that even my PhD
Speaker 1: Ad buys a Charlie Kasier believe. But you know, I
Speaker 1: would be remiss if I didn't say that. You know,
Speaker 1: he's the guy who really got me to start thinking
Speaker 1: about challenging things that were taken as fact when we
Speaker 1: had limited data. He's the guy who really started me
Speaker 1: on this path. There's just so much. I mean, this
Speaker 1: whole notion, for example, I said that I had started
Speaker 1: out studying so called drugs abuse. I mean just that term.
Speaker 1: The field still uses that term. It's a bias term,
Speaker 1: you know, as the only thing that these drugs do
Speaker 1: are be abused. And then you say, well, even what
Speaker 1: is that rather than just thinking them about them as
Speaker 1: any other psychoactives or compounds. You can say psychoactive compounds
Speaker 1: that humans take or whatever. But drugs have abused. That's
Speaker 1: just one of the soda notions. Another notion was that
Speaker 1: most of the people who use any of these drugs cocaine, nicotine, alcohol, heroin,
Speaker 1: whatever the drug, most of the people who use these
Speaker 1: drugs do not become addicted. That is, they do not
Speaker 1: meet criteria for substance use disorder. The vast majority use
Speaker 1: these drugs without a problem. But yet when we talk
Speaker 1: about these drugs, we talk about them as if everybody
Speaker 1: who uses these drugs will meet criteria for substance use disorder. Yeah. Wow, well,
Speaker 1: those are some dynamite findings I still see in the
Speaker 1: research literature. I see things like drug addiction is a
Speaker 1: brain disease. Even recently, you know, I came across that
Speaker 1: kind of term that must make your skin crawl, like
Speaker 1: when you see that in the abstract. Yeah, you know
Speaker 1: it's a The drug addiction is a brain disease. Has
Speaker 1: become more of a political issue than a science issue. Now,
Speaker 1: if we can go back to nineteen eighty four, when
Speaker 1: I believe it was nineteen eighty four when the National
Speaker 1: Institute on Drug Abuse became subsumed under the National Institutes
Speaker 1: of Health, the National Institutes of Hell. Their mission is
Speaker 1: to bring to bear to science to help solve health
Speaker 1: related problems in the country. And we can see the
Speaker 1: value in that when we think about the Institute on
Speaker 1: Heart and Blood and lung. You know you want them
Speaker 1: working on heart disease and those sort of issues. Cancer Institute,
Speaker 1: you want cancer that institute working on cancer because those
Speaker 1: are really serious health problem. Now you take you bring
Speaker 1: the National Ascuse of drug Abuse within the Instruth's Health,
Speaker 1: the mission for the National Institute of the Drug Abuse
Speaker 1: becomes to focus on pathology, drug addiction and so forth.
Speaker 1: Most of the people who use these drugs that you
Speaker 1: want to learn information about do not meet criteria for pathology,
Speaker 1: and so you're starting out with this bias mission. And
Speaker 1: that would be okay as long as you inform people
Speaker 1: that your focus is exclusively on pathology and not these
Speaker 1: other things. But what has happened is that the National
Speaker 1: Institute on Drug Abuse acts as if everything that they
Speaker 1: publish and might mind you, they fund like eighty percent
Speaker 1: of the world's research in this area with this bias focus,
Speaker 1: but they act as if it's the only sort of
Speaker 1: outcome related to these drugs. And that's just that's not true.
Speaker 1: Now when we think about the brain disease model of
Speaker 1: drug addiction, that whole sort of promulgation that was done
Speaker 1: in order to get more money from Congress. Because if
Speaker 1: you have this biological concern, then you have something that
Speaker 1: you can put your finger on. Is not a moral failing.
Speaker 1: And we're not saying it is a moral failing or
Speaker 1: it's not some nebulous sort of thing. It's a real
Speaker 1: biological thing. Now Congress is more likely to say, oh,
Speaker 1: this is a serious problem, we have to fund this,
Speaker 1: we have to put more money into this, and so
Speaker 1: it becomes this political issue. And the problem is that
Speaker 1: many of the scientists, even who studied is don't realize
Speaker 1: it's a political issue, and they don't realize that the
Speaker 1: data does not support that position. And so in twenty twelve,
Speaker 1: I published a paper in Neuropsychopharmacology where I did a
Speaker 1: review of the neural imaging studies that look at methaphetamine users. Now,
Speaker 1: if you're going to see some if you're going to
Speaker 1: see some neural toxicity, you would see it in the amphetamines,
Speaker 1: because the amphetamines are perhaps the best of these drugs
Speaker 1: in terms of causing neurotoxicity at large doses, doses far
Speaker 1: larger than what humans take. So if you're going to
Speaker 1: see some neurotoxicity, you would see it first with the amphetamine.
Speaker 1: And so I did a literature review assessing the literature
Speaker 1: looking for some kind of neuropathology after people have been
Speaker 1: taking methamphetamine for some extended period of time, to see
Speaker 1: if I could find evidence of this brain disease. And
Speaker 1: I didn't find any evidence of this, and so and
Speaker 1: I published that and said this, you know, so it's
Speaker 1: maddening when I hear people continue to say this. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that we will never find any evidence
Speaker 1: of it, but at this present time in our history,
Speaker 1: we don't have any evidence of it in humans at least. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was my fair. Papers that you've been is cognitive
Speaker 1: functioning and pain and metafite I can't say that word
Speaker 1: menifet users metamine users a critical review. Yeah, and you
Speaker 1: controlled for age and education. I noticed in that paper
Speaker 1: and you still found they score within the normal range
Speaker 1: of functioning using PET imaging. This idea of cognitive function
Speaker 1: is very interesting and near and dear to my own heart,
Speaker 1: because I'm an intelligence researcher, and uh, you know, we
Speaker 1: miss all sorts of battery of tests and things to
Speaker 1: measure cognitive functioning. When we use the phrase cognitive functioning,
Speaker 1: does that include things like working memory? Does that include
Speaker 1: things like vocabulary? Uh, sort of a short term memory?
Speaker 1: Recall your ability to like repeat back something backwards and forwards. Yeah? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it includes all of that. It includes something as simple
Speaker 1: as reaction time, and things more complex like cognitive flexibility.
Speaker 1: Can people ship sets? I mean it includes all of
Speaker 1: those things. Wow, wow, because that's not what I was
Speaker 1: told when I was a kid. I was told say
Speaker 1: no to drugs and say no to sex. Well, first
Speaker 1: of all, you shouldn't really be talking about drugs with kids.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, this is another one of these
Speaker 1: stupid things that we do in society. I mean, you
Speaker 1: think about sex education at what age is appropriate for
Speaker 1: sex education. I think about my own kids. I have kids,
Speaker 1: and we've dealt with these issues as they came up,
Speaker 1: and so they weren't some special issue that we set aside.
Speaker 1: But let's just say high school for example, if you're
Speaker 1: going to talk about drugs in high school and say, okay,
Speaker 1: that might be appropriate. The three drugs that you're going
Speaker 1: to talk about are alcohol, tobacco, and cannabis. Those are
Speaker 1: the drugs that people in high school predominantly use. When
Speaker 1: you think about something like cocaine opioids, it's less than
Speaker 1: one percent of the high school students who are going
Speaker 1: to be using those drugs. And so, given that knowledge
Speaker 1: that we've had for fifty years or so, you want
Speaker 1: to just make sure that people be able to identify
Speaker 1: the signs when people are having trouble or problems, and
Speaker 1: think about some like alcohol poisoning. If someone is starting
Speaker 1: to exhibit the signs of alcohol poisoning, you want to
Speaker 1: make sure that people are able to clear the airway
Speaker 1: if they passed out, because if they start to vomit,
Speaker 1: you don't want them to choke on their vomit. Those
Speaker 1: kind of things. If then you think it's about something
Speaker 1: like tobacco. In New York City and my kids, it
Speaker 1: seems like damnly everyone has asthma, and so you want
Speaker 1: to make sure that people have their inhaler. You want
Speaker 1: to make sure that they are able to recognize the
Speaker 1: signs of asthma if they are smoking, whether it's tobacco, cannabis,
Speaker 1: or any of those things. Another thing related to cannabis is,
Speaker 1: like novice, inexperienced users, oftentimes they overdo it and then
Speaker 1: they get suspicious, anxious, paranoid. You want to make sure
Speaker 1: that people who are around them stay calm and the
Speaker 1: drug will float away from the receptor and they will
Speaker 1: return back to normal. So you want to just want
Speaker 1: to you just want to make sure that your children
Speaker 1: know how to recognize these signs in order to be
Speaker 1: able to help their friends, or god forbid it, even
Speaker 1: if they get in trouble, they don't panic. That's the
Speaker 1: major problem that people panic, and that's it. That's what
Speaker 1: drug education at that level should consists of. Beyond that,
Speaker 1: you don't want anybody really talking to your kids about drugs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a reason why the title of your book is
Speaker 1: Drug Use for grown Ups. Do you see you see
Speaker 1: do you see? Thank you? Bro? That's right. I'm a fan.
Speaker 1: I'm a fan. But drug use for grown ups is
Speaker 1: about the responsible use of drugs. If you're going to
Speaker 1: be an adult about it, and you're going to be responsible,
Speaker 1: and you're going to and you're going to use it,
Speaker 1: what are the things that you should be doing to
Speaker 1: really minimize harm to yourself and others? Right? You know,
Speaker 1: I just want to say something about drug addiction, just
Speaker 1: for a second. I'll do it in the book. I
Speaker 1: make it clear that this isn't a book about drug
Speaker 1: addiction because there's this disproportionate focus on a day and
Speaker 1: I didn't want to contribute to that. When it comes
Speaker 1: to drug addiction, if we know that the vast majority
Speaker 1: of users of any drug do not meet criteria for addiction,
Speaker 1: then it tells us we have to look beyond a
Speaker 1: drug in order to try and understand what's going on
Speaker 1: with addiction. And those things are we've known in psychology forever.
Speaker 1: They are psychosocial predominantly. You know whether or not the
Speaker 1: person is being subjected to chronic, unrealistic expectations. They've recently
Speaker 1: lost a job, they're no longer they no longer have
Speaker 1: good standing in their community. A wide range of did
Speaker 1: these factors, including co occurring psychiatric illnesses. Now, once you
Speaker 1: have taken care of those sort of things and you
Speaker 1: don't meet criteria or you're not at risk for those
Speaker 1: kind of things. When I think about drug use for
Speaker 1: grown ups, I think about how people use alcohol in
Speaker 1: our society. The majority of people. You use alcohol in
Speaker 1: your moments of relaxation, in your moments of in your
Speaker 1: myopic moments, if this is your time. The same is
Speaker 1: true with any of these other drugs. The problem with
Speaker 1: these other drugs is that you don't you're not as
Speaker 1: sure about the quality control issue. So you got if
Speaker 1: you're not sure what dose you have, whether or not
Speaker 1: you actually have what the person told you that you have.
Speaker 1: So you have to make sure those things are taken
Speaker 1: care of too. If you've got all of those things satisfied,
Speaker 1: you take the appropriate doses in the appropriate setting of
Speaker 1: set aside the time to do these things, just like
Speaker 1: you set aside time to watch, say some sporting event,
Speaker 1: the Super Bowl, March, Madness Championship, whatever it is you
Speaker 1: set aside the time to do the same is true
Speaker 1: with drug use. And if you do all of those
Speaker 1: kind of things, you are more likely to have a
Speaker 1: more positive experience, as I try to describe in the book.
Speaker 1: In the book, I tried to show people what it's
Speaker 1: like to be able to take drugs and enjoy the
Speaker 1: experience and do it in a responsible way, just like
Speaker 1: we do most things in our life. I mean, sometimes
Speaker 1: sometimes we are less responsible than others, but most of
Speaker 1: the time we do. We handle these things responsibly. Like
Speaker 1: if we look at our how on our highways, driving
Speaker 1: an automobile can really be a dangerous activity, but most
Speaker 1: of us do that in a responsible way. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: we don't ban automobiles just because there's a lot of desks.
Speaker 1: I mean, people eat food irresponsibly, absolutely and get all
Speaker 1: sorts of diseases from it, and we don't ban food absolutely.
Speaker 1: Great point, great point, Yeah, thank you, thank you. But
Speaker 1: it's very clear to me that you're not advocating for drugs.
Speaker 1: It's not like you're you know, do people misinterpret your
Speaker 1: work in that way? Do you have people who are
Speaker 1: like petitioning, They're like cow heard, it is not good
Speaker 1: for society because he's advocating drugs. But it's clear to
Speaker 1: me you're not doing that, but do you have people
Speaker 1: who've mis interpret Yeah, thank you for bringing that up.
Speaker 1: That's been one of the more painful things with the
Speaker 1: release of this book. I mean, this book has so
Speaker 1: really well and so I'm happy about that, but you
Speaker 1: know how it is. You know, you focus on sometimes
Speaker 1: on the criticism, even if the criticism is relatively small.
Speaker 1: But that's been one of the criticissm that you just
Speaker 1: point out that I'm somehow promoting drug use, and you know,
Speaker 1: the book is really trying to promote love and treating
Speaker 1: people's humanity in the same way you treat your own.
Speaker 1: That's the major message. And it's been disheartening when people,
Speaker 1: some people almost seems like intentionally distort the message to say, oh,
Speaker 1: you're promoting drugs and somehow trying to destroy society, when
Speaker 1: in fact, I'm saying that we want everyone to enjoy
Speaker 1: themselves while they're here, and we want to make sure
Speaker 1: we respect everyone's humanity and autonomy. And I try to
Speaker 1: like use the Declaration of Independence, at least the birth
Speaker 1: rights and the Declaration of Independence to help people see
Speaker 1: that we're all guaranteed these birth rights. It's self evident
Speaker 1: that I have life liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Speaker 1: Those are my birth rights, and so I was trying
Speaker 1: to trying to ask people to extend that to everyone
Speaker 1: in our society, so long as they are not preventing
Speaker 1: other folks from enjoying their birthrights. And so when people
Speaker 1: distort the message, it breaks my heart. And that certainly
Speaker 1: has happened at some point. Well, we just the best
Speaker 1: we can do is just keep reiterating it, re reiterating it,
Speaker 1: and hopefully this podcast will help queer that up as well.
Speaker 1: It's very clear to me you're trying to help people
Speaker 1: pursue happiness in their own way. I think that me
Speaker 1: and you are aligned in terms of of appreciating self actualization,
Speaker 1: the self of the unique self actus journey of an individual.
Speaker 1: That was what my latest book was about. We're connected
Speaker 1: in that. Yeah, absolutely, Yeah. And I found this other
Speaker 1: paper you're really really relevant in us understanding what's going
Speaker 1: on here. It's called alternative reinforcers differentially modify cocaine self
Speaker 1: administration by humans and not as pithy as as drug
Speaker 1: use for grown ups. But academic papers don't tend to
Speaker 1: be as pithy. But what I really like about this
Speaker 1: paper is. It shows that well, if you want people
Speaker 1: to change their behaviors in a lot of ways, you
Speaker 1: have to give them a better, more give them better alternative.
Speaker 1: And we have a lot of people who are really
Speaker 1: suffering in this world, like really really poor, really in environments, neighborhoods.
Speaker 1: They don't know if they're going to live the next day.
Speaker 1: And you can kind of actually think of drug use
Speaker 1: as rational in some cases, again not advocating for it,
Speaker 1: but actually quite rational given the lack of alternatives to
Speaker 1: get through the day. Yeah, no, you you hit it
Speaker 1: on the head. This is just straight behaviorism, you know.
Speaker 1: It's a I think it's still a powerful way to
Speaker 1: explain behavior. We think about the options that we have
Speaker 1: in our society we as a as an individual. For example,
Speaker 1: my kids I when I raised them, I raised them
Speaker 1: according to these principles. They have video games, they have
Speaker 1: their work at school, they have friends, significant others, all
Speaker 1: of these sort of things, and so we present these
Speaker 1: options like, Okay, if you do well at school, all right,
Speaker 1: then you might then I'll buy you a video game,
Speaker 1: or you have you can play your video game. These
Speaker 1: are the kind of options that we present to them
Speaker 1: in order to shape their behavior. I mean, this is
Speaker 1: how the world works. And so that study that you
Speaker 1: talked about, we just wanted to do a simple study
Speaker 1: to see if people who smoke crack cocaine their behavior
Speaker 1: conformed or comported with just typical behavior. They the same
Speaker 1: principles that were underline my behavior doesn't do they underlie
Speaker 1: their behavior. So we presented them with an attractive alternative
Speaker 1: money in the case that the paper that you discussed,
Speaker 1: we presented them with an option five dollars or a
Speaker 1: head of cocaine. They took drug and money about the
Speaker 1: same of the same number of occasions. In a follow
Speaker 1: up study, we took people and we said, okay, we're
Speaker 1: going to have five dollars be an option as well
Speaker 1: as twenty dollars be an option. When we increased the
Speaker 1: dose to twenty dollars, they took money on nearly every occasion,
Speaker 1: indicating that their behavior in both of these studies was
Speaker 1: as rational as most of our behavior. And so people said, well,
Speaker 1: they'll take drugs on every occasion no matter what. No,
Speaker 1: their behavior comported with the regular principles of behavior, and
Speaker 1: so that was important to show. Even though people had
Speaker 1: shown this repeatedly in laboratory animals, in rats and non
Speaker 1: human primates, and then subsequently people start to show this
Speaker 1: in humans. Wow. Wow. I do think this is related
Speaker 1: to the argument you've made that a lot of drugs
Speaker 1: are banned in America due to racism, and I do
Speaker 1: think this is related, right, Like there are specific populations
Speaker 1: that are targeted. It seems you say that, Yeah, you
Speaker 1: say there's a lot of money in misleading people about drugs.
Speaker 1: Can you kind of elaborate on that a little bit. Yeah, So,
Speaker 1: our first national drug laws that were enacted that restrict
Speaker 1: drugs were enacted in nineteen fourteen under this thing called
Speaker 1: the Harrison Act. The Harrison Act was at a time
Speaker 1: when the Congress believe really strongly believed in states rights,
Speaker 1: so they weren't trying to enact federal laws to restrict drugs.
Speaker 1: But what happened was that they we had all of
Speaker 1: these reports first Chinese people, the Chinese people and the
Speaker 1: opium dens. They owned opium dens and they were doing well,
Speaker 1: but then we started having these reports about white women
Speaker 1: going into these opium dens being corrupted by the Chinese,
Speaker 1: and also the Chinese businessmen were doing well, which made
Speaker 1: many of the white businessmen in these cities, San Francisco
Speaker 1: and New York be jealous, and so they enacted local
Speaker 1: laws to restrict these dens and to prevent white people
Speaker 1: from going into the Chinese owned den. And then about
Speaker 1: the same time cocaine and black people. There were stories
Speaker 1: that were said that black men were causing white were
Speaker 1: seducing white women into prostitution with cocaine. And they were
Speaker 1: also saying that black men were they became impervious to
Speaker 1: thirty two caliber weapons, and so you had to have
Speaker 1: a larger caliber bullet in order to kill black men
Speaker 1: who were crazed on cocaine. All of these things were
Speaker 1: exaggerations and untrue, but they led to the passage of
Speaker 1: that first drug law. And then subsequently with cannabis, Mexican Americans,
Speaker 1: Black Americans, they were saying misbehaved, they thought that they
Speaker 1: were as good as white people when they spoke cannabis.
Speaker 1: In nineteen thirty seven, they essentially banned cannabis for these reasons.
Speaker 1: And so when we say that our drug laws, they
Speaker 1: resulted from racism more so than pharmacology. This is what
Speaker 1: we mean. But I want to be clear here to
Speaker 1: say that those laws would not only supported by white people,
Speaker 1: they were also supported by the racial minority groups that
Speaker 1: were targeted. So you would have like black, middle to
Speaker 1: upper class people in support of these laws. This thing
Speaker 1: we call politics of respectability, showing the white population that
Speaker 1: we're with you, we're well, we share your view, that
Speaker 1: we're not like those negroes. And so that happened then
Speaker 1: and that happens even today. So I want people to
Speaker 1: understand that it's these laws are not only supported by
Speaker 1: the way to majority, but it's also supported by the
Speaker 1: same racial groups that are being subjugated by these laws.
Speaker 1: It must not be easy collecting being a scientist in
Speaker 1: such a political mindfield of a topic. You know, it's
Speaker 1: a little bit different than like Stone, who's like my
Speaker 1: life is to study the visual cortex of the You know,
Speaker 1: no one cares about the BA forty seven or what.
Speaker 1: But but I know, I mean, I think, I mean,
Speaker 1: I I did it. Yeah, that's fascinating what you do
Speaker 1: and you can do it and you learn all of
Speaker 1: these things, and I think a lot of people are
Speaker 1: interested in it, and then you don't get called political.
Speaker 1: I think that that's cool. You know what I do
Speaker 1: at some level, I have to think about, like, all right,
Speaker 1: my heroes, I think we're not long from April fourth.
Speaker 1: April fourth, it's the day that Martin Luther King was
Speaker 1: killed fifty four years ago, and I think about, like
Speaker 1: when he died, his popularity was in the garbage in
Speaker 1: the tank, that he was not a popular people, a
Speaker 1: person most Americans hated Martin Luther King. I mean, now
Speaker 1: we have this revisionist sort of history now that he's gone,
Speaker 1: and we can sanitize his sort of history and only
Speaker 1: focused on I have a dream and not the other
Speaker 1: things that he really advocated for. So I have to
Speaker 1: think about people like him, like my heroes, when they
Speaker 1: were here, they weren't popular and people didn't really want
Speaker 1: to hear what they have to say. And I have
Speaker 1: to constantly check myself, check the data and make sure
Speaker 1: that I am on the right side of the data.
Speaker 1: And so if A constantly do these kind of things,
Speaker 1: I'm okay, and then history will do what it will.
Speaker 1: But I know I have to have some integrity, and
Speaker 1: I know that if I am thinking about everybody else's
Speaker 1: humanity like I think about my own, that's a good start.
Speaker 1: And that's where I try to say, I really respect that, like,
Speaker 1: I truly respect that integrity. You've argued that we need
Speaker 1: more high profile, responsible, sensible adults who do who do
Speaker 1: drugs to come out of the closet. You know, like
Speaker 1: you're a fascinating combination of things. You're the first tenured
Speaker 1: African American Columbia professor. Is that true? But you know
Speaker 1: there is a certainly on the main campus. So we
Speaker 1: have the medical campus, and we have so on the
Speaker 1: medical campus there there might have been somebody who was
Speaker 1: tenured before me, But I don't know what ecology department. Uh,
Speaker 1: I'm in psychology and psychiatry. I'm in the medical and
Speaker 1: and and and the arch and science campus and an
Speaker 1: arch and science campus. You know, tenure is where you
Speaker 1: have your salary paid and that sort of thing. On
Speaker 1: the medical campus, it has something to do with you
Speaker 1: get paid if you bring in grants and and so
Speaker 1: it's I don't know exactly how that works on the
Speaker 1: medical campus, but certainly on the main campus, on the
Speaker 1: main campus. And I know you've said in a talk
Speaker 1: You're like, well, don't congratulate me for that. That's that's
Speaker 1: actually a tragedy. You know that we haven't had more
Speaker 1: and I really appreciated how you responded. I saw some
Speaker 1: talk where people started up, you know, a video standing
Speaker 1: ovation for you, like, well up, like we need thank
Speaker 1: you for saying that. Yeah, yeah, no, I see you, brother,
Speaker 1: I see I see you. And so I've I've in
Speaker 1: my own way done that. I've I've come out as
Speaker 1: loving edibles. I even tweet about it. I actually accidentally
Speaker 1: did way too much the other day. I had a
Speaker 1: whole Twitter thread. I'll share it with you. I thought
Speaker 1: I was doing a five mega gram snickerdoodle and I
Speaker 1: accidentally did it. Did you see that? Union had been
Speaker 1: to see that thread, did you? And I accidentally did
Speaker 1: one hundred milligrams And that was and I actually went
Speaker 1: to the er because I was having a panic attack
Speaker 1: over it, and and thedoctors. Everyone found it very funny.
Speaker 1: But that's that's an important that's an important experience because
Speaker 1: this is the thing that I tell kids that one
Speaker 1: you know, drugs interact would have recept there and they
Speaker 1: would eventually float away and you're gonna be cool. It
Speaker 1: might take some time, it might take as much as
Speaker 1: twenty four hours, but you're going to be chill. And
Speaker 1: if people just understand that, it'll be okay. Absolutely, and
Speaker 1: this is part of the story and I will absolutely
Speaker 1: share this this Twitter third with you. There was a
Speaker 1: moment where I just surrendered to my reality, like I
Speaker 1: was definitely hallucinating, like there was the four was pulsating
Speaker 1: and everything. And I have never experienced that on on
Speaker 1: marijuana before. I didn't even know that was possible on
Speaker 1: my own. I didn't know that was possible, but it is.
Speaker 1: I found out it's possible. But there was a moment
Speaker 1: where I just leaned into it. I was like, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be curious about it and I'm going to tweet
Speaker 1: about tomorrow and I was fine. I was absolutely fine.
Speaker 1: It's interesting how much the mind can calm you down,
Speaker 1: even in some of these kinds of extreme states of consciousness,
Speaker 1: like self talk. It's still valuable even in these states, right, absolutely,
Speaker 1: you know that experience. I hope you write about it
Speaker 1: more to explain the help because I think so many
Speaker 1: people will benefit from that, right, I mean, particularly as
Speaker 1: we get older. I know, like now I'm fifty five,
Speaker 1: and so one of my comprehensive questions for my PhD
Speaker 1: was this issue of drug absorption and distribution as you
Speaker 1: get older, because the liver function is not what it
Speaker 1: used to be at twenty years old, So that means
Speaker 1: that more drug will get into the bloodstream, meaning that
Speaker 1: you need to take less of it than you previously
Speaker 1: had to. And so like something like oral THAC for me,
Speaker 1: I would I would have to say what really low
Speaker 1: doses or else I might have those kind of experiences.
Speaker 1: And so these are the kind of things that we
Speaker 1: want to teach people. As you get older, you're dosing
Speaker 1: and drug use should also change, just like other things
Speaker 1: are changing. And we don't do a good job of
Speaker 1: teaching people these things in our society. And that's one
Speaker 1: of the things that perhaps that's the next book, teach
Speaker 1: people about these changes that occur and how to make
Speaker 1: sure you keep yourself safe. The thing is, we need
Speaker 1: better packaging. This was a complete accident. I'm used to
Speaker 1: usually buying my five milligrams Snickerdooles with like ten in
Speaker 1: one package. As I bit down into most of this thing,
Speaker 1: I then realized there's no other snicker Doodles in the bag,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, well, that's weird. Usually there's ten, And
Speaker 1: then I realized it's one hundred milligrams per snickerdoodle. And
Speaker 1: there's only one. There was only one in the bag,
Speaker 1: So that was that wasn't clear, That wasn't Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a that's a really good point. Yeah, that that that
Speaker 1: when they're may I hope you shared it with the manufacturer,
Speaker 1: with the store because I call I call med men
Speaker 1: or met with medmen. I think that Yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: that's that's an excellent point because yeah, at some level
Speaker 1: I think about I mean, you might need that much
Speaker 1: for I don't know patients who have extensive experience, but
Speaker 1: for typical people that's quite a bit. And so maybe
Speaker 1: that should be labeled medical so people will know that
Speaker 1: that's that's not for you, the typical person, like a
Speaker 1: red sign of like extremely high dosed, just so you know,
Speaker 1: differentiated some way. Cool. This does relate to a lot
Speaker 1: to some points you make about the need to regulate
Speaker 1: these things better. Other countries do a better job than America.
Speaker 1: They have drug checking facilities that are much better. Right,
Speaker 1: what can we do in America to regulate these things better?
Speaker 1: So the cannabis thing that we just talked about, that
Speaker 1: was in a legal state and you can go and
Speaker 1: buy it, and now you can talk to the manu
Speaker 1: in California, so you can also talk to the folks
Speaker 1: who regulate packaging and then they can deal with that.
Speaker 1: But oftentimes with other drugs there's none of that. I
Speaker 1: mean with other drugs where you don't where it's not legal,
Speaker 1: like cannabis is in California and some other places, you
Speaker 1: have none of that, and so people buy drugs from
Speaker 1: I don't know their dealer or the internet or wherever,
Speaker 1: and they don't know exactly what they're getting. In a
Speaker 1: place like Spain, Austria, the Netherlands, even Columbia, they can
Speaker 1: submit small samples ten milligrams or so of their drug
Speaker 1: to these drug checking facilities and they can do this anonymously,
Speaker 1: and it's also free, and they get a print out
Speaker 1: of all the chemicals that are contained in their little sample,
Speaker 1: and they comes with the dose, the concentrations, amount of
Speaker 1: those chemicals in this uh in the in their sample,
Speaker 1: and so they are informed about what is actually there.
Speaker 1: In the United States, we have that technology, but we
Speaker 1: just haven't made it available to the general public, in
Speaker 1: large part because we still operate under this puritanical sort
Speaker 1: of view that if we do that, then we're condoning
Speaker 1: encouraging drug use. Which is the same silly argument we
Speaker 1: said about condoms. Uh, if we hand out condoms, then
Speaker 1: we're condoning premarital sex. It's the same argument. And so
Speaker 1: in the book I describe talking with this woman, Lena
Speaker 1: Lina Wynn. She was the health commissioner of Baltimore at
Speaker 1: the time. Lena Wynn had She went on to become
Speaker 1: the head of Plant Parenthood. They eventually they got rid
Speaker 1: of her relatively quickly, and now she's like a public
Speaker 1: intellectual as a physician. But I talked to her about
Speaker 1: having drug checking facilities in Baltimore at the time when
Speaker 1: Baltimore was experiencing what they thought were in large rates
Speaker 1: of drug overdoses, and so as the health commissioner, I said,
Speaker 1: you know, this is one way to deal with this.
Speaker 1: Have drug checking facility and so people can know what's
Speaker 1: in their substance. So if they get something like fentanil
Speaker 1: or some other substance that's more potent than heroin that
Speaker 1: they're seeking, they will at least know and not overdo
Speaker 1: it and take too much. She essentially ignored me, and
Speaker 1: to this day, you know, we don't have drug checking,
Speaker 1: not officially anywhere in the United States. Meanwhile, we are
Speaker 1: lamenting the fact that we have drug overdoses and when
Speaker 1: this simple sort of procedure can take care of, will
Speaker 1: address a lot of those drug overdoses. And so that's
Speaker 1: been one of those another one of those discouraging, disheartening
Speaker 1: things that I certainly experience as I try and get
Speaker 1: this simple message across the public health officials. This makes
Speaker 1: me mad. You don't want to see me mad. No,
Speaker 1: that was a whole whole corser. No, this this is
Speaker 1: making me really upset. You know. It feels like in
Speaker 1: our in American society, we either stigmatize drug users or
Speaker 1: we treat them like they're Snoop Dogg, like they're cool
Speaker 1: but not smart, you know, no offense, no offense to
Speaker 1: Snoop Dogg. No. I feel it seems like there's a
Speaker 1: bi modal distribution of how we treat drug users, right,
Speaker 1: But there's a middle ground here, Like most people probably
Speaker 1: in America who are drug users are probably middle class,
Speaker 1: you know, like they don't brag about it, you know,
Speaker 1: they they use it somewhat responsibly in their life to
Speaker 1: bring their life more joy and pleasure. Her. You just
Speaker 1: you just hit on so much in that little that statement,
Speaker 1: you Meyban, you hit it like you said no disrespect
Speaker 1: with Snoop Dogg, because you know, I think, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think he's brilliant. Actually I think he's it's amazing historic.
Speaker 1: But you hit on so much there because I mean,
Speaker 1: we think about the illicit drug trade. It's a multi
Speaker 1: billion dollar industry. So when we say, well, who are
Speaker 1: the users, they can't be poor people. If it's a
Speaker 1: multi billion dollar industry. The people who are behind you
Speaker 1: drugs are middle to upper class people. They're the only
Speaker 1: ones who could support such an industry. So we know
Speaker 1: that for a fact. That's one and two. When we
Speaker 1: think about how we caricature drug users, we typically caricature
Speaker 1: them as these poor, degenerate, lost souls that are in
Speaker 1: need of our help, or in some extreme cases, just
Speaker 1: these ultra cool people who are taking the sanctioned drugs
Speaker 1: like cannabis is kind of sanctioned cool now, and some
Speaker 1: psychedelics now, like psilocybin, Okay, that's sanctioned cool today, but
Speaker 1: like heroin, that's always in the degenerate. So the class
Speaker 1: and so those tropes, the whole society is invested in
Speaker 1: those tropes. When we think about people who write movies
Speaker 1: without those tropes, many of the movies that contain drugs
Speaker 1: or drug use in it, they would not work because oftentimes,
Speaker 1: if you think about any movie you see related to drugs,
Speaker 1: the drug related characters are never developed. All you say
Speaker 1: is that, oh, he's a drug dealer, therefore he's bad,
Speaker 1: and you're bringing all the cultural baggage with you to
Speaker 1: that character. So the writer does not have to develop
Speaker 1: that character. And we are supposed to believe these incredible
Speaker 1: things about the drugs, and so the writers are invested
Speaker 1: in his trope. Of course, law enforcement is invested in
Speaker 1: this trope. When you think about all of the cop shows,
Speaker 1: they always show the drug sort of people as being
Speaker 1: the bad people. Of course the common people are the
Speaker 1: good people. The whole entire society is invested in this trope.
Speaker 1: And this trope is getting people killed. And that's the
Speaker 1: thing that I've been trying to point out. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: not just oh no no please please you got it?
Speaker 1: No please no, I definitely feel you, And I would
Speaker 1: even go step further. It seems like the uh, the
Speaker 1: drug users in these movies are usually always Hispanic or
Speaker 1: black like. It just seems like so like so many
Speaker 1: of these movies just fall into some sort of stereotype
Speaker 1: that like it's like it never dawned in a script
Speaker 1: write or to like just break out of it. That
Speaker 1: hard to rewrite the script. Yeah, but you know, like now,
Speaker 1: of course with the opioids, they are shifting to make
Speaker 1: sure that the drug users are white. When you think
Speaker 1: about I just came from a Tulsa, Oklahoma, one of
Speaker 1: my favorite places at some level. And and Oklahoma of
Speaker 1: course as a large white population. Even in their prison
Speaker 1: they're like one of the they're like the top prisoner prison.
Speaker 1: They have more prisons per capita than any other place
Speaker 1: in the United States, I believe. And places like Oklahoma
Speaker 1: they ran out of a minority like Native Americans and
Speaker 1: black people to arrest, so they're arresting white folks there
Speaker 1: at in large numbers. And so there are a number
Speaker 1: of places like that, even in places like Michigan and
Speaker 1: a lot of these or of rustpelt places where jobs
Speaker 1: went away, the factories went away and the only sort
Speaker 1: of jobs are in law enforcement, and then they run
Speaker 1: out of minority people to arrest, and so they're arresting
Speaker 1: for white people. And so we're all in the same bag.
Speaker 1: Now as a result of this sort of out of
Speaker 1: control machine, in effect, the war on drugs has become
Speaker 1: a jobs program for many people that were those factories
Speaker 1: went away, and now poor white people are paying the price,
Speaker 1: just like minorities have been paying for some period of time.
Speaker 1: And so you will see this if you go to
Speaker 1: places like the Rust Bill. Thank you for that clarification.
Speaker 1: That is so interesting. You know, we had talked a
Speaker 1: little about the effects of drugs on cognitive functioning, but
Speaker 1: I'm also interested individual difference predictors that predict whether or
Speaker 1: not you use drugs in the first place. So kind
Speaker 1: of not post but pre I came across some data
Speaker 1: showing that IQ. Higher IQ is correlated with greater alcohol consumption, use,
Speaker 1: higher tobacco use, and among British children, more likely to
Speaker 1: consume illegal drugs. So that doesn't fit a narrative. That
Speaker 1: doesn't fit a narrative, does it Well, it might depend
Speaker 1: on if it's just more likely to have tried a drug.
Speaker 1: So like when we think about tobacco, for example, some
Speaker 1: of the most consistent data shows that the more education
Speaker 1: you have, the less likely that you are to be
Speaker 1: a smoker. Because like as we got better education about tobacco.
Speaker 1: People with more education just don't smoke on a regular basis.
Speaker 1: But if we're talking about simply trying a drug, people
Speaker 1: who are maybe have a higher IQ might be more
Speaker 1: likely to try it because they are might they made
Speaker 1: me more likely to be suspicious of the messages from
Speaker 1: government sources about drugs, and so they want to know
Speaker 1: for themselves somebody like me. I grew up as an athlete,
Speaker 1: and I was quite obedient, and which I never took
Speaker 1: a drug. I was dumb and obedient, you know those,
Speaker 1: and so I was not one of those people who
Speaker 1: did any drugs. But as I got more information, more education,
Speaker 1: and learn more about our government misleading people in certain areas,
Speaker 1: I was then I was one of those candidates. When
Speaker 1: more education, who's more likely to try a drug? Yeah? Okay,
Speaker 1: great distinction between just trying drug and addiction. So let's
Speaker 1: let's double click on addiction for a second. You say
Speaker 1: people are not dying because of drugs per se, but
Speaker 1: because of ignorance. But this is solvable. You say this
Speaker 1: is solvable. You talk about you say addiction isn't the norm,
Speaker 1: but is predictable. Yeah, really like that as well. So
Speaker 1: let's talk about some of these these things. I guess
Speaker 1: there's two separate isations here. There's well that what are
Speaker 1: the predictable predictable factors topic? And then there's the topic
Speaker 1: of how is it solvable? So let's start with a
Speaker 1: predictable factors topic. One thing I think is replicable in
Speaker 1: the literature that I that I found is comorbidity of
Speaker 1: various psychiatric disorders does make it more well likely that
Speaker 1: you'll become addicted to drugs, particularly opioids? Is that is
Speaker 1: that correct? Does that still hold up in the literature?
Speaker 1: You hit it on the head. That's it. People who
Speaker 1: are suffering from depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, you name it. They're
Speaker 1: far more likely to meet criteria for substance USAE order
Speaker 1: than people who are not. That's one of the major
Speaker 1: predictable predicting predictable factors. Another one is think about people
Speaker 1: who have chronic unrealistic expectations heat on them. I think
Speaker 1: about celebrities, particularly childhood stars, as they grow up throughout life,
Speaker 1: they have been taking care of their whole family, whole
Speaker 1: extended family, and if their career wanes or they might
Speaker 1: be having no problem financial problems such that they can
Speaker 1: no longer maintain that sort of level of income. Imagine
Speaker 1: the stress that will be put on them because then
Speaker 1: people say, well, you know what about wealthy people who
Speaker 1: have who meet criteria for addiction. Yeah, we have to
Speaker 1: think about all of the unrealistic expectations heat on some
Speaker 1: of these people, and they're more likely also to be
Speaker 1: to meet criteria for dependence. And I think about the
Speaker 1: rust belt in the United States where all those jobs
Speaker 1: went away. People were making six figure incomes and they
Speaker 1: were respected members of their communities. Those factories went away,
Speaker 1: and then so too that their sort of positive regard
Speaker 1: or that positive standing in that community. All of those
Speaker 1: things make you more likely to meet criteria not only
Speaker 1: for drug addiction, but other sort of problems that you
Speaker 1: might have in your life as a result. And so
Speaker 1: what it tells us is that we have to take
Speaker 1: care of the psychosocial environment. If we're concerned about drug addiction,
Speaker 1: if we're concerned that people in our society are not
Speaker 1: doing well, we have to take care of the environment.
Speaker 1: And that's not as sexy as identifying a gene or
Speaker 1: a specific type of neuron. That's not as sexy. It
Speaker 1: requires actual work. And so That's why we haven't so
Speaker 1: much focused on that many of us who study drugs,
Speaker 1: because it's not as sexy couple of things that we
Speaker 1: can get this fixable drug consumption rooms sounds like a
Speaker 1: very viable option. And drug purity testing services. Can you
Speaker 1: talk about some of those? Are we hopefully lacking those
Speaker 1: in America? Yeah? Let's think about drug overdoses for example.
Speaker 1: The things that we know about drug overdoses, which you
Speaker 1: never see in the headlines, but I point this out
Speaker 1: in the book, is most of the people who die
Speaker 1: from a drug related overdose have multiple drugs in their
Speaker 1: system at the time of their death. And so what
Speaker 1: it tells you is that it's rare or is a
Speaker 1: lot more or less likely. It's a lot less likely
Speaker 1: that people will die with only one drug in their system.
Speaker 1: So what it tells you is that you want to
Speaker 1: figure out the drug combinations that become toxic. So if
Speaker 1: you take something like an opioid heroin or some other
Speaker 1: opioid e. Fentanel, and you mix it with another set
Speaker 1: of alcohol of benzodazepine like xanax, or even with pain
Speaker 1: nerve pain medications like gabapin nor neronto or even older
Speaker 1: ana histamines. They they they also induce sleep. So you
Speaker 1: mix these kind of medications, these drugs together, it increased
Speaker 1: the likelihood that you might have respiratory depression. So you
Speaker 1: try and that you're part of your education. You tell
Speaker 1: people don't mix certain sedatives, but you don't have don't
Speaker 1: have the messaging don't minx drugs, because people use drugs
Speaker 1: will automatically ignore that messaging. Because we know that some
Speaker 1: drug combinations, like, for example, oh, cocaine and heroin together,
Speaker 1: that's a nice speedball and people like that effect, and
Speaker 1: that effect certainly is not as deadly, or that combination
Speaker 1: is certainly not as deadly as say, heroe and promethazine,
Speaker 1: which is an older and a histamine that induces quite
Speaker 1: a bit of sleep. So you have to be specific
Speaker 1: in your messaging about these drug combinations. That's what Another
Speaker 1: one is just simply those drug checking facilities that will
Speaker 1: go a long way if people actually knew what they
Speaker 1: were getting. Now, when we think about the safe or
Speaker 1: the supervised consumption rooms, the thing that I worry about
Speaker 1: there is obviously it's a good thing to have if
Speaker 1: you have nothing else. My concern there is that when
Speaker 1: people have those or they fight for those things. They
Speaker 1: think that they have done all of the work. First
Speaker 1: of all, the only people who will go to a
Speaker 1: supervised consumption facility are people who have no homes. And
Speaker 1: like me, I would never go to and use drugs
Speaker 1: in a public setting like that. I would like to
Speaker 1: have it in the privacy of my own home and
Speaker 1: a setting which I'm comfortable. But if I had no home,
Speaker 1: I would have to go there. So what it tells
Speaker 1: us that we really should be working on housing, and
Speaker 1: that's what we That's where the real problem is. My
Speaker 1: concern is that people are treating these supervised consumption facilities
Speaker 1: as if they are solutions to unhoused people. We really
Speaker 1: need to make sure they have housing. Look, you're raising
Speaker 1: a lot of really good points. I really want to
Speaker 1: think this through with you for a second, because you
Speaker 1: know you can have people start to make the argument, well, like, Carl,
Speaker 1: are you ignoring personal responsibility? Are you ignoring the role
Speaker 1: that personal responsibility takes in drug overdoses and addiction? And
Speaker 1: what is interesting by that argument because it's like, on
Speaker 1: the one hand, your whole book is speaking to the individual.
Speaker 1: On the one hand, your whole book is saying you
Speaker 1: can take personal responsibility to a degree and have a
Speaker 1: responsible drug use. But then the other hand, you're talking
Speaker 1: about all these environmental things we can change that can
Speaker 1: really help a person. The problem is when people have
Speaker 1: either or thinking right, when they're like, you know, you
Speaker 1: have the big one of the other. And also, I
Speaker 1: just want to put a wrench in this and say, well,
Speaker 1: if comorbidity of mental illnesses do play a role, that
Speaker 1: is an internal factor that does have a pretty substantial heritability,
Speaker 1: and even if so, that suggests that, like it's still
Speaker 1: beyond the person's control to a certain degree whether or
Speaker 1: not they're going to have and developed mental illnesses. And
Speaker 1: then you throw in the mix mental illness and poverty.
Speaker 1: You throw these things into a system. I love systems thinking.
Speaker 1: That's why I like to think of it. And you
Speaker 1: have you have almost like no free will of this
Speaker 1: individual too, if drug is the only option in their
Speaker 1: life to a certain degree. So I just wanted to
Speaker 1: riff with you about all this. Yeah, no, yeah, when
Speaker 1: you so. One of the reasons that we have this
Speaker 1: sort of a brain disease model of addiction is because
Speaker 1: there's a there is a concern that people have and
Speaker 1: that if we if it's not a brain disease, then
Speaker 1: that that means you're blaming the victim, you know. Then,
Speaker 1: so what you're pointing out is that no, you can
Speaker 1: still look at these other sort of factors and you
Speaker 1: can see that it's not blaming the victim. There are
Speaker 1: all kinds of other ways that we can intervene and
Speaker 1: we're not blaming the victim. But ultimately, we as individuals,
Speaker 1: we ultimately we have some responsibility for our life. I
Speaker 1: mean that we can never get away from that because
Speaker 1: we're going to feel the consequences more than the other folks,
Speaker 1: because these are the consequences to us. And so there's
Speaker 1: an interplay with all of these things. And you, I
Speaker 1: think you summarize it better than me well when you
Speaker 1: pointed out all of these things. But I absolutely agree. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just see a lot of parallels between the same
Speaker 1: arguments being made about iq as and stratification of society
Speaker 1: and how personal responsibility. All the same arguments keep you
Speaker 1: can just generalize them to every specific field you see
Speaker 1: the same fights being absolutely absolutely you say our moralism
Speaker 1: is killing us. That's something you've said. I love that,
Speaker 1: and that suggests maybe we need to tone down the
Speaker 1: moral superiority of non drug users, right like the like
Speaker 1: you know, the stigmatization of drug users who are using it, responsibility,
Speaker 1: even irresponsibly stigmatizing them and having more compassion for the
Speaker 1: factors that led to that decision. Yeah, you think about it.
Speaker 1: You know, we have done such a good job of
Speaker 1: manipulating the public thinking around drugs that we don't even
Speaker 1: think about the main reason that people use drugs. Most
Speaker 1: people use drugs in order to alter their consciousness and
Speaker 1: in order to feel better, in order to feel better
Speaker 1: about other people. I think about like in the book
Speaker 1: to describe my use of media, of these drugs and
Speaker 1: feeling more magnanimous, more forgiving, more hopeful. All of these
Speaker 1: things are pro social things that we want to encourage,
Speaker 1: And when we think of that, it's like, why would
Speaker 1: you not want people to experience these things. We've been
Speaker 1: so good at manipulating people to move away from those
Speaker 1: main sort of reasons that people take drugs into automatically
Speaker 1: going to this frame that the drugs are going to
Speaker 1: imprison them, and that rarely is a thing that happens,
Speaker 1: whereas these other pro social things are far more likely.
Speaker 1: I know, I feel much more hopeful about our society,
Speaker 1: about the people in our society at the having take
Speaker 1: something like MDMA or even heroin than I am most times,
Speaker 1: and then I can think about things differently. I think
Speaker 1: about how my behavior might have negatively impacted someone else,
Speaker 1: and make sure that I apologize. Is a tone for that,
Speaker 1: make sure I don't do that sort of thing anymore.
Speaker 1: All of these things are what I do when I
Speaker 1: am maybe psychoactively altered. I want to make sure that
Speaker 1: I'm taking care of our environment, our people, all of
Speaker 1: these things. Yes, yes, I love that. What's what drugs
Speaker 1: do you use? In the book? I describe the stimulants,
Speaker 1: from cocaine to uh, the amphetamines, also the opioids, from
Speaker 1: heroin to some like oxycon cotton or oxy codone, cannabis
Speaker 1: of course, So I describe all of these drugs, some
Speaker 1: of the psychedelics. I've done things like two c b U. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I heroin, Oh yeah, that's an opioid. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: the heroin thing, you know, I put that in the
Speaker 1: prologue up front, so I knew it would be an
Speaker 1: attention grabber, and I said that, you know, I'm a
Speaker 1: regular heroin user, not defining regular and regular just meant
Speaker 1: at regular intervals, so it could be once a week,
Speaker 1: once a month, once every six months, once a year,
Speaker 1: depending on, you know, whether I can get it, which
Speaker 1: in the United I mean get good pure heroin. But
Speaker 1: what that turned into in the press was I shoot
Speaker 1: heroin every day. Of course, you know, I no one.
Speaker 1: I can't do that and then accomplish all the things
Speaker 1: that I do. And so the reason why I pointed
Speaker 1: out that I used all these drugs because I wanted
Speaker 1: to be an example. One. I wanted to be an
Speaker 1: example of getting out of the closet so we can
Speaker 1: change this awful narrative about what a drug user look like.
Speaker 1: I figured, with someone with my accomplishments, it would be
Speaker 1: hard for the press or people to disparage me or
Speaker 1: to smirch myation. But sure enough they tried. Another reason
Speaker 1: I stayed at my drug Youth up front is because
Speaker 1: I wanted to align myself with the people who were
Speaker 1: being demigrated in our society. I wanted to be with them.
Speaker 1: I wanted people to know that you're not alone, and
Speaker 1: I wanted people to get out of the closet so
Speaker 1: they also could align themselves with those people who are
Speaker 1: being denigrated in our society. I love it. I love it.
Speaker 1: I'll join you. I'll join you on that, on that
Speaker 1: cause I've been I've just started started to experiment with
Speaker 1: some high end the macrodosing of psilocybin, microdosing macro dos,
Speaker 1: you know, like for five hundred programs, and I'm just
Speaker 1: working my way up. But to me, it's just all
Speaker 1: about exploration. And you know, I am. I have very
Speaker 1: high openness to experience personality scores. I imagine you do
Speaker 1: as well. You know, you could be a highly intelligent person.
Speaker 1: High openest experience, try lots of things responsibily doesn't make
Speaker 1: you a horrible human being. Yeah, So who are some
Speaker 1: of your greatest influences outside of psychology? Because I see
Speaker 1: Bob Marley behind you, Is that right? Yeah? Bob Momley
Speaker 1: is actually Bob Marley, I should say, but I see
Speaker 1: a yeah, one of the albums. I'm making a drug joke.
Speaker 1: You see, Bob is always over my show. But by
Speaker 1: the way, you know, I see I see Bob Marley
Speaker 1: right now, I'm seeing Bob. No, was that is that
Speaker 1: a disc? Is that like a record? A record? Yeah?
Speaker 1: That's a record? You know, that's the old vinyl. Yeah, yeah, yeah, No.
Speaker 1: So Bob is one of my biggest influence because you know,
Speaker 1: I did four years in the Air Force eighty four
Speaker 1: to eighty eight, and during that time, you know, I
Speaker 1: grew up in Miami, and so my grandmother it's from
Speaker 1: the Caribbean. Her father's Jamaican, her mother Behemian. She's Bahamian,
Speaker 1: and so we had a lot of Caribbean influence. But
Speaker 1: when I went to the Air Force, I really got
Speaker 1: into like more of my Caribbean sort of upbringing. And
Speaker 1: Bob his music and lyrics helped me to start questioning
Speaker 1: our society and that's where I really began to start thinking.
Speaker 1: And then you know, other people Gil Scott Herron, another artist, musician,
Speaker 1: even I mean like writers, people like Upton Sinclair. The
Speaker 1: Jungle of that book was really important. James Baldwin one
Speaker 1: of my favorite writers. Yeah, you know, many people James
Speaker 1: Bowen has seen a resurgence in popularity here recently. But
Speaker 1: one of the things that current or contemporary contemporary writers
Speaker 1: don't write about Baldwin is that Baldwin was arguing for
Speaker 1: drug legalization as early as nineteen eighty six, and nobody
Speaker 1: really mentions that I pointed it out in a new book,
Speaker 1: But I hope people understand like Baldwin predicted this sort
Speaker 1: of awful war on drugs and the imprisonment of all
Speaker 1: of these poor people. He predicted this before it happening,
Speaker 1: and he was saying that the only thing that you're
Speaker 1: going to get is poor people behind bars, because wealthy
Speaker 1: people are going to continue to use drugs and be fine,
Speaker 1: but our poor people will be behind bars, and a
Speaker 1: lot of people, law enforcement and others will make a
Speaker 1: lot of money on this war on drugs. And that's
Speaker 1: exactly what happened. He was so prescient in so many ways,
Speaker 1: such a genius. So we have now two Columbia professors
Speaker 1: who've come out of the closet, Carl Hart and Scott
Speaker 1: Barry Kaufman. So we need to rally the troops in
Speaker 1: the psychology there. We know, we see you Mary soon
Speaker 1: not objeking out. There's no one called Mary Sue in
Speaker 1: her department. But I'm not mentioning any picar but no,
Speaker 1: we see you, you know, But anyway, I love it. Look,
Speaker 1: I will thank you so much for your time today,
Speaker 1: and let's let's grab a coffee on campus sometime. Absolutely, Man,
Speaker 1: will you please hit me up and let's do it.
Speaker 1: I would love to. I really appreciate it, and thank
Speaker 1: you man for even taking the time to check out
Speaker 1: the work. I really appreciate it. Likewise, keep it up,
Speaker 1: keep it up, all right, Take care, bro. Thanks for
Speaker 1: listening to this episode of the Psychology Podcast. If you'd
Speaker 1: like to react in some way to something you heard,
Speaker 1: I encourage you to join in the discussion at thusycology
Speaker 1: podcast dot com 'or on our YouTube page, Theuschology Podcast.
Speaker 1: We also put up some videos of some episodes on
Speaker 1: our YouTube page as well, so you'll want to check
Speaker 1: that out. Thanks for being such a great supporter of
Speaker 1: the show, and tune in next time for more on
Speaker 1: the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity.