Latest / Drawn of History / Joe Rogan Experience _1136 - Hamilton Morris(M4A_128K)

Transcript

Joe Rogan Experience _1136 - Hamilton Morris(M4A_128K) · Drawn of History

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: I try so hard. Boom. And we're live, Hamilton Morris.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Sober as fuck. How about you?
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Absolutely sober.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Yes, this time. So we did a podcast seven years ago,
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: and most people apparently didn't know how fucked up we were.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: But I figured, damn, we're here with Hamilton Morris. We
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: should go deep. And we just kept hitting that joint
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: until I lost most of my grasp on reality while
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: we're talking. It was just a very slippery conversation. I
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: was just too high to form coherent thoughts. It was
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: just whatever I pieced together was just, you know, it
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: was almost like miming a conversation.
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: But now seven years later and you have a new place.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: It's beautiful.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, you were at the early days. We did
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: it at my house.
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: That was way, way, way back in the day.
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: I had no idea, really. I knew who you were,
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: of course, but I didn't know about your personality. podcast entirely.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: I'd seen clips of you on YouTube and it wasn't
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: until I was driving home from that recording and my
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: phone just filled with hundreds of emails that I realized,
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: oh wow, this is a serious phenomenon that I was
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: not aware of. And now I see it's just become huge.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: It's a weird thing, dude. It's got the wheel. I
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: just sort of have to show up. It's a very strange,
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: and it sounds like false modesty or something like that,
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: but I'm just being totally honest. Like this thing does itself.
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: I think a lot of it might have to do
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: with the long form because people are so used to
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: seeing people's opinions condensed and filtered into these sound bites
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: and snippets and to hear an extended conversation with someone
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: where they can actually tell stories and articulate their opinions
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: in a nuanced, careful way is so rare.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: I agree. It's one of the reasons why I don't
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: do those shows anymore, like panel shows and things like that.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: It's just so frustrating.
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: Oh, it's insane. I have very little experience with that
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: sort of thing, but I did Dr. Oz last year.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: One of the worst ones. Yes.
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: And I don't know how any normal person could function
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: in that sort of environment. I mean, I have a
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: TV show, so arguably I'm well-trained for that sort of thing.
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: But unless you're an actor who's prepared a line to
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: say as soon as they point at you, there's no
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: way that you could function because it's not a genuine conversation.
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: It's just an opportunity to launch one sentence sound bites
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: and then audience applause.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And also the audience is such a strange element
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: to add to a conversation. I mean, if you and
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: I were having this conversation exactly in this room, but...
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: To the left of us is an enormous group of people.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: We'd feel weird. We would have to address them. We'd
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: have to turn to them. It would be odd.
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: Following illuminated applause and laughter signs.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: God, those are the weirdest. There's always the warm-up guy
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: who's like, okay, everybody, we're coming back from break. We're
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: coming back from break. And they hold up the sign, applause, applause, applause,
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: and everybody goes crazy.
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: And they create the worst environment. I was on this–
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: Discussion about Kratom. Are you familiar with this?
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: I'm on it right now. Oh, wow. Yeah, I just
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: took some. I fucked my knee up the other day.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: I did something, and it's been stiff and painful, so
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: I iced it before I came here, and then I
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: just took six of them. Let's see what happens. Wow.
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: I took ten once.
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: Ten one-gram capsules? Yeah.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: I don't know how much that's worth. I don't know.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: Can you grab that bag? There's a bag that's sitting
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: right on the sink. I'll tell you exactly what's in it.
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: But now I get why people might think it's a drug.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: It is a drug. Yeah, for sure. But when I
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: took four, I was like– well, I took two for–
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: the first time I took it, I took two. And
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: a couple times I took two, and it was like
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: a mild stimulant. But then when you get into the
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: range of eight to ten pills, it's like, oh, this
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: will fuck you up, this stuff. The stuff I take
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: is Urban Ice Organics, and see, it says– It says
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: take two.
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: It doesn't say the amount of material in the capsule.
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: What does it say there? 750 milligrams.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: Okay. So not quite a gram.
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: Not quite a gram. All right. That seems like a
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: reasonable amount. But they always construct these things in these ridiculous,
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: dramatic oppositions. Like it was me versus a woman whose
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: son had died of some Kratom-associated overdose. And, you know,
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: it turns into a thing like, well, what do you
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: have to say to this woman whose son died? It's like,
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: I don't know. You know, there are people that die
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: from caffeine overdoses as well. It's tragic that this happens.
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: Have people died from this? Yes. How much do you
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: have to take?
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: An enormous amount. I think a lot of people set
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: up these unrealistic expectations with these drugs where if they
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: like a drug, they want to say it's impossible for
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: it to kill anyone.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: It's impossible.
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: There's no possible way. If you set that as your standard,
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: you'll always fail because people will die doing absolutely everything, running,
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: having sex, defecating.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: Aspirin.
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: Aspirin, absolutely. There's nothing in this world that can't find
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: its way into a human death. So if people want
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: to say, and even, you know, cannabis, obviously, people say
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: you can't overdose on cannabis, and essentially you can't. But
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: if you look in the medical literature, there are a
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: number of these cannabis-associated fatalities. You know, you can debate
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: them endlessly, but the point is once a drug enters
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: a large enough population, there'll be a number of sensitive
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: individuals and someone will die. It doesn't mean that the
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: drug is dangerous. It means that it's unrealistic to set
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: a standard where if anything bad happens to anyone, we
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: have to decide that the drug is dangerous and should
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: be banned.
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree. I mean, look, water kills people. There's
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: a lot of these hazing things where the fraternity kids
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: will be asked to drink a shit ton of water.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: And people have died from it. A woman died in
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: San Jose a few years back from a contest to
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: drink water to get her son like an Xbox or
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: something like that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: of things that are lethal. But the LD50 for cannabis
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: is like, I mean, you literally have to smoke your
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: body weight or something, right? It's something crazy.
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: It would be very difficult. Yeah.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: But it doesn't mean that you couldn't get so high
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: that you did something really stupid and wind up dying. Right. Yeah.
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: Especially dependent upon the person and the, you know, biological variabilities.
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: Right, right. Exactly. And it's just, I think it's also
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: just a sort of a bad road to go down.
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: People always want to emphasize the safety of things. But
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: in my opinion, safety isn't the point. It doesn't. ultimately
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: matter to me, whether or not something is safe. I
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: think we should have the freedom to do dangerous things
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: if we choose. We're allowed to ride motorcycles. We're allowed
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: to shoot guns. you're allowed to go skydiving and bungee jumping,
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: all those things carry risks, but it's assumed that any
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: adult that does them is aware of those risks.
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I mean, it's also who is,
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: if the society that we live in was just you
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: and I, we were the only two people alive, who
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: are you to tell me what I can do or
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: me to tell you what you can do? It's ridiculous.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: And so when you have grown adults, telling a grown
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: adult who's informed what they can and can't do, then
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: it becomes a question of children. Well, then it becomes
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: a an education issue and it becomes a parental issue.
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's just, you can't lie to your children
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: about the effects of certain drugs because then they're not
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: going to believe you about the really actual, the actual
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: dangerous ones.
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: Right. And this is of course reflected in the so-called
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: opioid epidemic.
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: Right now.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: There's endless finger pointing. Everyone wants to find a culprit
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: that's behind all of it. And the easiest person to blame,
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: of course, are pharmaceutical companies because everybody hates pharmaceutical companies.
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: So why not blame them?
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: But, You know, and I'm not pro-pharmaceutical by any stretch
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: of the imagination, but I'm also not anti-pharmaceutical either. And
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: when you look at the way, for example, the New
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: York Times is covering the opioid epidemic, it's always in
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: this tone of, like, documents were uncovered that show that
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: executives at Purdue Pharma were aware that morphine was addictive
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: as early as 1999. It's like, well, of course. Of
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: course they were aware. People have known that morphine is
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: addictive for hundreds of years. This is old news. And
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: this whole idea that doctors were convinced by some letter
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: in the New England Journal of Medicine that said that
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: OxyContin isn't addictive is absurd. These are all morphine derivatives.
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: Any adult, especially a medically trained adult, should know that
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: no matter what little variation you make on that molecule,
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: if it's structurally and pharmacologically and qualitatively similar to morphine,
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: of course it's going to be addictive. And that in
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: and of itself isn't even a bad thing. It should
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: be okay to give people addictive drugs as well as
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: long as everyone's aware of the risks.
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: As long as they understand a protocol to get off
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: of it. There's so many people that get on these
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: things and then wind up taking them far longer than
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: they're supposed to because it's easy to get hooked. We
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: need to at least have some sort of responsible direction
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: that these people need to go to to get off
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: of them once they're on them. Because people that get
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: back operations, anything where they prescribe you high doses of opiates,
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: it's a huge problem. I know many, many people that
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: have gotten hooked because of it. And in fact, I
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: should tell you that my good friend Justin Wren, his
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: wife found out about Kratom because of you. Because of
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: your show, he had a problem with his shoulder, got
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: shoulder surgery. They put him on Oxycontins. He was fucked
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: up on them and he was having a really hard
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: time getting off and having the shakes really bad. And
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: kratom is the only thing that got them off of it. Right.
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: And that's not surprising. I mean, this has been known
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: for a very long time in Thailand. And that was
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: actually the reason that it was originally prohibited. I don't
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: know if you're aware of that, but because the government
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: taxed opium and people started using kratom, then they made
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: kratom illegal.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: Is that the right way to say it? Because people
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: say kratom. You're the only one I've heard say kratom.
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: It's a Thai word. People in Thailand call it kratom.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: Oh, okay.
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: So people in the U.S. call it kratom. It's also
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: they have, you know, maybe it's like kratom. So they're
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: not going to go that far. Right, right, right. But
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: kratom is closer.
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: If you did, it would be weird. Yeah, yeah.
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: But I feel, you know, yeah.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: Like American people that say Ecuador, Argentina.
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: But it is Cratom.
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Cratom. Okay. So we'll try to call it Cratom.
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: Or something close to that. It's closer to that than Kratom.
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: Right. And so the reason why it was made illegal
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: was because of the fact that it was pinching some
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: of the profits off of the opium trade. Yes. Wow.
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: That's fucked up.
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: And so this has been known for a long time
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: that it helps people get off more addictive opioids.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: And how does it do that?
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: Well, it's an opioid itself. And a lot of people
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: don't want to admit or acknowledge that. But I think
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: we need to get beyond this idea that drugs are
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: inherently bad or opioids are inherently bad just because the
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: ones that we're aware of have a lot of problems.
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: You know, in some sense, medicinal chemistry and pharmacology and
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: all this are still in a very primitive state. And
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: there's so much to be learned. So we're mostly giving
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: people these derivatives of morphine that have been around for
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: 100 years. And there are better things. We're going to
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: continuously discover less addictive treatments for pain. And I think
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: that the alkaloids in Kratom are a step in that direction,
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: which is so tragic that they're trying to now make
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: it illegal because this is something that, as far as
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: I can tell, has genuinely helped an enormous number of
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: people reduce their intake of more addictive and more dangerous opioids.
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: Well, one of the things that I felt, I mean,
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: and again, my dose was not extremely high, but when
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: I was on it, I was very coherent. It was
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: clear to me that I was affected by something, but
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: it felt kind of good. It didn't feel bad. It
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: felt a little uneasy, like a little like, whoa, the
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: world feels a little weird right now, but it did
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: not feel... Like I was impaired. Like I know a
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: lot of people who take it in exercise. Like I
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: have a friend, he'll take 10 pills and exercise. It
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: just seems kind of fucking crazy.
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: But he says he has a great workout. Right. By
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: taking that stuff before he works out. Yeah.
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: I mean, it seems to lend itself to a lot
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: of different applications. In Thailand, it's used almost exclusively for
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: that sort of purpose. In the South, it's a drug
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: that laborers use so they can you know, collect the
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: latex from rubber trees and just get their job done.
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: That's what it's about. I mean, that's what opioids are
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: about for a lot of the world, both in the
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: United States and in Africa and Thailand is, you know,
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: people live hard lives and manual labor is painful and
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: repetitive and difficult. And anything that makes that a little
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: bit more manageable is a very important tool for humans.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: I always felt like People that did heroin or opiates
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: or something like that were on a very short road
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: to death. That was my perception when I was a kid.
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: And then I had a friend who was a longshoreman.
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: They worked on the docks. They would bring fish in
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: and fillet the fish for the market. And he worked
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: with a guy that every day at lunch, the guy
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: would go cop. He would get his heroin. He would
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: shoot it up in his car, and then he'd go
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: back to work. And I was like, he'd go back
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: to work? And you're like, yep, he worked every day.
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: Like every day he shot up and every day he worked. Like, yeah,
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: he was never late. Nope, just did his work. Like, wow, well,
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: I didn't think you could do that. I thought you
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: did heroin. The next thing you know, you'd just be
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: on the floor in a fetal position in your own
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: urine and you just would fall apart and die. Right.
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's this idea that people sometimes refer to as
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: pharmacological determinism, that a certain drug has to do a
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: certain thing. So alcohol has to sedate and disinhibit you.
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: heroin has to addict you and make you a slave
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: to it and kill you. Cocaine has to be a
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: euphoric thing that's done at parties that's also very addictive.
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: PCP has to make you strip nude and run around
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: fighting cops and punching holes in wooden fences. But when
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: you look at this, anthropologists have looked at certain drugs
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: that are used cross-culturally, like alcohol, and what you find
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: is this whole idea of pharmacological determinism is fundamentally flawed.
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: Drugs behave differently in different cultures depending on the set
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: and setting of the user. And so you find all
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: sorts of instances that are major exceptions to these rules
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: that we've set up for these various drugs. For example, PCP,
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: which is arguably one of the most ubiquitously maligned drugs
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: in the world. I mean, no one can imagine that
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: PCP is medicinal. But even to this day, PCP is
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: in Schedule 2, not Schedule 1, like cannabis and LSD
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: Schedule 2. It can still be prescribed, actually. And that's
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: because it had a history of medicinal use. There was
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: even PCP psychotherapy in the UK in the 50s. So
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: This is something that most people wouldn't believe. But to
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: those patients that were taking it then, there was none
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: of this cultural association with PCP being a drug that
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: causes psychosis or makes you strip nude. It was simply
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: another tool for a psychiatrist to use and help people
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: release repressed memories or traumas that they were afraid to
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: talk about when sober.
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: Well, we're seeing that now with MDMA, right? I mean,
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: and also ketamine. Ketamine being used as an actual tool
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: for psychotherapy, particularly for people with depression, it's having really
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: good results. My friend, Neil Brennan, who's a hilarious comedian,
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: he's had struggles with depression. He got great relief from
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: taking ketamine.
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: Right. And what I think is really interesting is, you know,
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: this is often... packaged as a sort of psychedelic renaissance.
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: But I think in a larger context, it's a drug
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: facilitated psychotherapy renaissance, because this was not just limited to psychedelics.
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: People did something called narcoanalysis, where they would give people
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: sedatives like propofol, the drug that killed Michael Jackson, or
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: various barbiturates or various other drugs. And the relaxing effect
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: would allow people to talk more openly to a therapist.
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: And it was considered very effective. Now this idea of
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: a psychiatrist injecting you with a drug in order to
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: help you talk about your problems, it's unheard of. I
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: don't think anyone does it anymore, but it used to
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: be very common. And I think a return to that
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: is going to be really beneficial.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree with you. I think the right drugs
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: with the right cases and the right people, and I
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: think we've got to get past these schedules. When you
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: have things like marijuana and psilocybin and especially DMT, which
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: your own body produces as a Schedule I drug, and
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: the famous Terrence McKenna line we're all holding when it
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: comes to DMT. It's just stupid. It's stupid that these
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: things are Schedule I. When you're saying there's no medical
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: benefit whatsoever or medical application for cannabis, it's fucking crazy.
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: You want to have something that really actively promotes a
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: distrust in law enforcement. The scheduling of drugs is one
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: of the best ones because when you look at something
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: like marijuana and you see that that's a Schedule I drug,
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: that's infuriating to people that gain huge benefits from cannabis.
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: I mean, people that have going through chemotherapy, people that have,
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: you know, interocular pressure from glaucoma. I mean, you can
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: go down the list over and over and over again.
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: Kids that have epilepsy. There's so many people that have
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: had great benefit, particularly from edible cannabis, from people that
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: have seizures. I mean, you could keep going on and
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: on and on. It's just It's an amazing plant. And
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: to have that demonized because of some ridiculous propaganda from
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: the 1930s that still somehow or another clung on in 2018.
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: When you think about all the information we have now
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: with the Internet and the fact that cannabis is still
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: Schedule 1, you have assholes like Jeff Sessions still saying
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: things like good people don't smoke marijuana. This is crazy talk.
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: It's crazy. But keep in mind, it was just about
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: 100 years ago that alcohol was prohibited in the United States.
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: And it took 13 years to reverse that. And that
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: was alcohol. There's no drug more integrated into our culture
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: than alcohol. And that took 13 years to reverse.
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: What was that like back then? That must have been madness.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: When alcohol was illegal, when the cops would come in
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: and jackbooted thugs would knock over gin mills and... bust
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: open kegs of whiskey and spill it all out. Like,
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: what the fuck was that like?
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: It was disastrous. But I think what's interesting about that
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: is it was a worthwhile experiment. To give them the
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: benefit of the doubt, it was worthwhile to see. Because
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: on some sense, you could say that prohibition has a
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: certain logic to it. You could say drugs cause problems.
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: So if we just make all the drugs illegal, then
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: maybe those problems will disappear. But it didn't work. The
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: experiment failed. And There's nothing wrong with a failed experiment,
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: but it's a problem if you keep repeating it over
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: and over and over again for 100 years looking for
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: a different result.
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: Right. And then go to other drugs and go, well,
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: this one, let's try this one. Let's make this one illegal.
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: And it's a terrible PR situation for the police as well.
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: If I were a police officer, I would be the
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: biggest opponent of the war on drugs and of anyone
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: in the government. Because when you think about why does
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: the average person in New York City love a firefighter?
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: They love firefighters, but they hate cops. Why is that?
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: It's because of the drug war. Because a firefighter isn't
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: going to hurt you for something that wasn't really a
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: crime to begin with, for some kind of victimless crime.
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: A firefighter is just there to help you. to save
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: you if you're in trouble and the same would be
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: true of police officers if it weren't for the drug
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: war ideally there's a little more complexity to.
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: It sure there's certainly certainly more complexity when it comes
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: to shootings and yes along those lines but i mean
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: the stop and frisk i've read something about stop and
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: frisk in new york when they had when they had
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: that instituted that most of it was drugs. Most of
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: it was like catching people with marijuana. Yeah. Which is
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: just fucking insane. You just say, hey, you look like
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: you might be streetwise. Get over here.
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: And that's the way these laws have functioned from the
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: very beginning. I mean, if you look at drug law
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: in the UK, it tends to be very black and white.
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: Something is legal or illegal. If it's legal, it can
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: be sold in stores because it's legal. If it's illegal,
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: it can't be sold anywhere. In the US, they've instead
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: created this nebulous, far-reaching gray area where there's all sorts
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: of things that are maybe illegal, kind of illegal, do
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: it but don't get caught. And it's created an ability
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: for the government to selectively prosecute people whenever they want,
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: if they want.
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, that seems to be lessening. I mean, when
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: you have someone like Jeff Sessions in office, it's very disturbing.
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: But then Trump says things like he's very strong on
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: states' rights to pass marijuana laws and things along those lines.
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: You're very incredulous.
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: I don't know. I mean, I suppose I am a
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: bit incredulous when it comes to Trump doing anything good.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: But I think if you told him that people love
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: him more, if he did things good, he would do
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: things good.
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: That's probably true. If someone that he trusted said.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: It, yeah. I think we've got to get somebody in deep.
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: We've got to get a mole in there. Got to
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: get somebody who's good at back rubs.
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: Get Ivanka on the podcast.
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: I don't think that'll help. I doubt it'll help. I mean,
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: I just don't know what is the thing that'll help.
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: There's also the separation between the drug users and the policymakers. Yes.
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: And one thing that I am certain will help, and
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: it's sort of tragic that this is the case, but
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: it's capitalism. It's the corporatization of these drugs.
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: With cannabis, when it was hippies and the counterculture having
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: marches down the streets of New York holding up 420 signs,
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: it doesn't, I suppose, have all that much clout in
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: the eyes of lawmakers. But when you have some guy
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: from Yale Business School who's never smoked weed who says,
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: you know, this is a serious business opportunity, we're going
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: to make it big and get investors, invests millions and
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: millions of dollars into it, hires lobbyists, plays the game
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: like a capitalist, then the laws do change. And I
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: wish that weren't the case, but it is. And it's
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: tragic for the people that did fight and did go
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: to prison and did sacrifice that then these business school
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: guys come along and reap all the benefits. But that's
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: the way it works.
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that is the way it works. And that's okay.
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's just a weird path. It's a weird path,
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: but as long as we can get to legalization, I'm
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: 100% for that path. I just think that might be
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: the only way. In this weird country, this country is
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: so enamored with money. I mean, we're so enamored with
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: money and profits and even for dying people, even old people.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: Like Warren Buffett invested shit tons of money in warehouses
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: to grow cannabis in Colorado when the laws were passed.
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: I mean, that guy's 150,000 years old. He's worth billions
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: of dollars. And he's like, who gives a shit? I'm
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: making more money now and more and more and more.
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: I mean, even when they're really old, they're massively motivated
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: by profit.
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: Yes. And I think the same will be true for
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: psychedelics and will probably be true for all of these
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: things because you need to have lobbyists. You need to
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: have this sort of typical white collar support to push
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: things forward.
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: I agree. I don't see any other way around it
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: right now. I mean, the real hope is that cannabis–
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: not that it will get rid of capitalism, but that
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: we'll figure out– it's hard to wear those things with
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: glasses on, right?
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: Ari's talking about it. The glasses dig in your head.
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: That cannabis will– not just cannabis, but cannabis will open
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: the door to all these different substances that will allow
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: people to gain a greater perspective. This is the ultimate goal,
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: in my opinion, is to give people the opportunity to
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: step outside the momentum of their lives and look at
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: things with fresh eyes and make clear decisions. This is
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: one of the best things that I think that drugs provide,
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: is that these psychedelic drugs in particular provide an escape
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: from the momentum of of this life that you've created
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: or that you've found yourself a part of. It's very
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: difficult for people to stop behavior patterns, to stop and
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: to just look at themselves objectively and sort of rethink, regroup,
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: and reassess. And this is one of the best things
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: about cannabis and about psilocybin and a lot of these
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: other psychedelic drugs is that it gives you this newfound
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: perspective that allows you to reconsider things.
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely. And I think with, you know, ketamine and
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: the treatment of depression, it's a similar idea because depressed
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: people become used to these very ingrained patterns of thinking
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: and anything that can break you out of that, that
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: can shake it up for a minute and maybe give
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: you a different perspective, I think is inherently therapeutic.
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think so as well. And I think I'm
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: hoping that what I see, and this is what I
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: believe I see, is that we're changing our perceptions of it.
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: I had a conversation with a friend of mine the
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: other day about marijuana, where we were talking about how
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: you used to hide whether or not you did it
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: from certain people. And now that group of people that
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: you have to hide it from is smaller and smaller.
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: And that it seems like everyone casually smokes marijuana now
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: in our circles. There's so many people that do. There's
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: a few that don't, sober people and whatever. But it's
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: way more common, whereas 10, 15 years ago, this was
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: something you hid. If you had a good job, if
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: you had a family, this is not something you wanted
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: people to know about.
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: And what I think is really interesting is that in
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: and of itself changes the nature of the cannabis experience.
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: So I think if somebody uses cannabis in a culture
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: that supports it, that approves of it, their experience will
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: be better by virtue of that fact. So there's a
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: certain shame that a lot of people feel when using
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: any drug. I, for whatever crazy reason, feel it a
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: little bit with cannabis. It's, you know, just a hair of,
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: I should be, you know, I should be studying, I
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: should be reading, I should be, you know, more focused.
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: This is a little hedonistic. It's a little comfort oriented.
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: I should be working harder. But that's, I think, just
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: the vestiges of this propaganda that i've been fed or
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: something like that or maybe it's true but i understand
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: from one perspective why the cannabis culture drums the benefits
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: of cannabis so hard you know that it cures all
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: disease that it's good for you that it cures cancer
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: all this stuff because if you have that in your
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: mind um at the very least it's going to reduce
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: that sort of internal shame that you might feel and
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: makes the entire experience healthier and more beneficial because we
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: do construct these limitations we construct these experiences to some
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: extent So if you decide that cannabis is a dissociative
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: drug that's hedonistic and comfort-oriented and will take you away
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: from your responsibilities, then that's what it will become. But
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: if you decide, like Terrence McKenna did, that it's an
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: intellectual catalyst, that it will facilitate your ability to read
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: and learn and think and write, then it will become
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: that as well.
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a weird one, right? Because people that take
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: it are prone to paranoia. or that are dealing with
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: like some difficult issues in their life right now that
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: they're perhaps trying to avoid, it becomes an uncomfortable experience.
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: Whereas people that are happy and having a good time
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: and in a good place, the marijuana will sort of
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: enhance that. It'll give you this loving, warm feeling of
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: comfort and of like sort of acceptance of your existence
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: and it's going to be okay.
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: Right. But I think even the paranoia is like a
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: sort of, a sort of meme, you could say, a
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: sort of vestige of this propaganda that makes people afraid
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: in the same vein as the bad trip. I think
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: the concept of a bad trip is a very damaging
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: concept because, and I know from personal experience, I never
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: really used psychedelics in high school with the exception of
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: salvia because I was terrified of a bad trip. I'd
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: talk to friends who'd describe bad trips and they'd say, oh,
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: it's a bad trip. It's really... bad. It's scary. And
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: I would think, oh, that's terrible. I could, I would
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: never want a bad trip. I'm never going to touch
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: these things because a bad trip would be too much
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: for me to tolerate. And then I started using psychedelics
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: and I realized there's no such thing as a bad
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: trip any more than there's a bad meal or a
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: bad relationship or a bad day. I mean, having an
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: occasional bad thing in life doesn't stop you from doing
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: things like eating or having relationships or living typically. So
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: what do you mean.
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: By there's Are you saying there's no such thing as
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: a bad trip?
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: Are you saying there's no such thing as a bad meal?
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: I'm saying that there is such thing as a bad meal,
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: but it wouldn't prevent you from tripping. And I think
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: that even the bad, or wouldn't prevent you from eating, rather.
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: Sorry about that. But I think even these bad trips,
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: although they can be difficult, are beneficial in our learning
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: experience in the same way that a bad meal could be.
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: You learn not to go to that restaurant or maybe
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: you learn something about what makes you sick or what
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: to be careful of in the future. You know, if
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: you are approaching life from a non-fearful perspective where your
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: intention is to learn, then you can extract benefit from
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: almost any experience. And these difficult psychedelic experiences, I genuinely believe,
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: and this is what is maybe the hardest thing to
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: communicate about psychedelics, is that it's the difficult ones that
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: are often the best. Those are the ones that really
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: teach you something. And when you're trying to talk about
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: psychedelics with people who've never used them, it's not a
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: great selling point to say, oh, you know, the best
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: thing that can happen is you're going to think you're
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: going to die. But that is arguably the best thing
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: that can happen, is to think that you're going to die.
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: Because that's a confrontation with the overarching fear, the fear
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: that generates all other fears. And if you conquer that fear, then...
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: your life will almost certainly improve.
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: Well, what is one thing that's sort of genuine, genuinely
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: universally accepted as a beneficial experience is a near death experience,
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: sort of universally accepted as a transformative moment in people's lives.
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: Like I had this near death experience and I realized, wow,
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: I got to get my shit together. After that heart attack,
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: I realized that life is a gift and I changed
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: the way I think about things. And I started calling
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: people that I loved and telling them that I loved them.
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: This is the same– you can get a near-death experience
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: from cannabis. You just don't ever die. But you really do.
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: I mean it's the death of so many perceptions and
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: so many things about your life, especially from edible cannabis,
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: which I think is probably one of the least understood
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: and most potent things that people are consuming on a
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: daily basis. I can't tell you how many times I've
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: given someone edible marijuana and they're fucking convinced that it's
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: been laced with something awful and that they're going to die.
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: But then afterwards, they come out of it and they're like,
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: I got some work to do. The only way I
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: would disagree with you is people that are prone to
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: psychotic breaks.
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Because there is an absolute genuine connection between people
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: who have a slippery hold on reality and some experiences
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: with psychedelics that lead them down a bad road.
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: That's true.
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: It can, it's a stressor and like all stressors, it
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: can precipitate a psychotic break. Uh, they've done pretty large
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: scale epidemiological analyses of psychedelic drug users versus the non
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: psychedelic drug using population and the incidence of mental illness
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: isn't any higher. So I don't think that you can
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: argue that psychedelics cause mental illness, but you can, and
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: in some measures it seems to actually reduce it in
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: terms of things like alcoholism, substance abuse disorders. But, um,
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: But it can be a stressor that would precipitate such
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: an episode in a susceptible individual. And I had a
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: very traumatic and formative experience myself where my best friend
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: had a psychotic break while I was with him tripping.
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: So I've seen this firsthand. I know exactly what it
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: looks like.
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I've had friends have real bad experiences too where
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: they're screaming and yelling and then disassociative and then afterwards
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: become very strange and have a really hard time with
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: reality for a bit. I've never seen someone have a
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: complete psychotic break from it.
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: This was that. He never recovered.
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: Never?
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: He never recovered. He was my best friend at the time,
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: and he never recovered.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: So he was fine before the psychedelics? Yes. Jesus Christ.
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: But again, you know, and that happened early.
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: So now he's still fucked? Yes. Damn.
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: But again, you know, I typically don't tell that story
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: in public because it could be misinterpreted as a scare story.
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: You know, I don't, it's impossible to prove the counterfactual.
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: Would it have happened without psychedelics? Almost certainly, I can't say.
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: All I know is that he took a very high
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: dose of a psilocin ester and had this episode. He
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: was hospitalized and he was not the same afterwards. So
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: I'm aware that this is something that happens, but it
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: also typically happens in the early 20s, late teens, the
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: same time that people typically have psychotic breaks and develop schizophrenia. Yeah.
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: The instances of schizophrenia in people who use cannabis are,
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: cannabis in particular, but I don't know about other psychedelics,
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: but I would imagine they're very similar. They're exactly the
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: same as the incidences of schizophrenia in non-using populations. It's
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: like 1%. 1% across the board seem to have issues
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: with schizophrenia. And the real question is how many of
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: those people could, I mean, Is it avoidable? Like if
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: your friend had never done that and instead had, you know,
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: become a marathon runner or something and, you know, found
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: some other outlets for his energy, would he have never
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: gone down that road? We don't know.
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: It's impossible to say.
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's impossible to say. I think it's very important
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: to talk about that though. And with further research, perhaps
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: we could isolate genes, you know, like they have for CTE.
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: Now they have, they can do an analysis of your genes.
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: and then determine whether or not something like football would
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: be a dangerous path for you because you have a
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: higher probability of developing CTE. It would be wonderful if
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: they figured out a way to do that with psilocybin
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: or with cannabis or with anything else and be able
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: to recognize the potential links to psychotic breaks and to,
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: you know, a host of different mental disorders that could
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: possibly be triggered by high doses. Yes.
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: I mean, this is one of so many things that
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: needs to be done. And that's, you know, everyone's very
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: excited about all this clinical research that's happening right now.
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: I'm excited about it as well. But on one level,
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: it is very politically oriented research. You know, the things
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: that they're looking at have actually typically been done before,
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: not all of it. But the aim is to firmly
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: establish these things that have been known for a occasions
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: mystical type experience, or MDMA is useful for treating PTSD,
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: or psilocybin has an anti-addictive effect. These are things that
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: people have known for a little while, but now it's
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: about proving it. But I'm really looking forward to getting
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: deeper into these serious questions about, you know, exactly how
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: these drugs interact with various subtypes of serotonin receptors, because
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: I think that they're going to be very important tools
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: for understanding consciousness. as a whole.
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it would also be interesting knowing how they react
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: to different diets. You know, when people are, you know,
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: when you're eating certain types of foods that are bad
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: for your body, I would really be curious to see
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: what kind of effect that has. I mean, when you
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: have real large-scale research that goes over really important variables
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: in terms of, like, human health, and then you add
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: in these different substances, whether it's psilocybin or cannabis or
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: whatever it is. It's going to be interesting to see
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: how the body reacts to these various perturbances, these various
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: changes of your state.
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And that's, you know, traditionally in a lot of
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: these indigenous groups, the diet plays a big role in
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: the way that the drug is administered. And I think
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: we're slowly rediscovering a lot of things that have been
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: known for our tens, maybe hundreds, maybe thousands of years
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: in some of these indigenous groups. Have you had a
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: chance to see any of my new show by any chance?
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: No, no, I haven't.
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: Oh, I think you'd like it.
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: I'm sure I'd like it. I like your old show.
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this is, I think it's a lot better than
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: the old show. Yeah.
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: Awesome.
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah. But I, you know, I had the opportunity to
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: look at the way salvia is used in the mountains
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: of Oaxaca and you know, Native American peyote use and
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: all these different things. And yeah, there's so much to
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: be learned from all these traditions that are not reflected
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: in the current clinical climate because they can't be. But
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: I think that that's going to be a part of
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: it is slowly integrating these other alkaloids that are present
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: in the plants to see what role they play in
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: the same way that, you know, the initial medicalization of
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: cannabis was Marinol, which is just THC and sesame oil.
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: But now there's increased understanding of the way these accessory
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: cannabinoids modulate the THC experience or whether THC is even
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: the primary therapeutic agent for certain disorders. And I imagine
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: the same thing will be true for peyote and for
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: the iboga alkaloids and probably even for some of the
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: chemicals found in mushrooms.
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: So when you're doing this show, have you had any problems?
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: Have you had any pushback against what you're doing or
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: any issues with it being on Vice?
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: I've had an enormous amount of freedom. Ultimately, I have very,
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: very little to complain about when it comes to censorship.
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: The way the show got started, the actual TV show,
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: was sort of an interesting story where they were starting
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: up Viceland, and a producer who's now gone gave me
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: this deck of drug stories they were going to do,
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: and they were all kind of terrible, scare stories, like
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: the new drug, Bromo Dragonfly, it's killing teens, a.
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: New drug, Bromo dragonfly.
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: Is that real?
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. What is that?
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: It's a really fascinating compound developed by this chemist, David E. Nichols,
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: who found that these conformationally constrained benzofuran amphetamine derivatives are
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: like very high potency DOB derivatives. Anyway, it's a super
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: potent psychedelic amphetamine that has a cool tricyclic structure.
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: Huh.
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: And it looks like a dragonfly. The molecule looks like
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: a dragonfly, kind of. And.
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: it's got a very high or low.
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: It's super super potent and very very long lasting so
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: it lent itself to scare stories um you know people
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: it's a potent vasoconstrictor so people would take very high
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: doses of it and occasionally they would have to amputate
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: a finger or something like that But again, this isn't
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: because the drug is bad. It's because people used it irresponsibly.
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: And this is something that people have so much difficulty understanding.
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: We're so eager to blame drugs for all of our problems.
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: Drugs have never hurt anyone. They're just inanimate constellations of
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: carbon and hydrogen and nitrogen and oxygen. They don't jump
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: out of their bags and vials and attack your serotonin
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: or receptors or dopamine transport or anything like that. So
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: this is just a weird pattern that we've done repeatedly
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: over time. And I don't know if you read the
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: new Michael Pollan book. I know he was on the podcast.
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: I'm in it right now.
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's great.
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it is great.
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: But one thing that I thought was interesting about it
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: is that he put a lot of the emphasis on
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: the prohibition of psychedelics on Leary. And Leary almost certainly
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: played a role. But I think it's slightly ironic that
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: he's a journalist and didn't really go that deep into
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: the role that journalists played in all of this, which
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: was humongous. You know, journalists are sculptors of public opinion,
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: and it became the standard way of reporting on any
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: of these things to say that they're bad, to sensationalize it,
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: and to not have any consideration for what that would do.
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: Because anytime a journalist writes some scare story, they can
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: really mess with drug policy in a serious way. It
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: might seem... like nothing. Like, oh, there's a bunch of
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: people in Brooklyn and they overdosed on some obscure synthetic cannabinoid,
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: AMB fubinica. Who cares about AMB fubinica? No big deal.
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: Say that it turns people into zombies. And if it
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: gets thrown into schedule one, who cares? Not a big deal. Well,
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: that's a very short sighted way of thinking about all
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: of this, because that's exactly what happened with psychedelics. And
• 41:29
  Speaker 2: then we're not learning from the mistakes of the past
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: that just because something it's fun to sensationalize and talk
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: about how dangerous it is at this moment, doesn't mean
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: that 10 years from now, we're going to recognize that
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: it has serious therapeutic potential. And we made a big
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: mistake outlawing it. And I think a lot of that
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: also comes from this sort of us versus them mentality
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: that people have, where it's cannabis is good, synthetic cannabinoids
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: are bad. Well, synthetic cannabinoids don't have to be bad
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: for cannabis to be good. Cannabis can be good without
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: something else being bad to counterbalance it. You don't need
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: to hate something to justify your love of cannabis. And
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: this whole hatred of synthetic cannabinoids, I think, is totally
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: misdirected because these are products of prohibition that most people
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: wouldn't even want to use in the first place. And
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: when they do use them, they don't know what they're taking.
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: They don't know what dose they're consuming. And so, of course,
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: they're having bad experiences. That would happen with almost any drug,
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: caffeine included, if people just consumed enormous, unmeasured doses without
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: having any idea what they were getting into. And so
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: they're thrown into schedule one. Well, what happens if 30
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: years from now, once the therapeutic potential of cannabinoids is
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: being really seriously explored? We find out that that AMB
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: fubinica that everyone was saying turned homeless people into zombies
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: in Brooklyn in 2017 turns out to activate a certain
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: subtype of the CB1 receptor that's especially useful for Parkinson's
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: disease or something like that. Then we're going to regret
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: having done that. So I think people have to be
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: very careful. Anytime you say anything negative about a drug,
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: you have to be very, very careful because the implications
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: can be enormous. I think that the best stance in
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: all of this is to not... Speak ill of drugs,
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: of any drug. Give the drugs a break.
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: Spoken like a true drug enthusiast. But isn't that a
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: problem also with just what journalism is? It's like asking
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: a comedian to talk about something but not make fun
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: of it. It's what their job in a certain sense
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: is to get people excited about things. And I don't
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: know whether you'd say the lazy way out or the
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: common approach is to say something that scares people. I mean,
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: that's what clickbait is mostly about, either outrage or fear.
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: That's true. But there's a lot of richness in truth.
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: I agree, but it's hard to sell. It's hard to
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: sell that richness.
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: I don't think it's even hard to sell. I think
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: the people are lazy. There's this idea that a lot
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: of people have that journalism is organized by some malevolent
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: Rupert Murdoch-type puppeteer who's telling everyone to, you go off
• 43:54
  Speaker 2: and you say that cannabis causes car accidents, and you
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: go off and you say this evil thing about this
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: and say that alcohol is good.
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: Did you see when Alex Jones was on my podcast
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: and got high with me? We got him drunk and high.
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: And when it came up in his trial for his divorce,
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: he said that George Soros puts, he tests marijuana every
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: year to see how much George Soros is influencing the
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: levels of THC. That was his excuse.
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: But people love these ideas. They love the ideas of
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: the puppeteer, the malevolent puppeteer, because it denies individual agency.
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: But the reality, and I say this as a journalist
• 44:37
  Speaker 2: who's worked at many different publications, not just Vice, and
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: this is a difficult reality to swallow, is that people
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: are free to say whatever they want most of the time.
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: And that journalists choose to report on things this way.
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that is true. But it's also true that they, like,
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: I've been a part of stories that I've talked to
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: the author of it, and they said, well, this was
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: manipulated by the editor. The editor manipulated the title, the change.
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: That's a great excuse from the perspective of the writer.
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: But it's true. Rolling Stone did an article about me,
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: and they called me a psychedelic warrior. And I said
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: to the guy who wrote the article, what the fuck
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: is that? I was laughing, and he goes, dude, I
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: did not write that. The editor gets a hold of it,
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: tries to make it more salacious. It becomes something that's
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: more likely for people to buy or click.
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: Right, especially with headlines.
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: That is true.
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: And the real problem is that this sort of outrage
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: culture and comment culture that has emerged provides no incentive
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: for truth. Because suppose someone were to write an article
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: about this conversation we're having right now and it could say,
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: Hamilton Morris says Kratom should be illegal or something like that.
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: Then that will get so much more engagement because then
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: you'll have all these people saying, fuck Hamilton.
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: He's a traitor.
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: How dare he say that it. should be illegal that
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: it didn't watch it. And then you'll have other people
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: arguing with those people saying, well, listen to the interview. Hey, hey,
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: he actually never said anything about that. Listen carefully to
• 46:03
  Speaker 2: what he was saying. And then you create this whole engagement,
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: a bigger engagement for doing the wrong thing than you'd
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: get for doing the right thing.
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: True, but the initial statement is much stickier. The initial
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: statement of Hamilton Morris is a bad guy because he
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: thinks Kratom should be illegal or Kratom should be illegal.
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: That is what more people are going to pay attention to.
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: Far less people read the retraction. and read the initial.
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: This is one of the more insidious things about printing
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: things that are patently untrue purposely. That people do do
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: things that are untrue with the caveat that they could
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: just print a retraction that maybe 30% of the people
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: that read the original article are going to read. The
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: initial imprint is what's going to stick with people. Even
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: if you, someone calls you a rapist, okay? And then
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: it turns out that the person who called you a
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: rapist was lying. The people who heard you were a
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: rapist first, they still have that in their head. Oh,
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: he's a rapist. I heard he's a rapist. It's very
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: difficult to get slippery ideas out of people's heads. So
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: if somebody writes some article saying that you're against the
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: legalization of certain drugs and they start looking at you
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: as being compromised, the influence that people have today can't
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: be understated because the reach is so powerful. The reach
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: of any article, any video, it's so significantly greater than
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: any other sort of distribution of information in the history
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: of human beings. The potential for it impacting large groups
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: of people is so huge now. Yes.
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: And this is the result of that is also that
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: the viewers have a lot of power. And I think
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: that in some sense, they don't quite recognize the nature
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: of that power. It's like voting with your dollar. If
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: you spend all of your time commenting hatefully on things
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: you don't like, you are actively encouraging the production of
• 47:54
  Speaker 2: more of that thing that you don't like.
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: You need to engage with what you approve of more
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: because every time you engage with something you dislike, advertisements
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: are sold and it has been incentivized to do that
• 48:07
  Speaker 2: bad thing. And that's a really sticky thing when we
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: have this culture where everyone loves to show their outrage
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: and virtue signal and show that they're on the right
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: side and all this stuff constantly to say, hey, step back.
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: You're just feeding the problem.
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I think there's also a problem with a lot
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: of what people are doing during the day. It's something
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: they don't want to do. A lot of what people
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: are doing is some job that they don't enjoy. And
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: during that job, they have freedom to go online. And
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: in this state of feeling like shit about whatever they're doing,
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: they enjoy complaining about stuff. And so they'll read things
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: and type things and get engaged in things. And there's
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: some sort of a sport to getting pissed off about stuff.
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: Instead of just spending your time doing things you actually enjoy.
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: It seems so simple. It sounds like a simple solution.
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: But if you could figure out a way to actively
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: ignore things that are going to piss you off and
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: seek out things that are going to excite you and
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: intrigue you, you're going to be a healthier, happier person.
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: And isn't that ultimately what everybody wants? I want to
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: be happier. Don't you want to be happier?
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: Of course.
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: But why do we seek out shit that pisses us off?
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: Because it becomes a sort of addiction. It's drug-like in
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: and of itself. I mean, I see it. These arguments,
• 49:24
  Speaker 2: people are frittering away. They're finite time on earth, engaged
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: in these endless comment battles that no one reads. And
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: it's a very dark reality, but it is also something
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: that's driving the current culture of, journalism that where the
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: truth doesn't matter as much all that matters is engagement right.
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: Right it's just clicks it's just clicks and money it's
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: interesting that you were saying something about drugs being inanimate
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: objects and drugs don't actually kill people it's so funny
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: how drug enthusiasts parallel gun enthusiasts with their arguments it's
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: really the same freedom argument and it's.
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: Really and i'm in an interesting perspective because i live
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: in new york i'm like a whatever, just a nerdy
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: guy that.
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: Doesn't... Let me guess, you live in Williamsburg. I do.
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: Big surprise. Well, that's where the office is. I live
• 50:16
  Speaker 2: close to the office that I work at. But I
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: have no interest in guns. So it's really easy for
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: me to say, well, look, there was this shooting and
• 50:28
  Speaker 2: all these people died and this other guy got shot.
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: And These things are really causing a lot of problems.
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: Let's get rid of them because it doesn't impact me.
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: And that's where you have to be the most careful
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: because the worst thing you can possibly do is make
• 50:41
  Speaker 2: judgments about how other people should conduct their lives based
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: on your own preferences, which people do all the time.
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: So you hear someone say, well, I don't like cannabis.
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: I don't like it. I don't smoke it. Why should
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: it be legal? Because people go to prison for it
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: because it ruins people's lives who aren't your own. And
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: you have to think about people that aren't you. And
• 50:58
  Speaker 2: so it's very difficult when it comes to gun control
• 51:01
  Speaker 2: issues because I'm faced with that exact same issue where
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: it would be so easy for me to say, get
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: rid of them all. It doesn't impact me. I don't
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: like guns, but I don't want to fall into that
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: same trap.
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it is a trap. And it also sort of
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: highlights how slippery life is in general, that these absolutes
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: that we look for, these ones and zeros, they don't
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: necessarily exist in a lot of subjects. There's a lot
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: of people that have done bad things that have also
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: done great things. And that gets weird too. Just human
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: beings in general, we're complex creatures. And to just categorize
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: something as negative or positive, there's a lot of positive
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: things that you could find with drugs. There's a lot
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: of negative things you could find with drugs too. And
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: they mirror human behavior. There's a lot of positives and
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: negatives in human behavior. Yes.
• 51:59
  Speaker 2: And back to this journalistic issue and the coverage of drugs.
• 52:03
  Speaker 2: I mean, one thing that worries me about the way
• 52:05
  Speaker 2: cannabis and Kratom and psychedelics are presented is that it's
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: always couched in they're safe, they're therapeutic, they're spiritual, they're historical.
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: But that isn't the point. Even if all those things
• 52:16
  Speaker 2: are true and there's some debate, eventually someone will find
• 52:19
  Speaker 2: a chink in that armor. Someone will die. Maybe they
• 52:23
  Speaker 2: haven't been used as long as you thought they were used.
• 52:25
  Speaker 2: Maybe they don't always work therapeutically. So then what? Do
• 52:28
  Speaker 2: you go back to prohibition? No. That's why I think
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: you need to emphasize cognitive liberty. You need to emphasize
• 52:33
  Speaker 2: people's right to explore these alternate states of consciousness regardless
• 52:38
  Speaker 2: of whether or not they're therapeutic or safe or traditional
• 52:40
  Speaker 2: or spiritual. The point isn't that it's safe or any
• 52:44
  Speaker 2: of these other things. The point is that if you
• 52:46
  Speaker 2: want to live in a free society, you have to
• 52:48
  Speaker 2: be allowed to take a certain amount of risk.
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a big point. That's a very big point.
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: And I think it really fits well with your description
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: of the things that people are allowed to do that
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: are legal that are very dangerous, like race car driving,
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: bungee jumping, all these things that we just allow them
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: to do. We don't think twice about it. Using a parachute,
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: all that crazy shit. Nobody's saying, hey, we should ban skydiving.
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: There's no one saying that. Fucking a lot of people
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: die skydiving, man. I mean, it's a fucking dangerous pursuit.
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: We don't seem to care. We seem to care about
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: drugs because we think that somehow or another, either our
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: children or someone we know is going to be insidiously
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: infected with these things. They're going to get into their
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: lives and fuck them up. And I think the real
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: problem with that is education. That's the real problem with that.
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: I was extremely fortunate in a weird way to see
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: someone with a cocaine addiction when I was in high school.
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: It was a good friend's cousin who got really fucked
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: up on cocaine when he was a couple years older
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: than me. And I watched his life fall apart. And
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: I remember thinking when I was little, like, wow, I
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: don't want to touch that shit. Like, cocaine's fucking terrible.
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: And then from then on, I've never done cocaine. But
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: it's because of that education. And I think real education
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: is a fucking tough thing because you don't really just
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: get it from knowing information. You have to see things.
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: You have to talk to people. You have to experience
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: things on your own. If someone talks about psychedelics, someone
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: teaches about psychedelics, but they have no experience in actual
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: psychedelic states personally, it's a very hollow conversation. It's like
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: a certain amount of education has to be from real
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: life experience.
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, absolutely. And the other thing is just again,
• 54:41
  Speaker 2: this idea of pharmacological determinism. Like, I had a friend
• 54:45
  Speaker 2: that was very, very, very seriously addicted to cocaine and
• 54:49
  Speaker 2: had the resources to do immense quantities every single day.
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: And he'd always say, well, you know, if I try heroin,
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: I know it's all over for me. I know that
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: will be the last straw, so I'm never touching that stuff.
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: And he didn't. But my own perspective, you know, I've
• 55:05
  Speaker 2: essentially tried everything. And if you really just think about
• 55:11
  Speaker 2: these things, you can actually learn, for example, I've tried
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: heroin once. I didn't think it was that interesting.
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: Did you do it injecting?
• 55:17
  Speaker 2: No.
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: You snorted?
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: I snorted it, yeah.
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah. What was it like?
• 55:20
  Speaker 2: It was boring, I think. Boring?
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 55:22
  Speaker 2: I don't think opiates are very interesting drugs psychologically. You know,
• 55:26
  Speaker 2: if I were to be totally honest, I think the
• 55:28
  Speaker 2: cannabis is more euphoric and has so few side effects.
• 55:32
  Speaker 2: You know, opiates cause horrible constipation. They cause all kinds
• 55:36
  Speaker 2: of weird sweating problems. I don't think they're especially pleasant drugs,
• 55:40
  Speaker 2: but they're romanticized so much in our culture that people
• 55:42
  Speaker 2: think that's it, heroin, the ultimate high. Well, maybe it isn't.
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: Maybe it's not even that great at all. Maybe it's
• 55:47
  Speaker 2: garbage and it doesn't even matter. And that's the same
• 55:50
  Speaker 2: way I feel about snorted cocaine. I don't even think
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: it's a good drug. It's not an issue of it's
• 55:55
  Speaker 2: so addictive you've got to stay away from it because
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: it's so damn good. It's not good. It's not even
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: an enjoyable high. It has a short duration. It You
• 56:03
  Speaker 2: then feel bad almost immediately afterwards. It's a flawed substance.
• 56:08
  Speaker 2: Same is true of alcohol, I think, as well. Alcohol
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: is a crazily flawed molecule. It's terrible. No other drug
• 56:15
  Speaker 2: that I can think of causes a hangover of that
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: type where there's a toxic metabolite that poisons you the
• 56:22
  Speaker 2: following day.
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: Dr. Carl Hart was trying to explain to me. What
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: that is, and essentially he was saying that when you're
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: getting a hangover, it's your body reacting to the addictive
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: properties of alcohol. That you're getting addicted to alcohol almost immediately.
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: That your body is compensating for that. And then this
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: hangover is not just you being dehydrated. It's also your
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: body withdrawing from alcohol.
• 56:51
  Speaker 2: I would. I am not familiar with any evidence for that.
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: Do you know who he is? Dr. Carl Hart? Of course, yeah.
• 56:56
  Speaker 2: I actually tried to intern for him when I first
• 56:58
  Speaker 2: moved to New York.
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: Love that guy.
• 56:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I have a lot of respect for him. But,
• 57:00
  Speaker 2: I mean, I'd have to look at his source for that.
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: You'd have to also look at the way I described
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: it because I probably butchered it.
• 57:07
  Speaker 2: Okay, but there's an alternate explanation that's even simpler, which
• 57:10
  Speaker 2: is simply that alcohol is metabolized into a chemical acetaldehyde
• 57:15
  Speaker 2: that's toxic. And with alcohol, it's a very, very weak
• 57:18
  Speaker 2: drug by weight. You're consuming insane amounts in terms of
• 57:21
  Speaker 2: the number of molecules. You're consuming insane quantities of the drug.
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: So all of this acetaldehyde accumulates in your body and
• 57:30
  Speaker 2: it has a directly toxic effect.
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: Is there a way to counteract that and mitigate the effects?
• 57:35
  Speaker 2: Yes, there are proposed ways to do it. I haven't
• 57:38
  Speaker 2: experimented with any of them myself because I don't really
• 57:40
  Speaker 2: like alcohol that much to begin with.
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: Isn't glutathione, that's a... That's something that allows your body
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: to process it more easily?
• 57:48
  Speaker 2: It would have to be something that prevents this specific conversion.
• 57:52
  Speaker 2: I don't know off the top of my head.
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: Okay. What about Crocodile? You ever fuck with that stuff?
• 57:58
  Speaker 2: Well, this is another perfect example. So you take a
• 58:00
  Speaker 2: drug like Crocodile, and it sounds horrible.
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: It's the Internet's drug.
• 58:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: Fear drug.
• 58:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, people are. But behind every scare story, there's nothing.
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: Explain what that is. Okay.
• 58:10
  Speaker 2: So there's a scare story that I believe it was
• 58:13
  Speaker 2: in Moscow, somewhere in Russia, and this was hitting the
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: news around 2004? No, no, no.
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: Much later.
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: 2010? Something like that. I don't know. And the idea
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: was that this is the worst stuff. It's ultra addictive.
• 58:32
  Speaker 2: You inject it, and then you lose a limb, and
• 58:35
  Speaker 2: you have... profound necrosis all around the injection site, and
• 58:39
  Speaker 2: this is the worst drug, most addictive drug of all time. Well,
• 58:42
  Speaker 2: the drug itself is called desomorphine, and it's been used medicinally.
• 58:46
  Speaker 2: There's nothing especially addictive or dangerous at all about desomorphine.
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: The problem is that people were injecting completely impure reaction
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: mixtures that had all of the components from the synthesis
• 58:58
  Speaker 2: that hadn't been removed, including phosphorus, which is immensely toxic.
• 59:03
  Speaker 2: So you have people basically reporting on IV phosphorus toxicity
• 59:10
  Speaker 2: as if it were a result of this drug when
• 59:11
  Speaker 2: it's a completely separate issue. And this is what you
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: see when you look at all of these things. It's
• 59:16
  Speaker 2: never the drug. Any drug scare story, it's never the drug.
• 59:21
  Speaker 2: You always have to look for the root cause because
• 59:23
  Speaker 2: it's never the drug. There's never been a drug in history.
• 59:26
  Speaker 2: And that is why, if you look at the DEA's
• 59:28
  Speaker 2: list of controlled substances... It's not dangerous drugs that are controlled.
• 59:34
  Speaker 2: It's enjoyable drugs. Something like tetrodotoxin, the chemical in pufferfish.
• 59:39
  Speaker 2: That's not a controlled substance. There's some regulations in terms
• 59:42
  Speaker 2: of how much you can purchase, but it's not a
• 59:43
  Speaker 2: controlled substance. Ciguatoxin, the most potent known neurotoxin. It's not
• 59:48
  Speaker 2: a controlled substance. Lead isn't a controlled substance. Mercury isn't
• 59:53
  Speaker 2: a controlled substance. Mercuric chloride isn't a controlled substance. all
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: of the deadly poisons. Cyanide isn't a controlled substance. It's
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 2: not about what's safe and what's dangerous. It's about what
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 2: people like to use, what's enjoyable.
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: What is the root of that?
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 2: I think it's a puritanical idea that any sort of
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 2: euphoria is bad. Euphoria is listed as a side effect
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 2: in some medications. We assume that it's a bad thing.
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: To feel good. Right there with diarrhea. It's like euphoria, diarrhea. Yeah,
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: that is a strange thing. It's going to cut back
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: productivity and make you a lazy ne'er-do-well and just become
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: a burden on society. That's a common way of describing
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: people who use drugs.
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 2: Sure, and this fundamental idea that sobriety is good. You
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 2: look on Instagram, people post a selfie and say, six
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: months sober, guys. Thank you so much and tons of
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 2: congratulations because it's a virtue because you accomplished something. You're
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 2: not using drugs.
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 2: Whereas in other cultures, that would not be the case.
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 2: People would just say, oh, you've decided not to work
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 2: with a certain medicine. That's an interesting choice, not an
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 2: accomplishment necessarily.
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: Who was the saying? Was it Kyle Kingsbury that was
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: saying that how much he hates the term plant medicine
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: or was it Dennis? I think it was Kyle. You
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: don't like the term plant medicine, do you?
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 2: I don't.
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: Well, there's a. It's a weird sort of pretentious.
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes, I know. What people call ayahuasca the medicine
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 2: or things like that. Yeah, or toad medicine. I mean,
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 2: I wouldn't.
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: You don't hate it.
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 2: A lot of these more flowery terms like entheogen, I
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 2: just don't use them myself, but I don't hate it.
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: Well, you're, you know, I think people like you are
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: very important, and I'm a big fan. But I think
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: one of the reasons why you're important is you are
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: a cognoscente. of real drugs like you you understand what
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: they actually do you could explain them to the layman
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: or you could debate them with someone who was a
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: doctor perhaps that wanted to you know to talk about
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: the dangers of them and you understand all the various
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: aspects of it i think there's a tremendous amount of
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: ignorance when it comes to drugs drug consumption what is
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: a drug i mean how many times have you seen
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: a person with a beer in their hand smoking a
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: cigarette saying they don't do drugs It is so fucking stupid,
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: but it's so common. There is this very, very, very
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: common aspect of being a person, which is this desire
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: to change your mental state. And we've done it throughout
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: history with various substances. But there's so much stigma attached
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: to it. And one of the things I've been doing
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: lately on stage, I'll ask people, how many people get
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: piss tested at work? It's fucking stunning. It's stunning. It's
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: like more than 10% of the audience will raise their hand.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: like one out of 10 people gets their body tested
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: to make sure that while they're not working there, they're
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: not putting anything in their body that's prohibited.
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 2: Which is such a horrible invasion of privacy that, you know,
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 2: that became so popular that in the 80s during one
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 2: presidential election, all the candidates voluntarily had their urine tested
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 2: to prove that they were sober. I mean, this is
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 2: like truly considered a virtue. And, It's immensely invasive. I
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 2: say this as someone who's analyzed my own urine in
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 2: a laboratory before. And it's like a strange portal into
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 2: your own life that you're showing to a stranger. Everything
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 2: that you've consumed is then apparent there. And it's incredibly,
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 2: it's a huge invasion of privacy that we've just decided
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 2: is acceptable. And you have to be very careful about
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 2: these things.
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah. No, I agree.
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 2: And, of course, the synthetic cannabinoid. epidemic, if you want
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 2: to call it that. I actually don't want to call
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 2: it that because I hate even the idea of a
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 2: drug epidemic. But the popularity of synthetic cannabinoids is largely
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 2: driven by the fact that they didn't show up on
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 2: these urine tests. So initially it was in the military.
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 2: Then it was people who were on parole or probation,
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 2: people who were living hard lives, wanted to get high,
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 2: couldn't get high. This was a way that they could
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 2: do it. And so they've incentivized people that just wanted
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 2: to smoke weed to using completely untested synthetic cannabinoids instead
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 2: as a direct result of these urine tests.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: Well, it's also just a complete misunderstanding when it comes
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: to the actual effects and how long they last. You're
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: not even testing a person's conscious state. You're testing whether
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: or not a person has altered their state of consciousness
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: outside of their working time. You know, it's not like
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: you show up and they could scan your hand and
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: realize that you're high on marijuana right now. That's not
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: what they're doing. What they're doing is they're testing you
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: for something that could linger in your body for weeks
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: after these psychoactive effects have long since gone.
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, or even be the result of passive exposure.
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 2: There was a great scientific article that came out a
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 2: couple of years ago where they found that just passive
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 2: exposure to cannabis smoke contaminates your hair with THC, so
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 2: that all these people who had hair tests who actually
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 2: had not smoked cannabis but It sounds like an excuse.
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 2: I was just in the room. Someone else is doing it.
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 2: Just being in contact with someone who'd smoked cannabis could
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 2: then deposit THC in your hair and cause you to
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 2: test positive. So these tests aren't even necessarily reliable. This
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 2: is the same problem. There was a kind of trend
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 2: a little while ago. I don't know if you saw
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 2: about this, where people would get their urine tested and
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 2: to quantify the levels of neurotransmitter metabolites in their urine.
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 2: And this was supposed to be like a fingerprint of
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 2: your mood. So they'd quantify the level of serotonin, dopamine, GABA, whatever, whatever, whatever.
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 2: And then they'd say, oh, you're a little low on serotonin.
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 2: You're pretty depressed, actually. You need to supplement with some
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 2: 5-HTP or something like that. It's a very reductive way
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 2: of thinking about consciousness. But the main issue is that
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 2: you're not testing in your brain. You're testing your urine.
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 2: And a lot of these neurotransmitters are biosynthesized in the periphery.
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 2: So just because you have these neurotransmitters in your urine
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 2: doesn't mean they were ever in your brain. It doesn't
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 2: say anything about anything.
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: So it's just, it's so juvenile in a way. It's
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: just such a, it's such a piss poor way of
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: maintaining order, checking people's consciousness and make immediate. What you
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: should do is judge people based on their productivity. If
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: I have some guy, And he shows up for work,
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: and he kicks ass every day. I'm like, dude, what's
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: your secret? He's like, I get high. Get high before work.
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: It's great. I feel good having a good time at work. Zippity-doo-dah, zippity-day.
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: I'm putting everything in order, and it just feels good.
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: I'm like, keep doing what you're doing. I mean, that's
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: how it should be. We should be judged based on
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: whether or not whatever we're doing is, I mean, I
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: guess the real caveat to that would be people that
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: do speed. Yeah, I mean, you would get pretty productive
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: for a short period of time doing speed. But I
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: think the downside of that, there's so many people that
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: are on Adderall today, right? What are your feelings on that?
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 2: I think that it's a very interesting issue because it's
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 2: amazing when you look at the history of all these things,
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 2: how these issues repeat themselves over and over and over again.
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 2: So it was a problem in the 50s and it's
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 2: a problem in the 60s and it's a problem in
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 2: the 70s. Now it's a problem now. It's always a
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 2: problem that we're treating as if it were a new thing.
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 2: But people have been using amphetamine-type stimulants for the better
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 2: part of 100 years. And people will now, the kind
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 2: of popular thing to say is, you know, didn't you
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 2: know Adderall is one carbon atom away from meth? But
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 2: here's the flip side. Meth is one carbon away from Adderall.
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 2: So this whole idea that meth, again, back to pharmacological determinism,
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 2: that meth is a drug that turns you into a toothless, insane,
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 2: white trash guy who's stabbing the walls of the cleaver
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 2: looking for people that are hiding and whispering secret messages
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 2: or something like that. This is just a stereotype that
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 2: we have created. Of course, there are people like that,
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 2: but the reality is that These stimulants have an ambiguous
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 2: potential for all sorts of things. Some people use low
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 2: doses of methamphetamine. In fact, methamphetamine is scheduled to because
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 2: to this day it can be and is prescribed as
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 2: a treatment for ADHD in addition to amphetamine, which is Adderall.
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: What do they call it when they prescribe it?
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 2: Desoxan is the brand name for methamphetamine and Adderall is
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 2: the brand name for amphetamine. And I've tried both drugs,
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 2: both amphetamine and methamphetamine, and they're very, very similar drugs.
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 2: And that's not to say that either are good or bad.
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 2: It's just a factual statement that if in a double-blind, placebo-controlled,
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 2: or not even placebo-controlled, just a double-blind trial, I don't
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 2: think that I could differentiate them.
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: It could treat ADHD. It could also help obese patients
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: lose weight.
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: Did you know that there's a lot of people that
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: think Trump is on diet pills? Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 2: On a diethylpropion.
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. And that he used to be on one
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: of the elements of finfen, fenfen?
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 2: Fenfenfluramine, maybe.
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 2: Phentermine?
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: Well, there was some journalist that even talked about that.
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: We saved this. We have it on a folder now.
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: What did you say, Jamie?
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 2: I've been hit up messages about that journalist, that he
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 2: might be compromised or sketchy or something like that. But
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 2: even if he were on diethylpropion or phenfluramine or phentermine
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 2: or phenmetrazine or any of these substances, so what?
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: Well, the question is, is his judgment compromised because he's
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: hopped up on speed?
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 2: His judgment seems compromised regardless.
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: But is that why?
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 2: No, probably not.
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: But it could be why he gets so much shit done.
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: I mean, remember when during the— you just don't want to
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: compliment him, and I understand that. No, no, no.
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 2: That's not why. It's, again, it's this idea— There's a
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 2: certain exculpatory value that drugs have. People make the same
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 2: arguments about Hitler. Like Hitler, he was just high on speed.
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 2: That explains it. The Nazis, they were just high on speed.
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 2: That explains it. But what value does it really have?
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 2: The same thing with Anthony Bourdain. They'll say, oh, no
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 2: drugs were found in his system post-mortem.
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: So what?
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 2: What if they had been? Then what?
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: Well, the idea is that he might have been experiencing
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: a fucked up state of mind because of some drug
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: that made him make a poor choice and take his
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: own life.
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 2: But you wouldn't know.
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: You wouldn't know why he did it. Is that what
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: you're saying?
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 2: It wouldn't explain anything, really, because you still wouldn't know
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 2: his internal state. It would just be you're projecting an assumption.
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 2: So what if there were a small amount of heroin
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 2: in his blood at the time of his death? Then
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 2: you would assume that he had relapsed, was so ashamed
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 2: of his relapse that he then decided to kill himself.
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 2: But the reality is we can't make those sorts of
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 2: We don't know other people's internal states. We don't even
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 2: know what these things do to other people.
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: We don't, but we do know that some things like
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: Abilify and some other SSRIs and even some anti-anxiety medication
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: have been strongly linked to suicidal thoughts. And in fact,
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: they're actually listed as some side effects for a lot
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: of these drugs. Yes. Don't you think that? I mean,
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: I know correlation does not equal causation, but don't you
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: think that that's worth considering and it's something to be discussed?
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 2: It's worth considering, but I would be careful about assigning
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 2: too much value to it, which is what people tend
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 2: to do. Same thing with Columbine. They'll say, oh, he
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 2: was on this or that antidepressant.
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: That's why.
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 2: Is it why? Does it really explain it? Because there's
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 2: a hell of a lot of people that take those
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 2: same drugs and don't kill all of their classmates.
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: Right, right. For sure. For sure. But it also could
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: be a factor. And this is not something that I
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: think we should avoid considering. I think it should be discussed. Responsibly. Yes,
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: I agree with you. But I think we're trying to
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: look at things binary, right? We're looking at things in
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: terms of like on or off, black or white, one
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: or zero. And I just don't think drugs work that way.
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 2: No.
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: And I think you agree. Yeah. The speed thing is
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: curious to me because one of the side effects of
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: these drugs is impulsive, irrational behavior and extreme confidence in oneself.
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: This is what we always think of people that are
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: hopped up on speed, people that have coke confidence. Coke
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: confidence is a real phenomenon. When people do cocaine, they
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: feel very confident about themselves and they say ridiculous shit
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: to people. The question is, is that really what's happening?
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: If I gave coke to you, would you start acting
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: irrationally and feeling extremely confident in yourself? Or Is it
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: just accentuating a problem that already exists in the person's personality?
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 2: Both, probably. Yeah. A combination of the two. But the
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 2: other thing is even if he has been using this
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 2: stuff for decades, he's probably tolerant to it and it's
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 2: not– I don't think it would explain his behavior.
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: Well, I think it's giving him energy.
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 2: He's been like this for so long though. I mean
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 2: this is a long history of this sort of behavior.
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: Well, this was what the journalists had talked about, that
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: he had been on this stuff for a long time
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: and that there was an actual Duane Reade pharmacy in
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: New York where he described where he got the prescription filled.
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 2: People were doing the same thing with his finasteride as well, though.
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 2: And I found that particularly obnoxious.
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: Finasteride is.
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 2: Propecia.
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: Propecia.
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 2: So they were saying, oh, he's on finasteride and that explains,
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 2: you know, his affair or that explains this because it
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 2: does this or that to your libido. And again, it's like,
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 2: I don't know. Or not at all. Or let's give
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 2: him some credit for being a human being with free
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 2: will that makes choices on his own that aren't entirely
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 2: mediated by what pharmaceuticals he uses.
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: Well, finasteride also has side effects of depression. We went
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: over this yesterday with my friend Ari, who was really
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: depressed at one point in time, and it coincided with
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: his use of finasteride. Right.
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I've seen, but it's not very common. It does occur,
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 2: but it's not common.
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: Right. But for the person that does get those side effects,
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: saying that it's not common doesn't really offer any comfort. No. No,
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: it doesn't. Like, oh, well, I... I'm one of the
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: lucky ones. I'm one of the lucky ones who wants
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: to jump off a bridge to get my hair to
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: grow back.
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 2: But the reason that I'm so opinionated about this particular
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 2: issue is because you see it time and time again.
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 2: It never stops. I don't know if you're familiar with
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 2: the Jeffrey McDonald murder case.
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: No, I'm not.
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 2: Super fascinating. You probably have read about it and forgotten
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 2: about it. It was a big thing in maybe 1970,
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 2: but he was this military doctor who was credentialed the
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 2: perfect man did everything right perfect family everything beautiful and
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 2: then one night he goes to sleep and claims that
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 2: is right after the manson murders claims that these hippies
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 2: walk into the house saying kill the pigs acid is
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 2: groovy kill the pigs acid is groovy and then just
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 2: brutally massacre his entire family and out of nowhere out
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 2: of nowhere yes and um and It's a long and
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 2: complicated story, but he went to prison. I don't think
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 2: that he is guilty, but people had to find an
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 2: explanation for why.
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: What do you mean you don't think he's guilty?
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 2: I don't think he's guilty. He had no motive and
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 2: the investigation was botched.
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: So you think someone came into his house and did that?
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: And he was accused of it?
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 2: Yes. But because he had no motive, people had to
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 2: construct a motive. They had to concoct a reason that
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 2: this doctor... would have murdered his entire family. And so
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 2: what's a good reason? Oh, amphetamine. He'd been using this
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 2: amphetamine-containing diet pill. So that explains it all, right?
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: But it doesn't.
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 2: It's a terrible explanation. People use amphetamine all the time
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 2: without killing their family. So I just want to be
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 2: very careful about, you know, do these things play a
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 2: role in human behavior? Of course they do. But do
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 2: they determine human behavior? No.
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: That's a very good point. There's a lot of factors.
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: There's just, it's messy. Being a person is messy.
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 2: It's very complicated.
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: I mean, you're a different person at noon than you
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: are at 7 p.m. Of course. Yeah. I mean, it's just,
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: it's so complicated. And the more limitations we put on
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: research and the more stigma we put on the use
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: of these things, the more murky these waters are going
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: to be. Yeah.
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 2: And I think people don't even appreciate the extent to
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 2: which all these drugs have been made illegal. Of course,
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 2: everyone's aware of cannabis, the Schedule 1, LSD, psilocybin, MDMA.
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 2: But the list is long. It's hundreds and hundreds of chemicals.
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 2: And a lot of these chemicals are chemicals with no supporters.
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 2: No one's fighting for them. There's a substance called 2CN,
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 2: one of Shulgin's creations. They just threw it in Schedule 1.
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 2: No one uses it. If you scour the internet, I'd
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 2: be surprised if you could find three reports of people
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 2: using 2CN. Totally unheard of. But they just throw it
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 2: in Schedule 1 because why the hell not? No one's
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 2: going to stand up for it. That's the end of 2CN.
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: But they miss a lot of shit too, right? Like
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: they miss 5-methoxy-methyltryptamine. They miss that.
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 2: No, that was made illegal in 2011.
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: Right. But for 1970, when everything else got thrown into
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: the mix, they made it illegal. I bought that shit.
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: I used to be able to buy it online.
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so did I.
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was crazy. You could buy a fucking jug
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: of it. They can get the whole city high. You
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: could buy it online.
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because it was never popular.
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: So how did they make it illegal? How do they
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: do that?
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 2: They don't need any reason. They can simply say that
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 2: it has abuse potential and make it illegal, and if
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 2: no one opposes it, then it becomes illegal. That's how
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 2: this list has gotten so long. You have all these
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 2: people fighting for the legality of cannabis and these other
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 2: substances that are known to have therapeutic potential, but these
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 2: other more obscure substances that are really only of concern
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 2: to scientists who are very seriously... disinclined to break the
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 2: law for the sake of their research. Drug users don't
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 2: care about breaking the law. Scientists are very unlikely because
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 2: the whole purpose of science is to publish and you
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 2: can't publish if you committed a crime in the context
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 2: of your research. So scientists are dramatically limited by the
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 2: prohibition of these substances. And it's the obscure ones that
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 2: end up actually making a big difference, not so much clinically,
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 2: but in terms of actually understanding the mechanism of these substances,
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 2: the structure activity relationships. the neuropharmacology.
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the stigma on psychedelic use and even studying them
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: has led so many doctors or scientists, researchers that would
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: be inclined to want to do research on these particular things.
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: They avoid them because it could be incredibly damaging to
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: their careers.
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 2: And it's bureaucratic. I mean, there was a group at
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 2: Columbia that was doing really fascinating research on the drug
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 2: Ibogaine and Parkinson's disease. And I was speaking with the
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 2: head of the study, and he was saying how obnoxious
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 2: it was to have the government come and weigh his
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 2: vial of Ibogaine every day and monitor his logs. And,
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 2: you know, this guy is a really serious researcher. He's
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 2: not going to, if you were to get high, he's
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 2: not going to get high off this tiny supply of
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 2: government mandated or government sanctioned Ibogaine. that was supplied to him.
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 2: But they give these people a really hard time. They
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 2: make them buy a very expensive safe. They do all
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 2: this stuff that these are the last people to abuse
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 2: the substances. And they are the ones that are hurt
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 2: the most severely, except for, of course, the people that
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 2: go to prison. They're the ones that are hurt the
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 2: most severely.
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a crazy thing to think that people are
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: going to recreationally use Ibogaine. That's one of the weirder ones.
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 2: Oh, it's totally bizarre. Yeah. And Ibogaine is a drug
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 2: with so much potential. For those people that are aware
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 2: of Ibogaine, it's typically only discussed as a drug that
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 2: treats addiction to opioids, which is very, very important, especially now.
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 2: But that's the tip of the iceberg with Ibogaine. It
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 2: has one of the most complex pharmacologies of any drug
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 2: I've ever studied. There's almost nothing it does not do.
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's, you know, you have the alpha-3, beta-4
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 2: nicotinic acetylcholine receptor, which is also the target of Welbutrin
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 2: and has a kind of smoking cessation anti-addictive effect. Then
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 2: you have really high affinity relative to the other receptors
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 2: for the NMDA receptor. So it has a ketamine type
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 2: effect and has a classical psychedelic effect of the 5-HT2A receptor.
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 2: Then it's a dopamine reuptake inhibitor, serotonin reuptake inhibitor. And
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 2: then it releases this protein, GDNF, which is considered one
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 2: of the most important proteins in treatment of Parkinson's disease.
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 2: It's one of the only things that is able to
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 2: cause a regrowth of dopaminergic neurons in people that have Parkinson's.
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 2: So this is like really fascinating stuff that's just in
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 2: Schedule 1. Scientists can't work with it. It's a tragedy.
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: It is a tragedy. And it's also so effective. I
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: know so many people that have gone to Mexico and
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 1: gone to these clinics and done one Ibogaine session for
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: 24 hours and come out of it a totally different person.
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: Come out of it with a complete new perspective on
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: even why they were using whatever they were using in
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 1: the first place in a way that they didn't. Not
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 1: only does it help eliminate the addictive properties and the
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: connection that your body has to those substances, but it
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: also allows you to re-examine why you went down that
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: road in the first place.
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Oh, yeah. And there was a sort of pharmaceutical
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 2: push to develop non-psychedelic derivatives of ibogaine that would retain
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 2: the anti-addictive properties, which sounds like a good idea in theory.
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 2: So they created this drug called 18MC, and it wasn't psychedelic,
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 2: but then it also lacked some of these neurotrophic factor-releasing
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 2: properties of ibogaine. But really, the bottom line is that
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 2: We shouldn't deny the fact that the psychedelic activity of
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 2: these substances is therapeutic, psychotherapeutic in and of itself. I
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 2: had a friend who was severely, severely addicted to heroin,
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 2: and he traveled to the Netherlands to take Ibogaine and
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 2: took the drug, was going into the experience, and then
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 2: started feeling this intense craving for heroin and started looking
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 2: through his bags to see if he'd somehow put a little,
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 2: had forgotten about a little bit of heroin that could
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 2: just get him through And then he goes into his
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 2: bag and then finds a small bag of heroin and
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 2: snorts it. And then is like, I traveled all the
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 2: way to the Netherlands to do this. This was, I'm
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 2: a failure. I'm relapsing after all this money, all this work.
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 2: I have no self-control. I'm a terrible, terrible person. Why
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 2: can't I just stop and then realize that the whole
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 2: thing was a hallucination? There was no heroin. He'd hallucinated
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 2: his own relapse. Whoa. Wow.
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: What was your experience with Ibogaine?
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 2: I've never taken high doses. The most I've ever taken
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 2: is 50 milligrams.
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 1: What's an effective dose?
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 2: It really depends. There's a sort of move toward microdosing
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 2: Ibogaine because it actually does have a cardiotoxic effect, especially
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 2: at higher doses. So people are looking into ways of
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 2: reducing that cardiotoxicity by using it at lower doses for
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 2: longer periods of time. Again, this is something that has
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 2: to do with prohibition because In this prohibition market, if
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 2: you are addicted to heroin, you go to Mexico or
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 2: you go to Canada and you go to an Ibogaine clinic,
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 2: you need to get as much bang for your buck
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 2: as quickly as possible. You're not going to stay there
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 2: for two months of treatment because most people have lives
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 2: and can't afford to do that. So what do you do?
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 2: They give you what is called a flood dose. It's
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 2: a massive dose, often a multigram dose of Ibogaine because
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 2: it's just like a sledgehammer that knocks you down and
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 2: allows you to get out of it. But is that
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 2: the best way? That's the fastest way. That's the most
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 2: appetizing way for someone that had to travel to do it.
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 2: But is it the best? Probably not, because we know
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 2: that at high doses, it has this potential to induce
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 2: cardiac arrhythmias, and that can kill and has killed. So
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 2: people are, yeah, now looking at lower doses over longer
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 2: periods of time, which would be ideal if it were
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 2: legal in the United States, I believe.
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's, it's a, really interesting one to me it's
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: a it's a really interesting one because it's got such
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: a long history of use and so many people have
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: had these very good experiences with getting off of addictive
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: drugs from it oh yeah and it's so relatively unknown
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: as well it's it's it's something that you know i
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 1: talked to someone like you and of course you know
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 1: about it but i mean i bet if we walked
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: down the street and asked 100 people i'd be shocked
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 1: if one of them knew about it.
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah And, you know, Terence McKenna would sometimes talk about
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 2: psilocybin as an invention of mushrooms or as technology or
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 2: as being synthetic. And I don't really agree with that idea.
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: An invention of mushrooms?
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 2: Or he would sort of say, like, this is as
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 2: synthetic as a Coca-Cola bottle. This is like alien technology.
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 2: That's how he would describe psilocybin. But in my opinion, it's,
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 2: you know, it's a pretty simple derivative of tryptophan. You
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 2: just decarboxylate, methylate the nitrogen twice, and then add this
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 2: phosphate ester. But ibogaine... That's a crazy molecule. That's like
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 2: a three-dimensional thing that no medicinal chemist would have ever discovered. That,
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 2: if there's, you know, not to sound mystical, but that
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 2: strikes me as some sort of plant technology. I mean,
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 2: it's an amazingly complicated structure. It's so complicated that it's
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 2: almost impossible to synthesize. In fact, it can't be synthesized commercially.
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 2: All the ibogaine that people use has to be extracted
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 2: from plants because that's the only way to get it.
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: Wow. I first found out about it when... When Hunter S.
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 1: Thompson accused Ed Muskie of being on it during the
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 1: presidential race of, what was it, 1970 or whatever it was?
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 1: That was a hilarious moment. And a lot of people,
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: I think, were introduced to what Ibogaine was by that
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: when he said a Brazilian witch doctor had been flown in. Ha, ha, ha.
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 2: Of course, it doesn't even grow in Brazil.
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: No, it doesn't even make sense. Well, it's also, it
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: was hilarious when he was on the Dick Cavett show
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 1: and they asked him about spreading those rumors. And he's like, well,
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: there was a rumor that he was doing this Ibogaine.
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: And I know because I started the rumor. I just
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: reported factually. There was a rumor. Yeah, I mean. It's a, there's,
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of these drugs that get put into
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 1: various categories. And Ibogaine is one of the very few
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 1: that really isn't in any category in terms of like
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: modern culture, like the way we discuss and consider these things.
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 2: Oh, because it's very different structurally and pharmacologically. But that
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 2: Hunter S. Thompson story is really interesting because it's, obviously
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 2: a very charming, funny story. And I'd have to know
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 2: exactly when it happened relative to the scheduling of Ibogaine.
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 2: But that might be an example of how what's a
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 2: frivolous joke that most people enjoy told in the wrong
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 2: climate can result in the loss of a chemical that
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 2: could be It could save tens of thousands of lives
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 2: and could be a treatment for Parkinson's disease. You know,
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 2: this is the responsibility that journalists have. It's more responsibility
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 2: than I think they'd like to have often. But that's
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 2: the truth. You make a joke about Ibogaine, next thing
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 2: you know, it's in Schedule 1. Maybe he made the
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 2: joke afterwards, but if he didn't, you have to wonder.
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 2: Because that was one of the first major mentions of
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 2: Ibogaine in the popular press. And the same is true of,
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 2: you know, there was a Rolling Stones scare article that
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 2: came out a while ago. And it's the same deal,
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 2: this drug 2CT7. And they do a whole story, oh,
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 2: this teenager, he took too much, and this 2CT7, it
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 2: can kill you with just a little pile of powder
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 2: or whatever. And then the drug is made schedule one.
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 2: Shulgin worked on psychedelics. Alexander Shulgin, great medicinal chemist who
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 2: spent his entire life studying psychedelics, considered this one of
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 2: the six greatest creations of his entire career, squashed by
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 2: a single stupid story in Rolling Stone. That's how easily
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 2: it happens.
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: Now, was the story stupid? I mean, did it have
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 1: any basis in fact?
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 2: An editor at Rolling Stone told me that there were
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 2: factual errors in it, and there's something weird about it.
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 2: But yes, people did die. Because yes, people die from
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 2: using drugs occasionally. To deny that would be to lie.
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 2: But that doesn't mean that they don't have therapeutic activity,
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 2: and it doesn't mean that they should be illegal.
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 1: One of the ones that disturbs me the most is fentanyl.
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 1: Fentanyl just... I don't even understand why anybody would want
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 1: to make that. It seems to me that we have
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: plenty of opiates as it is. Why make one that's
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 1: a thousand times stronger than heroin?
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I've known four fentanyl chemists, including the one that
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 2: introduced fentanyl to the United States initially. He died recently.
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 1: Did he die from it?
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 2: No. Died of old age.
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 1: It's killed so many people.
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 1: Tom Petty, David Bowie. Was Bowie one? I'm not sure.
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 2: Prince.
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 1: Prince.
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 1: I mean, there's quite a few great people that we've
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 1: lost to this stuff. Yeah.
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 2: It's really... it's unfortunate. But again, fentanyl is not the problem.
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 1: The problem is people taking it.
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 2: The problem is people taking it. And the problem is
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 2: lack of access to safer opioids and lack of education
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 2: surrounding fentanyl because it doesn't even really have desirable properties,
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 2: you know. One thing that people always talk about the
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 2: potency of fentanyl, but one thing that they don't often
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 2: talk about is the duration. It's a very, very short
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 2: duration opioid, which necessitates compulsive, constant redosing. If you're addicted
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 2: to fentanyl, unless you're doing a transdermal patch or something
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 2: like that, you typically can't make it through a single
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 2: night without having to redose because the duration is so short.
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 2: That's why it's always done in these prolonged release formulations,
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 2: like a lollipop that you suck or a patch. But anyway,
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 2: it's not a drug that's well-suited to street use. The
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 2: therapeutic index is too narrow. Its duration is too short.
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 2: It has a medical purpose that it works very well for.
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 2: It shouldn't be used as a heroin replacement, but the
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 2: economic reality is that you have to make heroin from opium.
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 2: Opium has to come from a place where poppies are grown.
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 2: That's a whole process, whereas fentanyl can be made by
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 2: one guy somewhere, and the profit margin on the fentanyl
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 2: is so much greater that there's an enormous economic incentive.
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 2: And the first chemist, this guy that was sort of
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 2: a friend of mine that died to do it, considered
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 2: it a good thing to do. That's the complexity that
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 2: you have to recognize. It's so easy to say that
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 2: all these people are so bad, but often you don't
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 2: know what's going to happen until it happens. His idea
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 2: was that one of the major burdens of being addicted
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 2: to heroin is that you can't afford it. It's really expensive.
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 2: So by substituting this relatively inexpensive material, the price of
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 2: heroin would go down. This financial burden associated with opioid
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 2: addiction would be reduced. It would actually improve the quality
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 2: of life of the users. And it could even be
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 2: a more pure, potentially safer material if you look at
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 2: certain literature. Of course, that's not what happened. And many
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 2: people died and he went to prison as a result
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 2: of it.
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 1: Did he really? Yes. Why did he go to prison
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 1: for it?
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 2: Because people died and it was traced back to him.
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 1: So he wasn't doing this in any sanctioned way?
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 2: No, he was a clandestine chemist. His name was George Marquart.
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 2: Weird guy.
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess.
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah. But anyway, you know, you just don't know. You
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 2: don't know what's going to happen until it happens. You know,
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 2: of course, the legendary story that heroin was introduced by
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 2: Bayer as a non-addictive alternative to morphine. They probably did
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 2: think that was the case at the beginning, but history
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 2: has shown that that is not the case. that's one
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 2: of the problems with introducing any drug to a large population.
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 2: You simply don't know. And it's also one of the
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 2: things that I find most interesting and perhaps a silver
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 2: lining in this whole synthetic cannabinoid narrative that's been playing
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 2: out over the last decade is you could say, oh,
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 2: it's terrible. People should just smoke cannabis. But we're learning
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 2: so much about what cannabinoid receptor agonists can do that
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 2: we would have never learned if it weren't for the
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 2: widespread use of synthetic cannabinoids. I mean, just for instance,
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 2: that it is possible for high-potency cannabinoid receptor agonists to
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 2: kill you. That's a big one. We didn't know that
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 2: until recently, that they can be addictive. We didn't know that.
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 1: What are they using? What is it?
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 2: It's an impressively diverse array of chemicals. It started out
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 2: with a drug called CP55940. Then it was CP, what
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 2: did they call it, cannabinoids. I-cyclohexanol now, and then JWH-18, JWH-73, JWH-210,
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 2: on and on and on and on. And then it
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 2: just branched like a giant cannabinoid fractal in every imaginable direction.
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 2: And a lot of these compounds, you know, they were
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 2: patented by various pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer for therapeutic purposes. Again,
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 2: this wasn't some malevolent chemist who was cackling and saying, ha, ha, ha,
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 2: I figured out the most addictive thing possible. They were
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 2: just looking to see what's legal, what looks pretty potent,
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 2: and reasonably safe, okay, we'll make that, we'll sell it.
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 2: And I've spoken with the chemists that actually were behind
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 2: a lot of these operations. Again, not bad guys necessarily. They,
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 2: you know, typically people don't want to hurt other people.
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 2: You know, genuine villainous people are pretty rare in my experience.
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 2: Most people believe that what they're doing has a justification
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 2: that is good. And again, with the synthetic cannabinoid ideas,
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 2: one is that although you won't hear this in the
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 2: popular press, and it's rarely said, they can be very enjoyable.
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 2: And it would be dishonest to say otherwise. Some of
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 2: them are very euphoric and compare favorably to cannabis, and
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 2: in certain measures might even be superior. That doesn't mean
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 2: they're safer. It just means that there's something very desirable
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 2: about them. And if you deny that, then you neglect
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 2: to understand why people use them in the first place,
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 2: which is that they make you feel good. So that's
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 2: part of it. But then the other thing is that
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 2: urine testing... people wanting to be able to get high
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 2: without breaking the law, low cost. I mean, there's a
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 2: lot of motivations for doing this. And as it played out,
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 2: people died, people became addicted and random things that no
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 2: one would have ever expected occurred. We, we learned, here's
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 2: another silver lining. I'm sure you're familiar with cannabis hyperemesis syndrome.
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 1: No, I'm not.
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 2: You know, this, um, this bizarre pattern that certain people
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 2: that smoke all day, every day, um, It started showing
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 2: up in the medical literature about a decade ago. People
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 2: smoke all day, every day, and they start getting very,
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 2: very nauseous and start vomiting. And the only thing that
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 2: can relieve the vomiting is a hot shower.
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 1: Huh.
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 2: So really weird. So all these people are showing up
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 2: in emergency rooms when they, like, run out of hot water, saying, like,
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 2: I need some kind of, I need some help or something. Like,
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 2: I don't know what's going on. The condition resolves itself.
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 2: very rapidly as soon as you stop smoking cannabis. So
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 2: it's not hard to treat. You just can't smoke weed anymore.
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 2: But no one knew what caused it and why it
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 2: was happening now after thousands of years of human cannabis interaction.
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 2: Why now for the first time in history? And the
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 2: answer is that people are smoking more weed now than
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 2: ever before. You know, the levels of THC ingestion with
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 2: dabbing and high potency strains are just higher for some people.
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 2: It's much higher than it's ever been in the past.
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 2: But then the question is, what is causing it? Is
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 2: it cannabis itself? Is it a fertilizer? Is it a pesticide?
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 2: What is responsible for this? And it wasn't until people
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 2: using synthetic cannabinoids began to experience the same constellation of
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 2: symptoms that they realized that this is an intrinsic property
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 2: of certain cannabinoid receptor agonists. So that's something that you
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 2: can learn from all of this, that it wasn't pesticides
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 2: and it wasn't some kind of fungus or something like
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 2: that growing on the plant. This is something that happens
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 2: from prolonged high-dose use of cannabinoids. And there's all sorts
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 2: of other lessons that can be learned.
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 1: Is that an issue with cannabis use, pesticides? Have you
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 1: ever heard of people having real problems?
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 2: Well, historically it was, certainly. You know, Paraquat Pot, did
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 2: you ever hear about?
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 1: No, what's that?
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 2: Paraquat was, you know, in one of many misguided attempts
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 2: to prevent people from using drugs. They started spraying all
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 2: of the cannabis that was grown in Mexico with this
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 2: ultra-toxic herbicide called Paraquat. And this is a drug that
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 2: induces Parkinson's disease when you're exposed to it, like really
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 2: seriously nasty stuff, no joke. And so the idea was
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 2: if we poison all the cannabis and create this widespread
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 2: fear that whatever you're smoking might contain Paraquat, maybe people
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 2: will use it less. And luckily, Paraquat doesn't have a
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 2: lot of thermostability. It's sort of denatured by the heat
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 2: of smoking. So it's argued that people were not actually
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 2: exposed to it who smoked it. but still this is
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 2: a horrendous thing for the government to have done. They
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 2: did the same thing during alcohol prohibition, by the way,
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 2: they would poison alcohol. I mean, that's the extent they'll
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 2: poison people to prevent them from getting high. But that's
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 2: a reality. But, but now in turn, you know, there's
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 2: obviously a move toward organic gardening, people using, you know,
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 2: neem oil and things like that. So I, Wouldn't know. Oh,
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 2: and there was, yeah, there was actually a big controversy
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 2: in Colorado with a pesticide called myclobutanil, I believe, that
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 2: was used and potentially could release cyanide when smoked.
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 1: So, yes.
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 1: Well, I would worry about that with large-scale production. Things
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 1: become commercially viable to the point where someone like R.J.
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 1: Reynolds gets into the mix and starts growing enormous marijuana plantations.
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. I mean, it's a concern with all the
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 2: food that we eat as well.
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, of course.
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 1: What is interesting to you now? Is there anything that's
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 1: coming up or some new thing that people might not
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 1: be aware of that might be fascinating to you?
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, I'm interested in everything. I love the history.
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 2: I did a piece in this last season of my
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 2: TV show where I traced the history of of psychedelic
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 2: toad venom, of 5-MeO-DMT containing toad venom, because people have
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 2: this idea that all psychedelics have been used for thousands
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 2: of years, that every psychedelic has an ancient history. But
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 2: when you look at the history of 5-MeO-DMT, there is
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 2: no evidence, really, no convincing evidence that I'm aware of.
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 2: Maybe you can point to a ceramic toad. Is that
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 2: evidence that people smoke toad venom? Not in my opinion.
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 2: It might be some indication that maybe they did, but
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 2: it's certainly not hard evidence. Even if there were a
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 2: guy sitting on his back smoking a pipe it wouldn't
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 2: be hard evidence but anyway so there isn't convincing evidence
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 2: as far as I'm concerned of ancient toad venom use
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 2: so then the question is when did it start who
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 2: was the first person to do this and I love
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 2: these little historical investigations to get to the bottom. Who
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 2: is the first person to synthesize this drug? What were
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 2: their intentions? Who is the first person to smoke toad venom?
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 1: And the toad venom is a weird one, too, because
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 1: it's this bizarre misconception that you lick the toads. Right.
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 2: Which, again, journalistically... produced. Maybe it was inspired by cartoons
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 2: as well to some extent, but yes.
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 1: So the way you do it is you have to
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 1: get the toad to excrete whatever this is and you
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 1: put it on glass and then you dry it out.
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 1: Is that the idea?
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 2: That's the idea, yes.
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 1: And then you scrape it off with a razor blade
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 1: and then smoke it?
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 2: That's it.
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 1: And does it come, is it a pure form of
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 1: 5-MeO DMT?
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 2: No, and there's actually very little chemical analysis that's been
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 2: done in the 21st century. I analyzed a sample that
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 2: I collected when I was in Sonora and And it contained,
• 1:39:16
  Speaker 2: in addition to 5-MeO-DMT, it contained some interesting serotonin derivatives,
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 2: including serotonin O-sulfate. And nobody knows how these different tryptamine components,
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 2: as well as these steroidal lactones that are sometimes called bufotoxin,
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 2: contribute to the experience. If I had to guess, probably
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 2: not that much, but maybe there's a little bit of
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 2: that sort of entourage effect that you get with almost
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 2: any plant that has a variety of different alkaloids that
• 1:39:42
  Speaker 2: might inhibit certain enzymes or do this or that. but
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 2: it's about 15% according to the older literature. The analysis
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 2: that I did wasn't quantitative, so I don't know exactly
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 2: what the concentration was, but it's somewhere in that region,
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 2: and I'm sure it depends on whether the toad has
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 2: been milked previously and all these other variables.
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 1: Does the experience mirror taking synthetic 5-MeO DMT?
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 2: I haven't tried. I've tried synthetic 5-MeO DMT a couple times.
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 2: I've tried Bufol, various venom, once at a low dose,
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 2: once at a high dose. They were all different, but then...
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 2: Everything is different. Mushrooms are different every time I take them.
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 2: You know, it's really hard once you start explaining a
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 2: different experience based on the composition of the material because
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 2: how do you assign it to the dose or the
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 2: minute number of different tryptamines that are also present? It's
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 2: really hard to say. But, you know, I think that
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 2: there is a strong argument to be made for using
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 2: the synthetic as opposed to the toad-derived material simply because
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 2: you don't have to harm... Not that it necessarily does
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 2: harm toads, but you don't even have to risk it.
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 1: Right, right.
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 2: And it's easy to synthesize.
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm sure toads aren't into getting rubbed on windshields. Yeah.
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 1: Seems like an annoying day for a toad.
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they want to eat insects.
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, whatever the fuck they do. One of the more
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 1: interesting stories out of the last decade or so was this...
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 1: A story that I read about these scholars in Jerusalem
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 1: that were connecting the story of Moses and the burning
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 1: bush to the acacia bush and the acacia tree, which
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 1: is rich in DMT. And they believe that, you know,
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 1: when you're talking about a story that was told through
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 1: oral traditions for who knows how many years and then
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 1: written down in ancient Hebrew and then transcribed and, you know...
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 1: and translated to Greek and Latin and all these, there's
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 1: a lot lost in the mix. And they believe that
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 1: what that story might have been about of Moses coming
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 1: down from Mount Sinai with the tablets and having the
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 1: experience with meeting God in the burning bush, that what
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 1: this is in fact was a dimethyltryptamine experience.
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 2: Maybe.
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It's a big maybe.
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 2: It's a big maybe. I can say, that if you
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 2: go to the south of Mexico in Chiapas, there's a
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 2: tree that grows there. It's a weed called mimosa hostilis.
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 2: Maybe you're familiar with it. And this is so abundant
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 2: that it's used to make fence posts. All the fences
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 2: on the side of the road are made of mimosa hostilis.
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 2: It's used as firewood to cook meals. The air smells
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 2: like DMT because people are using it as fuel all
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 2: over the place. Not a single person that I spoke
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 2: with was aware that it was psychoactive. And these are
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 2: people that are burning it All the time.
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 1: Do they get high from it? Is there... Like, if
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 1: you were in a tent or something like that, and
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 1: you were doing a hot box sort of scenario, would
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 1: you get high from it?
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 2: No. I saw no... Would you? It may be... It's
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 2: about 2% DMT.
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 1: So... You'd probably have to get so sick from coughing.
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It would be a very... I mean, even just
• 1:42:59
  Speaker 2: smoking pure crystal DMT can be very difficult for some people.
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 2: So my guess... Not to be like a wet blanket,
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 2: but my guess is not really. And that's a very
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 2: strong source. Maybe some acacia is stronger, but that's certainly comparable.
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 2: And that's something people are using to cook food all
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 2: the time, and they're not aware that it's psychoactive.
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 1: So was there a way, or is there a way,
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 1: for a person living thousands of years ago to somehow
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 1: or another extract DMT from something like the acacia tree?
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 2: Um... I actually spent some time thinking about that a
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 2: while ago. First of all, it depends on how you
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 2: define extraction. If it were in an ayahuasca sense, like
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 2: a tea, of course, yes. But then they would need
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 2: some sort of enzyme inhibitor to create the ayahuasca. If
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 2: it were to create an isolated smokable form, again, you
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 2: could just do an aqueous infusion and then dry that
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 2: out and maybe smoke that. But in terms of a
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 2: real extraction that would produce crystals of DMT... I don't
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 2: know what the nonpolar solvent they would be using to
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 2: extract the freebase would be, like butter or something? And
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 2: then how would you get rid of the butter?
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 1: So what is the process? Like if you're going to
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 1: take a tree that's rich in DMT and extract DMT
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 1: from it, what do you have to use?
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 2: Have you ever done it before?
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 1: No, I've never done it. Oh, okay.
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 2: Well, it's a very generalizable and simple process that applies
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 2: to almost everything in chemistry. Sometimes it's called an acid-base
• 1:44:32
  Speaker 2: extraction process. Most people that are in the DMT community
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 2: go something they call straight to base. And the idea
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 2: is that the side chain of the DMT molecule contains
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 2: a basic nitrogen that if it's protonated in an acidic solution,
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 2: then it's water soluble. And if it's deprotonated, then it's
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 2: only soluble in a nonpolar solvent. So what you do
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 2: is you just deprotonate the nitrogen with a base, potassium
• 1:44:58
  Speaker 2: hydroxide or sodium hydroxide typically, and then treat that aqueous
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 2: basic solution with a non-polar solvent like naphtha and isolate
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 2: the naphtha, dry it out, and you have your material.
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 2: And that applies to everything. That's not a DMT-specific process,
• 1:45:15
  Speaker 2: but that's what people do. Everything with a basic nitrogen.
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 1: Now, what's the earliest history of extraction?
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, the first wave of DMT use in
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 2: the United States was all synthetic. In fact, DMT was
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 2: discovered synthetically before it was ever found in nature. The
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 2: same is true of 5-MeO DMT.
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 1: How'd they do that?
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 2: There was a Canadian chemist named Richard Helmuth-Mansky who, um,
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 2: I believe was looking at different alkaloids in strawberry plants
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 2: and he was synthesizing references for these potential strawberry alkaloids
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 2: and made DMT. So he didn't know what he had
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 2: made other than a potential natural product found in strawberries. And, um,
• 1:45:55
  Speaker 2: And then it wasn't until Zara much later conducted self-experiments
• 1:45:59
  Speaker 2: with injected DMT that people became fully aware of its psychoactivity.
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 2: And then people started finding it in plants. I mean,
• 1:46:05
  Speaker 2: the 1950s and early 60s were, of course, a fascinating
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 2: time in psychedelic research because you have these convergences of
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 2: these amazing ideas. First, you have the discovery of serotonin,
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 2: which is like, you know, we take this for granted.
• 1:46:19
  Speaker 2: Now it's in television commercials. But this was, of course,
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 2: something that no one knew about. And suddenly they're finding
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 2: this in all kinds of different animals. Initially, it was
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 2: in the salivary glands of squid and in different animals.
• 1:46:30
  Speaker 2: And then they're finding it in the human intestine. Then
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 2: they're also finding that all of these plants that people
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 2: worshipped in various indigenous societies also contain serotonin-like molecules. Then
• 1:46:40
  Speaker 2: they discover LSD and find that that's maybe the most
• 1:46:43
  Speaker 2: potent known pharmacological agent at that time. And it binds to...
• 1:46:50
  Speaker 2: Serotonin receptors, it activates a serotonin-type response in isolated tissue.
• 1:46:55
  Speaker 2: So there's like this weird triple convergence of information. Super potent,
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 2: amazing compound LSD is discovered. Serotonin is discovered in all
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 2: these different organisms, and there's a pharmacological convergence between the
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 2: two of them. And then you have all these people
• 1:47:08
  Speaker 2: worshipping serotonin-like molecules. So there was, you know, a lot
• 1:47:12
  Speaker 2: of enthusiasm at that time to figure all of this out.
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 1: So in terms of history, so we're talking about like
• 1:47:20
  Speaker 1: somewhere in the 1950s, they started extracting DMT. The use
• 1:47:24
  Speaker 1: of it orally dates back far longer than that because
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 1: of use of MAO inhibitors and creating ayahuasca. But in
• 1:47:31
  Speaker 1: terms of the first extraction, we can kind of isolate.
• 1:47:35
  Speaker 2: From plants to smoke?
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:47:38
  Speaker 2: It might have been even later. It might have been
• 1:47:39
  Speaker 2: the 80s.
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 1: Okay. So the idea that people thousands of years ago
• 1:47:46
  Speaker 1: we're able to do something along those lines is probably
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 1: not accurate. Because they're talking about a burning bush. That's
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 1: why it's appealing to people, right? The idea of Moses.
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 1: Do you think that maybe the understanding of synthesis from,
• 1:48:00
  Speaker 1: you know, synthesizing this from these scholars, maybe they don't
• 1:48:04
  Speaker 1: have enough of an understanding of chemistry?
• 1:48:07
  Speaker 2: Well, what would be really interesting is, is to do
• 1:48:10
  Speaker 2: an experiment to see what were the materials that were available?
• 1:48:14
  Speaker 2: How would this have been done? Would you have to
• 1:48:16
  Speaker 2: use butter as your nonpolar solvent? How well would that work?
• 1:48:19
  Speaker 2: What would your butter preparation be done? Would you take
• 1:48:22
  Speaker 2: it rectally then? Is that how it would work? I mean,
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 2: you have to kind of, what would your base have been?
• 1:48:26
  Speaker 1: Well, I think they were talking about it being something from,
• 1:48:29
  Speaker 1: I mean, burning, right? A burning bush. Maybe it's just
• 1:48:32
  Speaker 1: one of those things that sort of gets conflated, right?
• 1:48:33
  Speaker 1: Because you have people today that are very aware that
• 1:48:36
  Speaker 1: people smoke DMT and have these incredibly tense, intense religious
• 1:48:40
  Speaker 1: psychedelic experiences. And then maybe they looked at the Acacia
• 1:48:44
  Speaker 1: Bush and said, oh, the Acacia Bush is rich in DMT.
• 1:48:48
  Speaker 1: That's probably where the Moses story came from.
• 1:48:51
  Speaker 2: Right. Well, what's really interesting is, you know, DMT has
• 1:48:53
  Speaker 2: never been found in the human brain, even though Rick
• 1:48:56
  Speaker 2: Strassman says that it has been. So a lot of
• 1:49:00
  Speaker 2: people are constantly assigning altered states of consciousness to DMT,
• 1:49:04
  Speaker 2: but we can have these states without DMT. I mean,
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 2: maybe it's never been found in the human brain, but
• 1:49:08
  Speaker 2: also there's ethical and experimental issues with sampling fluid from
• 1:49:13
  Speaker 2: a living human's brain. Right.
• 1:49:14
  Speaker 1: But it has, they have found it in living rats.
• 1:49:17
  Speaker 1: This is fairly recently. This is the Cottonwood Research Foundation.
• 1:49:20
  Speaker 1: That's their, their attempt is to try to prove that
• 1:49:24
  Speaker 1: the pineal gland is a source for DMT. We know
• 1:49:28
  Speaker 1: that DMT exists in the human body. We know that
• 1:49:30
  Speaker 1: the liver produces it and we know that the lungs
• 1:49:32
  Speaker 1: produce it. We're not totally aware of whether or not
• 1:49:36
  Speaker 1: there's anecdotal evidence that points to the pineal gland.
• 1:49:39
  Speaker 2: Based on the rat idea and based on the presence
• 1:49:42
  Speaker 2: of certain enzymes that could be responsible for it. But
• 1:49:46
  Speaker 2: even if it is, even if it is, then what?
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 2: There's still a whole question of how is it released?
• 1:49:52
  Speaker 2: How is it distributed? What receptors does it activate? And
• 1:49:54
  Speaker 2: is it even necessary as an explanation for altered states
• 1:49:58
  Speaker 2: of consciousness? Because there are other things in the brain
• 1:50:00
  Speaker 2: other than DMT. DMT has never even been found in
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 2: the brain, but there are other things. You know, you
• 1:50:04
  Speaker 2: have endogenous proteins that bind to the kappa opioid receptor,
• 1:50:08
  Speaker 2: the same receptor that is responsible for the effect of salvia,
• 1:50:13
  Speaker 2: things like that.
• 1:50:13
  Speaker 1: They could be responsible.
• 1:50:14
  Speaker 2: I mean, even carbon dioxide itself can induce a pretty
• 1:50:19
  Speaker 2: strong altered state of consciousness.
• 1:50:21
  Speaker 1: Right, which is why people like those psychedelic breathing exercises. Yeah.
• 1:50:26
  Speaker 1: Is it like hypoxic? Is that what it is? What
• 1:50:29
  Speaker 1: are they doing when they have those, what is it called?
• 1:50:33
  Speaker 1: There's a type of breathing exercise called That induces psychedelic states.
• 1:50:38
  Speaker 2: Holotropic. Holotropic. Breathwork.
• 1:50:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And that is the idea behind that, right? It
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 1: increases the amount of carbon dioxide in your blood?
• 1:50:45
  Speaker 2: I haven't seen a mechanistic explanation.
• 1:50:47
  Speaker 1: Hmm. Yeah, I think that was.
• 1:50:50
  Speaker 2: But it would make sense. In an early LSD psychotherapy,
• 1:50:54
  Speaker 2: one of the things that they would do before giving
• 1:50:56
  Speaker 2: someone LSD is they'd give them something called carbogen, which
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 2: was a gas that contained carbon dioxide, and they would
• 1:51:02
  Speaker 2: look at their response to the carbon dioxide inhalation. And
• 1:51:05
  Speaker 2: if it induced a panic response, they would say, maybe
• 1:51:07
  Speaker 2: you're not psychologically ready for this LSD experience. So that was,
• 1:51:12
  Speaker 2: you're talking about a test. I mean, that was a
• 1:51:14
  Speaker 2: very primitive early test that was used by psychiatrists to
• 1:51:19
  Speaker 2: see if people were, had the psychological fortitude to withstand
• 1:51:23
  Speaker 2: the experience.
• 1:51:24
  Speaker 1: That's fascinating. So tell me more about whatever is in
• 1:51:27
  Speaker 1: the brain that mirrors the effects of salvia.
• 1:51:31
  Speaker 2: It's a protein. I can't remember off the top of
• 1:51:33
  Speaker 2: my head what it is. If you look up endogenous
• 1:51:36
  Speaker 2: ligand for kappa opioid receptor, it will come up. David
• 1:51:40
  Speaker 2: Nichols recently wrote a paper that actually goes into alternate
• 1:51:43
  Speaker 2: mechanisms of how the DMT-type near-death experience could be produced
• 1:51:50
  Speaker 2: by non-DMT compounds. But I mean, there was a lot
• 1:51:53
  Speaker 2: of work also on endogenous NMDA receptor antagonists. There was
• 1:51:58
  Speaker 2: a protein that was called Alpha Endo Psychosin, or Angel Dustin,
• 1:52:04
  Speaker 2: named after Angel Dust. But the main researcher died in
• 1:52:08
  Speaker 2: a car accident, like right as he was making some
• 1:52:10
  Speaker 2: kind of.
• 1:52:11
  Speaker 1: Breakthrough.
• 1:52:12
  Speaker 2: Breakthrough, supposedly. But.
• 1:52:15
  Speaker 1: Cue spooky music. Yes, yes.
• 1:52:18
  Speaker 2: But, you know, this has been a longstanding... question in
• 1:52:22
  Speaker 2: psychiatry is, you know, what causes psychosis? What causes altered
• 1:52:26
  Speaker 2: states of consciousness? Is there an endogenous psychedelic? That was
• 1:52:29
  Speaker 2: like one of the major motivations for a lot of
• 1:52:32
  Speaker 2: this research in the 60s, finding the endogenous psychotogen that
• 1:52:36
  Speaker 2: is responsible for schizophrenia. Now it doesn't seem to be
• 1:52:39
  Speaker 2: the case, but it's still a question that comes up.
• 1:52:42
  Speaker 2: What if dopamine is methylated in a certain way to
• 1:52:44
  Speaker 2: create dimethoxy, phenethylamine, or what about this? What about that?
• 1:52:48
  Speaker 2: I mean, Shulgin was very interested in it, about the
• 1:52:51
  Speaker 2: metabolic production of various psychedelics that account for altered states
• 1:52:54
  Speaker 2: of consciousness. It just hasn't been supported by evidence in
• 1:52:58
  Speaker 2: a very strong way, even though people really find the
• 1:53:00
  Speaker 2: idea compelling. And there was also the 5-MeO-DMT in schizophrenic
• 1:53:04
  Speaker 2: people's urine. That's also a thing.
• 1:53:06
  Speaker 1: Right. And we know that the body does produce 5-MeO-DMT.
• 1:53:10
  Speaker 1: We just don't know where.
• 1:53:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because again, it's like what I was saying earlier
• 1:53:13
  Speaker 2: about the depression tests where you look at your urine.
• 1:53:16
  Speaker 2: So you find 5-MeO-DMT in your urine and your first
• 1:53:19
  Speaker 2: assumption might be, okay, there's 5-MeO-DMT in my body. It
• 1:53:23
  Speaker 2: was in my brain, but you don't know that. It
• 1:53:25
  Speaker 2: could have been biosynthesized in your intestine and it could
• 1:53:28
  Speaker 2: have been excreted without ever entering your brain.
• 1:53:31
  Speaker 1: Right. And this is the whole idea of monoamine oxidase, right?
• 1:53:35
  Speaker 1: The idea that when we're eating things that are rich
• 1:53:37
  Speaker 1: in DMT, monoamine oxidase is breaking it down in the gut.
• 1:53:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 1: So even if you're consuming something, so if something is,
• 1:53:47
  Speaker 1: so how do they know that this salvia-like substance exists
• 1:53:52
  Speaker 1: in the mind or in the brain rather?
• 1:53:54
  Speaker 2: Because this peptide or protein has been isolated. Do you
• 1:53:58
  Speaker 2: find the name of it? I only caught four of
• 1:54:02
  Speaker 2: those words you said.
• 1:54:04
  Speaker 1: And I lost what I was.
• 1:54:05
  Speaker 2: Supposed to be getting.
• 1:54:09
  Speaker 1: So we know there's a host of different psychoactive substances
• 1:54:12
  Speaker 1: that are absolutely produced by the body and in the brain.
• 1:54:17
  Speaker 1: And that there's different ways that human beings have been
• 1:54:21
  Speaker 1: able to achieve psychedelic states outside of consuming drugs. Have
• 1:54:26
  Speaker 1: you done that?
• 1:54:28
  Speaker 2: I've done lucid dreaming. things. I've done Kundalini yoga.
• 1:54:33
  Speaker 1: The Kundalini one is the one I'm most interested in
• 1:54:35
  Speaker 1: because I have someone who's a friend of mine that
• 1:54:37
  Speaker 1: got really into it. And he was saying that he
• 1:54:40
  Speaker 1: can achieve very DMT-like states.
• 1:54:43
  Speaker 2: You know, there's a really interesting aspect of all this
• 1:54:47
  Speaker 2: that isn't often discussed, which is the ability to have
• 1:54:50
  Speaker 2: these states still interact with your environment because of course
• 1:54:54
  Speaker 2: there's something very physically taxing about breath of fire or
• 1:54:57
  Speaker 2: these Kundalini breathing techniques if you induce an altered state
• 1:54:59
  Speaker 2: of consciousness you need to be focused and you need
• 1:55:01
  Speaker 2: to be in a specific place sitting down where psychedelics
• 1:55:05
  Speaker 2: have this amazing ability to allow you to have that
• 1:55:07
  Speaker 2: experience but walk around and I think that's not to
• 1:55:11
  Speaker 2: be underestimated the walking around because then you can really
• 1:55:14
  Speaker 2: re-examine and your environment, that's a big part of it
• 1:55:17
  Speaker 2: for me. A big part of the psychedelic experience is
• 1:55:20
  Speaker 2: seeing what is New York like? What do I like
• 1:55:22
  Speaker 2: or not like about New York? What do I like
• 1:55:24
  Speaker 2: or not like about my apartment? Because it matters. These
• 1:55:28
  Speaker 2: things matter. This is your environment. Do you want to
• 1:55:30
  Speaker 2: be surrounded by clutter that you don't like? If you don't,
• 1:55:33
  Speaker 2: get rid of it. These are the sorts of thoughts
• 1:55:35
  Speaker 2: you have. And this is my other issue with going
• 1:55:37
  Speaker 2: to the Peruvian Amazon to have a psychedelic experience. Because
• 1:55:41
  Speaker 2: if you do it in this place that is superficially inappropriate,
• 1:55:44
  Speaker 2: like your apartment, I think it has the most applicability
• 1:55:48
  Speaker 2: to your own existence in terms of the music you
• 1:55:50
  Speaker 2: listen to, your friends, your environment, your life. You're confronted
• 1:55:54
  Speaker 2: by the books that you read, the photos of the
• 1:55:56
  Speaker 2: people that you know, all the things that matter to you,
• 1:55:59
  Speaker 2: not a jungle, although jungles are very beautiful and visually stimulating,
• 1:56:02
  Speaker 2: and I'm sure, and are, I know, an amazing place
• 1:56:04
  Speaker 2: to use psychedelics. I think that we underestimate the value
• 1:56:09
  Speaker 2: these things have when integrated into a more normal type
• 1:56:13
  Speaker 2: of experience, and that's something you can't do as easily with.
• 1:56:16
  Speaker 1: kundalini right right that makes sense so when you're using
• 1:56:20
  Speaker 1: psychedelics you will use them and walk around new york city.
• 1:56:25
  Speaker 2: Yes what is that like um i often feel a
• 1:56:29
  Speaker 2: lot of love for people yeah which is you know
• 1:56:31
  Speaker 2: because i think that we also tend to get into
• 1:56:33
  Speaker 2: these uh very angry oh the subway is annoying the
• 1:56:38
  Speaker 2: guy is taking up too much room i have to
• 1:56:41
  Speaker 2: stand it's taking forever it smells weird whatever Everyone is
• 1:56:45
  Speaker 2: looking at their phones all the time, which is a
• 1:56:47
  Speaker 2: little bit dark. And then, you know, if you're on
• 1:56:52
  Speaker 2: a low dose of a psychedelic or even a higher one,
• 1:56:54
  Speaker 2: sometimes I'll look at everyone on their phones and I'll
• 1:56:56
  Speaker 2: just feel compassion and love and think like, what a
• 1:56:59
  Speaker 2: strange situation we've all gotten ourselves into. I love all
• 1:57:03
  Speaker 2: these people. And it's like, I don't know what to
• 1:57:06
  Speaker 2: say about it, but I understand it completely. And I
• 1:57:08
  Speaker 2: don't know where we're going from here. And you suddenly
• 1:57:10
  Speaker 2: feel connected to something that's very real, which is people
• 1:57:14
  Speaker 2: on the subway. not looking at each other anymore. I mean,
• 1:57:17
  Speaker 2: this is in my own life, something that has changed dramatically.
• 1:57:19
  Speaker 2: When I moved to New York, no one looked at phones.
• 1:57:22
  Speaker 2: Now people only look at phones. Everyone is looking at
• 1:57:25
  Speaker 2: phones the entire time they're on the subway. This is
• 1:57:27
  Speaker 2: a total change in human behavior. And you really start
• 1:57:31
  Speaker 2: thinking about things like that. And it matters because it's
• 1:57:33
  Speaker 2: not in the Amazon. It's your life. And these are
• 1:57:35
  Speaker 2: the things, the choices that you make. Are you going
• 1:57:37
  Speaker 2: to be a person that looks at their phone all
• 1:57:39
  Speaker 2: the time as well?
• 1:57:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's fascinating how quickly that took hold. Yeah. If
• 1:57:44
  Speaker 1: you look at human history, the iPhone is 10 years old.
• 1:57:47
  Speaker 2: I know.
• 1:57:48
  Speaker 1: And that's really when it started. So 10 years ago,
• 1:57:50
  Speaker 1: people– and even then, in the beginning of the iPhone,
• 1:57:54
  Speaker 1: they were fucking useless.
• 1:57:55
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:57:55
  Speaker 1: You'd get online and it was really slow and terrible.
• 1:57:59
  Speaker 1: So most of the time you just text messaged it.
• 1:58:01
  Speaker 1: But now with all the apps and social media and constant,
• 1:58:06
  Speaker 1: constant updates of information and new things, and new events
• 1:58:10
  Speaker 1: and new trends, it's just, it's always calling you. I
• 1:58:13
  Speaker 1: better check, make sure anything's done. We've been on this
• 1:58:16
  Speaker 1: podcast for two hours. Let me see what's going on. Oh,
• 1:58:18
  Speaker 1: look at that. All these messages. Oh.
• 1:58:22
  Speaker 2: Weird. You did it to me. Actually, I have this
• 1:58:25
  Speaker 2: vivid memory of standing at your front door and you
• 1:58:27
  Speaker 2: selling Twitter to me, saying like, oh, you've got to
• 1:58:30
  Speaker 2: use Twitter. It's amazing. People send you all these articles
• 1:58:34
  Speaker 2: and it's so useful. You learn so much. It's really amazing.
• 1:58:37
  Speaker 2: Because I only had one tweet at that time. And
• 1:58:40
  Speaker 2: now it's like 2,500 tweets later and hundreds of hours
• 1:58:44
  Speaker 2: of my life I'll never get back.
• 1:58:45
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry. I got you. I got you. It is
• 1:58:50
  Speaker 1: that way still for me in many ways. I learn
• 1:58:53
  Speaker 1: a lot about what's going on in the world. I
• 1:58:55
  Speaker 1: follow a lot of science tweets, Twitter accounts, and a
• 1:58:58
  Speaker 1: lot of really interesting people that post interesting stuff. But
• 1:59:03
  Speaker 1: you got to know how to abandon a tweet several
• 1:59:07
  Speaker 1: words in. Like, this is bullshit. I'm not reading that. No,
• 1:59:11
  Speaker 1: I'm not reading that. Oh, what can they do now?
• 1:59:14
  Speaker 2: The tweets are too long.
• 1:59:15
  Speaker 1: This is crazy. No, it's not even that. It's just
• 1:59:17
  Speaker 1: knowing that it's going to be horseshit. This is going
• 1:59:19
  Speaker 1: to be just either gossip or nonsense or not interesting.
• 1:59:24
  Speaker 1: But there's still a shit ton of really useful information
• 1:59:27
  Speaker 1: that you can get out of Twitter on a daily basis.
• 1:59:29
  Speaker 1: There's always something new that's coming out. And I try
• 1:59:32
  Speaker 1: to retweet those things as much as possible. When I
• 1:59:35
  Speaker 1: see something that someone sends me and then that becomes
• 1:59:39
  Speaker 1: people know, hey, if you send Joe something really cool,
• 1:59:42
  Speaker 1: And he reads it. If I get a chance to
• 1:59:44
  Speaker 1: read it, I'll retweet it and people get a kick
• 1:59:46
  Speaker 1: out of that. So they'll send me more cool stuff.
• 1:59:48
  Speaker 1: And so then it sort of becomes like a little
• 1:59:53
  Speaker 1: ecosystem almost for disseminating interesting ideas. Yeah. But it's also
• 1:59:58
  Speaker 1: bullshit too. There's a lot of bullshit in there. A
• 2:00:01
  Speaker 1: lot of arguing, which I don't do. I just don't argue.
• 2:00:04
  Speaker 1: I think it's a very ineffective way to communicate with people,
• 2:00:08
  Speaker 1: with going back and forth with stuff like that online.
• 2:00:11
  Speaker 1: It just doesn't work well. And it becomes, I think,
• 2:00:14
  Speaker 1: more like idea sport with a lot of folks. Like
• 2:00:17
  Speaker 1: they're just trying to win these little battles and find
• 2:00:19
  Speaker 1: the witty or nasty thing to say. It's not productive.
• 2:00:24
  Speaker 1: It's not healthy. I don't like it.
• 2:00:26
  Speaker 2: Well, they're doing the same thing that journalists do, which
• 2:00:28
  Speaker 2: is that you get more attention for doing the wrong
• 2:00:31
  Speaker 2: thing than you do for saying the right thing. And
• 2:00:34
  Speaker 2: we all know that feeling where someone says something about
• 2:00:36
  Speaker 2: you that's unfair and wrong and you want to say, hey,
• 2:00:40
  Speaker 2: wait a second about that. That is totally incorrect. I'm
• 2:00:43
  Speaker 2: going to set the record straight. And that's what gets
• 2:00:46
  Speaker 2: the engagement, not the kind, thoughtful, considerate thing that somebody says.
• 2:00:51
  Speaker 1: Yes. Yes. I would love to accentuate the trend of kindness.
• 2:00:56
  Speaker 1: I really think that that is one thing. If there's
• 2:00:59
  Speaker 1: any one trend and to lean towards kindness, just to
• 2:01:04
  Speaker 1: be nicer to people. And if we could all sort
• 2:01:07
  Speaker 1: of agree that this is a virtue worth pursuing. I
• 2:01:10
  Speaker 1: think it would change the way human beings interact with
• 2:01:13
  Speaker 1: each other. These shifts, like the shift of looking at
• 2:01:15
  Speaker 1: your phone. If we could figure out a shift, and
• 2:01:18
  Speaker 1: one of the more disturbing things to me that comes
• 2:01:20
  Speaker 1: from the left, which I've always associated myself with being
• 2:01:22
  Speaker 1: a left-leaning person, that there's a lot of meanness coming
• 2:01:27
  Speaker 1: from the left now. And so a lot of, by
• 2:01:31
  Speaker 1: any means necessary, a lot of feeling the need to
• 2:01:34
  Speaker 1: squash people and humiliate people and insult people because they
• 2:01:39
  Speaker 1: don't agree with what you believe. And that this this
• 2:01:42
  Speaker 1: is a I think this is a terrible path to
• 2:01:45
  Speaker 1: go down because then it sort of justifies people who
• 2:01:48
  Speaker 1: think the opposite of that to be mean to you.
• 2:01:51
  Speaker 1: So now no one's getting anything done because this side's
• 2:01:54
  Speaker 1: being insulting and that side's being insulting and people are
• 2:01:57
  Speaker 1: getting kicked out of restaurants and people are protesting in
• 2:02:00
  Speaker 1: front of people's houses because they disagree with things. And
• 2:02:02
  Speaker 1: this is a lot of cruelty. a lot of meanness
• 2:02:05
  Speaker 1: and cruelty, which is the enemy of discourse. As soon
• 2:02:09
  Speaker 1: as that stuff gets thrown about and as soon as
• 2:02:11
  Speaker 1: it becomes a war, an idea war or an idea sport,
• 2:02:15
  Speaker 1: people are just trying to win and they're trying to
• 2:02:16
  Speaker 1: get back at you for what you said and you
• 2:02:18
  Speaker 1: get back at them for that. And it becomes this
• 2:02:21
  Speaker 1: terrible stall out situation. Yeah.
• 2:02:24
  Speaker 2: We've all bought into a game and it's a bad
• 2:02:26
  Speaker 2: game to play. It's the worst possible game and it's
• 2:02:30
  Speaker 2: very transparent. I mean, you look at what shows up
• 2:02:32
  Speaker 2: on the first page of Twitter. And it's things that
• 2:02:35
  Speaker 2: are perfectly designed to generate opinions. So teacher says that
• 2:02:40
  Speaker 2: now classrooms will be equipped with a bucket of stones
• 2:02:44
  Speaker 2: to throw at a school shooter. And what do you feel? Oh,
• 2:02:47
  Speaker 2: that's stupid. Or hey, that's actually kind of a good idea.
• 2:02:49
  Speaker 2: It's better than nothing. And everyone's engaging with it. And
• 2:02:52
  Speaker 2: you're buying into it. You're supporting it. And you're promoting it.
• 2:02:55
  Speaker 2: And you're making it bigger by paying attention to it.
• 2:02:57
  Speaker 2: I mean, there's an amazing book that I recommend anyone
• 2:02:59
  Speaker 2: listening to this read called Amusing Ourselves to Death by
• 2:03:02
  Speaker 2: Neil Postman, which he wrote in 1985 before computers, before
• 2:03:06
  Speaker 2: social media, before any of this. He predicts all of
• 2:03:08
  Speaker 2: it perfectly without even knowing the faintest hint of what
• 2:03:11
  Speaker 2: was going to happen. And, you know, his solution, if
• 2:03:16
  Speaker 2: there is one, is, you know, partially to disengage from
• 2:03:19
  Speaker 2: all of this, but to try to appreciate long, nuanced,
• 2:03:23
  Speaker 2: careful things, which is very hard to achieve on Twitter
• 2:03:27
  Speaker 2: or television or most places. We try our best.
• 2:03:30
  Speaker 1: Well, I think that's one of the reasons why podcasts like,
• 2:03:34
  Speaker 1: especially ones like this, that are these long form conversations
• 2:03:38
  Speaker 1: are becoming popular because people are hungry for actual communication.
• 2:03:42
  Speaker 1: They're hungry for people that are just, even if we
• 2:03:45
  Speaker 1: disagree on things, I want to know why you think
• 2:03:48
  Speaker 1: the way you think. And I want to hear it all.
• 2:03:50
  Speaker 1: I want to hear all of your reasoning. I want
• 2:03:53
  Speaker 1: to hear the thought process that led you to that.
• 2:03:56
  Speaker 1: I want to hear that. And I want to be
• 2:03:57
  Speaker 1: able to talk to you about how I think and
• 2:03:59
  Speaker 1: why I think the way I think. And maybe we
• 2:04:02
  Speaker 1: can come to some middle ground or at least understand
• 2:04:04
  Speaker 1: each other and go, oh, I see where you went
• 2:04:06
  Speaker 1: or I see why you do. I see what's happening
• 2:04:09
  Speaker 1: inside your mind or the way you feel or how
• 2:04:12
  Speaker 1: it relates to your life. This is absent in most
• 2:04:16
  Speaker 1: discourse on television. It's absent in all talk shows. It's
• 2:04:21
  Speaker 1: like what we're talking about, the oddness of a panel show.
• 2:04:24
  Speaker 1: I mean, they're so bizarre. It doesn't make any sense.
• 2:04:27
  Speaker 1: None of it, it's not how human beings interact with
• 2:04:31
  Speaker 1: each other. Can you imagine if every conversation you had
• 2:04:33
  Speaker 1: in your life, there was an audience clapping or wooing
• 2:04:36
  Speaker 1: at everything you said? I mean, it creates this sort
• 2:04:41
  Speaker 1: of fake way of communication that has become so commonplace
• 2:04:46
  Speaker 1: with us. Just even the way they sit, sitting next
• 2:04:49
  Speaker 1: to each other like this. Like we're not looking at
• 2:04:51
  Speaker 1: each other. I would be sitting over here and you'd
• 2:04:53
  Speaker 1: be at the desk. And I'd be like, well, Hamilton,
• 2:04:56
  Speaker 1: funny you bring that up. But, you know, and then
• 2:04:58
  Speaker 1: look at the crowd. It's just, it's alien. I mean,
• 2:05:02
  Speaker 1: it's really weird. And I think- Because of the fact
• 2:05:06
  Speaker 1: that people are so addicted to their phones and addicted
• 2:05:09
  Speaker 1: to media and this constant influx of this loop of information.
• 2:05:13
  Speaker 1: I mean, if you watch the news, they can't just
• 2:05:15
  Speaker 1: give you the fucking news. You have to get that
• 2:05:17
  Speaker 1: scroll on the bottom of other shit that you should
• 2:05:19
  Speaker 1: be freaking out about. It's like the news itself is
• 2:05:22
  Speaker 1: not enough. No, you have to know about terrorist attacks
• 2:05:25
  Speaker 1: and fucking ISIS and some new flu that can't be cured.
• 2:05:29
  Speaker 1: And it's all scrolling on the bottom while you're watching
• 2:05:32
  Speaker 1: other shit.
• 2:05:33
  Speaker 2: We.
• 2:05:35
  Speaker 1: This is not how human beings are designed. We're designed
• 2:05:38
  Speaker 1: to talk. We're designed to communicate with each other person
• 2:05:41
  Speaker 1: to person. This is what we're good at. This is
• 2:05:44
  Speaker 1: what we've lost. And the one thing that has probably
• 2:05:49
  Speaker 1: led to more people understanding more about each other, actual conversations,
• 2:05:54
  Speaker 1: is rare, which is really weird. It's way more common
• 2:05:58
  Speaker 1: for someone to look at their phone for 10 hours
• 2:06:00
  Speaker 1: a day than it is for someone to have a
• 2:06:02
  Speaker 1: one-on-one conversation uninterrupted conversation with someone for an hour. Those
• 2:06:07
  Speaker 1: don't exist. They exist with lovers. That's it. With lovers
• 2:06:11
  Speaker 1: and occasionally if you have polite dinner companions that put
• 2:06:16
  Speaker 1: their phone down and just drink a glass of wine
• 2:06:18
  Speaker 1: and talk to you about stuff. Even then, people suck
• 2:06:21
  Speaker 1: at it. It's almost like people forgot how to do it.
• 2:06:24
  Speaker 1: They talk over each other. They don't listen to each
• 2:06:27
  Speaker 1: other when the other person's talking. They're just waiting their
• 2:06:29
  Speaker 1: turn to talk. We're going down weird roads that these
• 2:06:35
  Speaker 1: roads where we're sort of distancing ourselves from compassion and
• 2:06:40
  Speaker 1: understanding and real communication. Absolutely. I don't know what to
• 2:06:45
  Speaker 1: do about it either.
• 2:06:49
  Speaker 2: Psychedelics might help.
• 2:06:50
  Speaker 1: That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. I think
• 2:06:53
  Speaker 1: they would help. I think if we had like real
• 2:06:57
  Speaker 1: centers where you could go and just like you could
• 2:07:00
  Speaker 1: go to a place where, where you can get a
• 2:07:03
  Speaker 1: licensed therapist to massage you. You know, hey, I've got
• 2:07:08
  Speaker 1: this back pole, and the only thing that works is
• 2:07:12
  Speaker 1: deep tissue massage. You go to a place, they give
• 2:07:14
  Speaker 1: you a robe, they play nice music, they give you tea,
• 2:07:17
  Speaker 1: and they're setting the set. The setting and the ambiance
• 2:07:24
  Speaker 1: of the room, it enhances the experience of getting the massage.
• 2:07:28
  Speaker 1: When you go into the room... The lights are down.
• 2:07:30
  Speaker 1: They might have a candle lit. You know, there's some
• 2:07:33
  Speaker 1: fucking hot rocks in the place and they're playing beautiful
• 2:07:37
  Speaker 1: harp music in the background. The set and setting is
• 2:07:40
  Speaker 1: a part of the experience of getting a massage. If
• 2:07:44
  Speaker 1: we could have something like that and have these things
• 2:07:47
  Speaker 1: common for the use of psychedelics where you could go
• 2:07:50
  Speaker 1: to an actual some sort of therapist that's trained in
• 2:07:55
  Speaker 1: both psychotherapy and the use of psychedelics. so they could
• 2:07:59
  Speaker 1: taunt to you and find out if you're stable, ask
• 2:08:02
  Speaker 1: you questions about your medical history, what kind of medications
• 2:08:05
  Speaker 1: are you on, how are you feeling, what are you
• 2:08:07
  Speaker 1: trying to achieve through this, and then work you through
• 2:08:11
  Speaker 1: an experience. I mean, I think this could be enormously beneficial.
• 2:08:14
  Speaker 1: It already has been. Sure.
• 2:08:17
  Speaker 2: It already has been. I mean, that's, you know, we
• 2:08:18
  Speaker 2: keep talking about psychedelic medicine all the time, but so
• 2:08:22
  Speaker 2: much of this has been done. That's the really crazy thing.
• 2:08:24
  Speaker 2: Ibogaine used to be a pharmaceutical in France, although it
• 2:08:26
  Speaker 2: was used at lower doses that weren't psychedelic. There used
• 2:08:29
  Speaker 2: to be an MDMA.
• 2:08:29
  Speaker 1: What were they using it for?
• 2:08:31
  Speaker 2: As like a tonic to stimulate people. It was called Lamberine,
• 2:08:37
  Speaker 2: eight milligram tablets.
• 2:08:39
  Speaker 1: What is an effective dose?
• 2:08:41
  Speaker 2: Threshold psychoactivity, in my experience, is about 20 milligrams of
• 2:08:45
  Speaker 2: the hydrochloride salt.
• 2:08:47
  Speaker 1: So they were microdosing?
• 2:08:48
  Speaker 2: They were mini-microdosing.
• 2:08:50
  Speaker 1: Mini-microdosing Ibogaine.
• 2:08:52
  Speaker 2: They may have used multiple tablets.
• 2:08:54
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 2:08:55
  Speaker 2: If anyone is familiar with French historical literature relating to Ibogaine,
• 2:08:59
  Speaker 2: I have a little bit of it, but there isn't much.
• 2:09:01
  Speaker 2: I mean, again, they used to use a psychedelic called
• 2:09:03
  Speaker 2: Indopan as an antidepressant in the Soviet Union. In the
• 2:09:05
  Speaker 2: United States, there was a drug called Monase, alpha-ethyltryptamine. It
• 2:09:09
  Speaker 2: was used as an antidepressant. It's an MDMA-type serotonin releaser.
• 2:09:12
  Speaker 2: And then, of course, the whole history of DPT-facilitated end-of-life therapy,
• 2:09:17
  Speaker 2: LSD psychotherapy, on and on. Everything Shulgin's group did using 2C-B, MMDA, Ibogaine.
• 2:09:26
  Speaker 2: This was along with Claudio Naranjo in order to facilitate psychotherapy.
• 2:09:30
  Speaker 2: I mean, people... not only were doing it, they were
• 2:09:33
  Speaker 2: exploring all the different ways to do it, which compounds
• 2:09:36
  Speaker 2: are best for which applications.
• 2:09:39
  Speaker 1: Do you have any experience with cacao?
• 2:09:43
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 2:09:44
  Speaker 1: What is your experience in terms of the psychedelic effects
• 2:09:46
  Speaker 1: or psychoactive effects?
• 2:09:49
  Speaker 2: It's mildly stimulating because of the theobromine content.
• 2:09:52
  Speaker 1: But does it mirror a small dose of MDMA?
• 2:09:56
  Speaker 2: Not in my experience, no.
• 2:09:57
  Speaker 1: It was Kyle that was talking about that, right? Kyle Kingsbury?
• 2:10:01
  Speaker 1: He was saying that in large doses that raw cacao
• 2:10:05
  Speaker 1: has some sort of a mild MDMA-like effect.
• 2:10:08
  Speaker 2: I've heard people say that, and people will sometimes say
• 2:10:11
  Speaker 2: that the presence of phenethylamine in cacao could account for that,
• 2:10:15
  Speaker 2: but it's such a small amount. Trace quantities, less than
• 2:10:18
  Speaker 2: a milligram, and the active dose of phenethylamine is hundreds
• 2:10:21
  Speaker 2: of milligrams or grams in order to achieve a psychoactive effect.
• 2:10:24
  Speaker 2: So I think the effect that people do experience is
• 2:10:27
  Speaker 2: probably mediated by theobromine, which is present in In relatively
• 2:10:32
  Speaker 2: high quantities. That's how the, you know, it's named after
• 2:10:35
  Speaker 2: the genus Theobroma.
• 2:10:37
  Speaker 1: And Theobromine does what? How does it make you feel?
• 2:10:40
  Speaker 2: It's a caffeine type stimulant. Oh, okay. So when people
• 2:10:44
  Speaker 2: say that chocolate contains caffeine, they're really referring to Theobromine.
• 2:10:48
  Speaker 1: And is that why it's deadly to dogs? Yes, it is. Huh.
• 2:10:53
  Speaker 1: So it's Theobromine that's doing it.
• 2:10:55
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 2:10:55
  Speaker 1: Fascinating. So it's not actually caffeine.
• 2:10:58
  Speaker 2: No.
• 2:10:59
  Speaker 1: It's just a caffeine-like substance.
• 2:11:00
  Speaker 2: It's less potent than caffeine.
• 2:11:02
  Speaker 1: What was your experience like physically? How did you feel
• 2:11:04
  Speaker 1: when you took this cacao? And how large a dose?
• 2:11:10
  Speaker 2: I mean, I used to eat it every day.
• 2:11:12
  Speaker 1: Like raw?
• 2:11:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, like powder. I used to eat it every day
• 2:11:17
  Speaker 2: and yogurt.
• 2:11:18
  Speaker 1: Just as a health thing?
• 2:11:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, as a health thing. And I liked the flavor
• 2:11:23
  Speaker 2: of it, but... I have never had an experience beyond,
• 2:11:27
  Speaker 2: at most, a low-level stimulant experience. And I've also taken
• 2:11:31
  Speaker 2: pure theobromine, and it is stimulating, but it requires, like,
• 2:11:35
  Speaker 2: 500 milligrams to achieve an effect, if I remember correctly.
• 2:11:38
  Speaker 1: Hmm. What about... Do you ever fuck with nutmeg?
• 2:11:44
  Speaker 2: No, but, I mean, it's a fascinating area. Of course,
• 2:11:47
  Speaker 2: you know, prisoners historically did it. Malcolm X did it. Yeah.
• 2:11:51
  Speaker 2: And the essential oil of nutmeg contains... meristosin, which is
• 2:11:57
  Speaker 2: a precursor for the psychedelic amphetamine MMDA, not MDMA, but
• 2:12:01
  Speaker 2: it's methoxy-MDA, as well as elemesin, which is another psychedelic precursor,
• 2:12:09
  Speaker 2: as well as there's, I think, one other, maybe even safral, actually.
• 2:12:14
  Speaker 2: I think it's safral, elemesin, and meristosin. And Shulgin had
• 2:12:17
  Speaker 2: a hypothesis. Again, Shulgin was actually by training a biochemist,
• 2:12:21
  Speaker 2: not an organic chemist, although he spent his career doing
• 2:12:24
  Speaker 2: organic chemistry. So he was very interested in these ideas
• 2:12:26
  Speaker 2: of the body creating psychedelics. So he thought when you
• 2:12:29
  Speaker 2: consume nutmeg oil that your body is emanating this double
• 2:12:36
  Speaker 2: bond and creating a series of different amphetamines, and that's
• 2:12:39
  Speaker 2: what accounts for the high. But in reality, people don't
• 2:12:42
  Speaker 2: actually know.
• 2:12:42
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 2:12:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:12:47
  Speaker 1: So what kind of history of use does it have
• 2:12:50
  Speaker 1: in terms of like people taking it for the psychoactive benefits?
• 2:12:55
  Speaker 2: I'm sure there is some ancient, or I would be,
• 2:12:58
  Speaker 2: I would assume there is some ancient use of it. But,
• 2:13:01
  Speaker 2: you know, it's mostly like a thing for teenagers and
• 2:13:04
  Speaker 2: people in prison these days. It's kind of, it's a
• 2:13:06
  Speaker 2: legal high. It's one of these things that you do
• 2:13:08
  Speaker 2: when you don't have access to anything else. And most
• 2:13:12
  Speaker 2: of the reports make it sound more like an anticholinergic
• 2:13:15
  Speaker 2: deliriant type experience, more like taking a lot of Dramamine
• 2:13:18
  Speaker 2: than like a classical psychedelic experience. But you can use
• 2:13:21
  Speaker 2: that oil to make a lot of psychedelics in a laboratory.
• 2:13:25
  Speaker 1: Wow. Now, history of use is also so fascinating to
• 2:13:31
  Speaker 1: me when you talk about history of use because there
• 2:13:33
  Speaker 1: are certain cultures that really don't have a written history.
• 2:13:36
  Speaker 1: They have oral history. So it's very difficult to determine
• 2:13:40
  Speaker 1: when people started. What about peyote. What is the history
• 2:13:45
  Speaker 1: of use of peyote? Because I remember reading something that
• 2:13:48
  Speaker 1: kind of stunned me that said that there's only like
• 2:13:51
  Speaker 1: a couple hundred years of known use of peyote. Yeah.
• 2:13:55
  Speaker 2: Well, okay. So there's different histories because peyote is used,
• 2:13:58
  Speaker 2: it grows naturally over a relatively broad region stretching from
• 2:14:02
  Speaker 2: the southern United States into, I believe, mostly northern Mexico.
• 2:14:07
  Speaker 2: And so in the United States, the history is about
• 2:14:13
  Speaker 2: 100 years old of the Native American church. It's recent.
• 2:14:18
  Speaker 1: That's crazy. So 1918.
• 2:14:21
  Speaker 2: Something like that.
• 2:14:22
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 2:14:23
  Speaker 2: It was a Comanche chief named Quanah Parker who spread
• 2:14:28
  Speaker 2: the peyote religion across the United States. And it caught
• 2:14:32
  Speaker 2: on because it's fantastic. Of course it caught on.
• 2:14:35
  Speaker 1: I've never experienced it. What is it like?
• 2:14:38
  Speaker 2: Well, again, it's another one of these plants that has
• 2:14:41
  Speaker 2: mescaline of course but then it has these other accessory
• 2:14:45
  Speaker 2: alkaloids that modulate the experience so what's really interesting about
• 2:14:47
  Speaker 2: peyote is it contains this chemical called peyotein and peyotein
• 2:14:52
  Speaker 2: i have some uh pharmacy trade journals from like 1890
• 2:14:57
  Speaker 2: or something like that no it must be later than
• 2:14:58
  Speaker 2: that it must be maybe like 1915 or something like
• 2:15:01
  Speaker 2: that sometime around there and they talk about like your
• 2:15:04
  Speaker 2: pharmacy must have morphine cocaine and peyote and the three
• 2:15:09
  Speaker 2: substances every pharmacist needs and uh and peyote was used
• 2:15:14
  Speaker 2: as a hypnotic it was used to induce sleep but
• 2:15:16
  Speaker 2: there's been no very little research on it none in
• 2:15:21
  Speaker 2: the 21st century i mean this is like uh was
• 2:15:23
  Speaker 2: once considered a really valuable medicine the issue is that
• 2:15:26
  Speaker 2: it's a little bit tricky to synthesize and it has
• 2:15:28
  Speaker 2: to be extracted from this rare cactus lefophora diffusa but
• 2:15:32
  Speaker 2: um but that modulates the experience you have so many
• 2:15:34
  Speaker 2: different alkaloids and And it's very long-lasting. It causes dramatic
• 2:15:40
  Speaker 2: pupil dilation. It's extremely nauseating. I made an episode about
• 2:15:44
  Speaker 2: peyote in the most recent season of my show. And
• 2:15:50
  Speaker 2: I vomited so much that my nose started bleeding. You know,
• 2:15:55
  Speaker 2: it was some serious vomiting. And it's physically very, very punishing,
• 2:16:01
  Speaker 2: more so than almost anything I've ever done.
• 2:16:02
  Speaker 1: In terms of the after effects or while you're doing it?
• 2:16:05
  Speaker 2: While you're doing it, it's a heavy load on the body.
• 2:16:10
  Speaker 2: So it's, people always say this is not recreational or whatever,
• 2:16:14
  Speaker 2: but it truly isn't. You know, this is really a
• 2:16:17
  Speaker 2: punishing experience. And on top of that, the Native American
• 2:16:21
  Speaker 2: ceremonies often accentuate some of those punishing aspects of it,
• 2:16:25
  Speaker 2: like water is conserved. You don't get to drink as
• 2:16:29
  Speaker 2: much water as you want, but to emphasize the importance
• 2:16:32
  Speaker 2: of water. And Mazatec salvia ceremonies, there's no water at all,
• 2:16:36
  Speaker 2: which I think actually increases the absorption of the leaf
• 2:16:39
  Speaker 2: into your mouth because the natural reaction when you eat
• 2:16:42
  Speaker 2: something disgusting is to wash it down with water. These
• 2:16:45
  Speaker 2: are little things that people do impulsively without thinking that
• 2:16:47
  Speaker 2: are going to change the nature of the experience. So anyway,
• 2:16:51
  Speaker 2: you eat this cactus. It's incredibly nauseating and bitter. And
• 2:16:54
  Speaker 2: then you have maybe a 12-hour hallucinatory euphoric state that's
• 2:17:01
  Speaker 2: very beautiful and strange.
• 2:17:03
  Speaker 1: And you just eat the cactus raw?
• 2:17:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Some people grind it. Some people cook it.
• 2:17:07
  Speaker 1: With cactus, you could get that shit at Home Depot.
• 2:17:10
  Speaker 2: You can get San Pedro at Home Depot.
• 2:17:12
  Speaker 1: It's not the same?
• 2:17:12
  Speaker 2: No, no. Peyote is a dumpling cactus. It's a very small,
• 2:17:16
  Speaker 2: somewhat spherical cactus that produces beautiful white and pink flowers.
• 2:17:22
  Speaker 2: And it's incredibly slow growing, which is why... The conservation
• 2:17:26
  Speaker 2: of peyote is an even bigger issue than the conservation
• 2:17:28
  Speaker 2: of toads. I mean, peyote, all these psychedelic plants have
• 2:17:32
  Speaker 2: major conservation issues that need to be addressed, but peyote
• 2:17:34
  Speaker 2: is arguably the biggest of them all because this is
• 2:17:37
  Speaker 2: a slow-growing plant. If you want to learn patience, grow peyote.
• 2:17:42
  Speaker 2: That is how you learn, I mean, this bottle cap.
• 2:17:45
  Speaker 2: I mean, it takes five years before it's the size
• 2:17:47
  Speaker 2: of a dime if you grow it from seed. Yes.
• 2:17:50
  Speaker 2: So when you're eating something that's, you know, that's as
• 2:17:56
  Speaker 2: big as the rim of a coffee mug or something
• 2:17:58
  Speaker 2: like that, it might be 20, 30 years old.
• 2:18:01
  Speaker 1: Jesus Christ.
• 2:18:02
  Speaker 2: So there's a lot of history in these plants. They
• 2:18:05
  Speaker 2: call them grandfather peyote. And I think the reason is
• 2:18:07
  Speaker 2: that by the time that they're ready to be They
• 2:18:10
  Speaker 2: often are grandfathers or grandmothers. They have produced seeds and
• 2:18:15
  Speaker 2: have offspring and all this stuff because it takes that long. So, yes,
• 2:18:22
  Speaker 2: it's very slow growing. It's not a sustainable practice the
• 2:18:27
  Speaker 2: way that it's being done, but there's also even bigger...
• 2:18:31
  Speaker 2: threats to the environment in the form of root plowing
• 2:18:33
  Speaker 2: all of the territory to build Walmarts and subdivisions and
• 2:18:36
  Speaker 2: different things in South Texas, because most of that land
• 2:18:39
  Speaker 2: is privately owned. And, um, and it's difficult because there's
• 2:18:45
  Speaker 2: a belief in the native American church that has to
• 2:18:47
  Speaker 2: be outdoor natural grown. It can't be a greenhouse cultivated
• 2:18:51
  Speaker 2: plant because part of the potency and the value is
• 2:18:54
  Speaker 2: from its interaction with nature. So if it's sustainably harvested
• 2:18:59
  Speaker 2: where only the crown of the cactus is removed, but
• 2:19:01
  Speaker 2: this long carrot-like taproot is left in the soil, it
• 2:19:04
  Speaker 2: can regenerate new heads. But if people don't have proper
• 2:19:07
  Speaker 2: harvesting techniques, it can decimate the population very quickly, especially
• 2:19:11
  Speaker 2: because it's not a very potent substance. It requires many
• 2:19:15
  Speaker 2: of these ultra, ultra, ultra slow growing plants.
• 2:19:20
  Speaker 1: Wow. So... What is the natural territory of it? How
• 2:19:24
  Speaker 1: wide is the natural territory of these plants?
• 2:19:26
  Speaker 2: I can't tell you exactly, but it's not very large.
• 2:19:30
  Speaker 1: So if it got very popular, there'd be a real problem.
• 2:19:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it probably won't. I mean, you know, the people
• 2:19:37
  Speaker 2: that care most about it outside of the Native American
• 2:19:39
  Speaker 2: church are, interestingly, cactophiles in Thailand and Japan who grow
• 2:19:43
  Speaker 2: it for purely aesthetic purposes because it's so beautiful. And
• 2:19:48
  Speaker 2: they would never even consider it because to them it's
• 2:19:50
  Speaker 2: this prized ornamental plant that produces amazing fruit and flowers
• 2:19:54
  Speaker 2: and lives seemingly forever. And if you take care of it,
• 2:19:58
  Speaker 2: it can just look amazing. So there's a huge peyote
• 2:20:04
  Speaker 2: scene in Thailand of people that never would dream of
• 2:20:07
  Speaker 2: consuming it, that just grow it ornamentally.
• 2:20:09
  Speaker 1: Wow. Now, San Pedro cactus, does that have psychoactive properties?
• 2:20:14
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, yes.
• 2:20:15
  Speaker 1: And did you have to extract it in a different way?
• 2:20:18
  Speaker 2: Like peyote, it can be consumed raw. With some varieties
• 2:20:22
  Speaker 2: of San Pedro, they actually contain comparable quantities of mescaline
• 2:20:26
  Speaker 2: to peyote, and it's a much more sustainable source of
• 2:20:29
  Speaker 2: mescaline for that reason. Unlike peyote, it grows very, very
• 2:20:33
  Speaker 2: quickly and can be propagated by cutting easily, and it's
• 2:20:39
  Speaker 2: much easier to work with. But traditionally, if you go
• 2:20:42
  Speaker 2: to Peru, they'll take a length of the cactus and
• 2:20:44
  Speaker 2: they'll cut it like a loaf of bread into slices
• 2:20:47
  Speaker 2: then they boil those slices and create a sort of
• 2:20:51
  Speaker 2: low potency aqueous infusion that they drink. And what's interesting
• 2:20:56
  Speaker 2: about the way they do it is that it seems
• 2:20:58
  Speaker 2: that it's almost designed to create a lower potency drink.
• 2:21:01
  Speaker 2: The way they do it, they drink every night, the shamans,
• 2:21:04
  Speaker 2: every night of their entire life. And many people come
• 2:21:07
  Speaker 2: back and do it repeatedly. And for them, it's sort
• 2:21:10
  Speaker 2: of It's like a traditional form of microdosing, you could say.
• 2:21:12
  Speaker 2: It's not about blasting yourself into the cosmos the way
• 2:21:15
  Speaker 2: people do when they smoke DMT. This is about fortifying
• 2:21:20
  Speaker 2: your body, giving yourself strength, cleansing yourself, balancing yourself.
• 2:21:26
  Speaker 1: And are there people that consume it raw as well?
• 2:21:29
  Speaker 2: Not that I saw there, no. Oh, but people do.
• 2:21:33
  Speaker 1: But people do.
• 2:21:33
  Speaker 2: I have.
• 2:21:34
  Speaker 1: And what is the effect? Is it comparable to the
• 2:21:37
  Speaker 1: peyote effect?
• 2:21:39
  Speaker 2: It's comparable, but it's, yeah, it's comparable. But again, it
• 2:21:44
  Speaker 2: gets very hard because of these variations with natural products
• 2:21:47
  Speaker 2: in terms of the potency of the cactus and that
• 2:21:50
  Speaker 2: point in your life. And, you know, people always come
• 2:21:52
  Speaker 2: up to me and say, what's the deal with MDMA?
• 2:21:54
  Speaker 2: It used to be like this, and now it's like this.
• 2:21:57
  Speaker 2: What accounts for that? It's like, well, don't underestimate your
• 2:22:00
  Speaker 2: own changes over time. When I was 21, I could
• 2:22:04
  Speaker 2: drink alcohol, not that I did very often, but I
• 2:22:06
  Speaker 2: could and not want to kill myself the next day. Now,
• 2:22:10
  Speaker 2: if I try to drink more than three drinks, I'm
• 2:22:12
  Speaker 2: going to feel horrible the next day, like just emotionally ruined.
• 2:22:16
  Speaker 2: And that's me, not alcohol.
• 2:22:18
  Speaker 1: Now, you brought up the term hypnotic, which reminded me
• 2:22:27
  Speaker 1: of our conversation that we had through email about Roseanne Barr. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Right.
• 2:22:32
  Speaker 2: Oh, yes, of course.
• 2:22:33
  Speaker 1: Yes. And about Ambien. Yeah. And about the effects of Ambien.
• 2:22:36
  Speaker 2: She came on the show.
• 2:22:37
  Speaker 1: She still hasn't. She can't... She's having a really hard
• 2:22:42
  Speaker 1: time with this. She feels terrible about what she said.
• 2:22:48
  Speaker 1: She feels like the whole world hates her. She feels
• 2:22:51
  Speaker 1: like she's lost everything and her life is destroyed and
• 2:22:56
  Speaker 1: she's distraught. She was going to fly out here, but
• 2:23:00
  Speaker 1: we had a conversation and we kind of decided it'd
• 2:23:03
  Speaker 1: be probably better if she waited. Just let some of this...
• 2:23:07
  Speaker 1: pass by. It's still in the news because they've decided
• 2:23:10
  Speaker 1: to move the show on without her. They're, they're going
• 2:23:13
  Speaker 1: to kill her off or something. Yeah. And she's just devastated. And, uh,
• 2:23:20
  Speaker 1: you know, she was also devastated health wise, uh, physically
• 2:23:24
  Speaker 1: she's an older woman and not that it'd be any different.
• 2:23:28
  Speaker 1: She was an older man. She's an older person. And,
• 2:23:31
  Speaker 1: this grueling schedule of doing a television show was horrible
• 2:23:34
  Speaker 1: on her. It just, it was really, really tough to do.
• 2:23:38
  Speaker 1: She got bronchitis. She felt like she was almost dying.
• 2:23:41
  Speaker 1: She was completely exhausted and she felt like the schedule
• 2:23:45
  Speaker 1: of it all just was just way too taxing on
• 2:23:49
  Speaker 1: her physically. Then on top of that, she's on a
• 2:23:52
  Speaker 1: host of different things. She's, I mean, she'll, if we
• 2:23:55
  Speaker 1: ever do wind up sitting down and talking on the podcast,
• 2:23:58
  Speaker 1: I'll get her to list, um, the various things she's on,
• 2:24:01
  Speaker 1: but she's on various antidepressants. She changes them up, mixes
• 2:24:05
  Speaker 1: them up. One of the things she said to me,
• 2:24:07
  Speaker 1: she needs to get her doses readjusted. She drinks alcohol regularly.
• 2:24:11
  Speaker 1: She smokes marijuana regularly. She's also on Ambien regularly. Takes
• 2:24:15
  Speaker 1: it every night to go to sleep. And I tried
• 2:24:17
  Speaker 1: to explain to her the fact that you're not getting
• 2:24:21
  Speaker 1: real sleep when you're on that. This is not something
• 2:24:24
  Speaker 1: you should take and rely on on a daily basis.
• 2:24:26
  Speaker 1: They even tell you to get off of it. And
• 2:24:29
  Speaker 1: it's difficult to get off of it. But people want
• 2:24:35
  Speaker 1: to dismiss the idea that she could have said something
• 2:24:39
  Speaker 1: that's completely out of character or done something that's completely
• 2:24:42
  Speaker 1: out of character while under the influence of this stuff,
• 2:24:45
  Speaker 1: that it could have contributed to that. They want to
• 2:24:47
  Speaker 1: dismiss it because they want a villain. No, she's bad.
• 2:24:51
  Speaker 1: They want this childlike, simplistic... reasoning and rationalization for what
• 2:24:58
  Speaker 1: she's done. Right.
• 2:25:01
  Speaker 2: And this is a prime example of the sort of
• 2:25:04
  Speaker 2: schizophrenic nature of the way drugs are depicted in our society.
• 2:25:08
  Speaker 2: If it's something like bath salts or K2, they're responsible
• 2:25:15
  Speaker 2: for everything. One toke of that stuff and you're eating
• 2:25:19
  Speaker 2: your best friend's face under a bridge. But then in
• 2:25:22
  Speaker 2: Roseanne's case, they have no explanation whatsoever, no exculpatory value.
• 2:25:27
  Speaker 2: They can't be used to explain anything. Is it an excuse?
• 2:25:31
  Speaker 1: No.
• 2:25:32
  Speaker 2: Is it an explanation? I think yes. I think that
• 2:25:36
  Speaker 2: intoxication can explain all sorts of inappropriate behavior, and to
• 2:25:39
  Speaker 2: pretend otherwise is, again, dishonest. I know Sanofi, the pharmaceutical
• 2:25:45
  Speaker 2: company that manufactures Ambien, had this widely shared tweet saying
• 2:25:49
  Speaker 2: that racism isn't a side effect of Ambien, but It's
• 2:25:53
  Speaker 2: a little bit ridiculous for them to have done that,
• 2:25:56
  Speaker 2: especially to someone who's mentally ill, because if you look
• 2:26:00
  Speaker 2: at the medical literature, the fact of the matter is
• 2:26:02
  Speaker 2: that Ambien is associated with all sorts of absurd behaviors,
• 2:26:06
  Speaker 2: command hallucinations, where people stab themselves, jump out windows, people
• 2:26:11
  Speaker 2: that butter their cigarettes and smoke them, people that paint
• 2:26:16
  Speaker 2: their houses in the middle of the night with no
• 2:26:18
  Speaker 2: memory whatsoever, and it's a profoundly, profoundly disinhibiting drug. So,
• 2:26:23
  Speaker 2: you know, here's maybe a somewhat analogous example from my
• 2:26:26
  Speaker 2: own life. I never take Ambien on planes for this
• 2:26:28
  Speaker 2: reason because I'm around strangers. I don't know what I'm
• 2:26:31
  Speaker 2: going to say or what I'm going to do, let
• 2:26:33
  Speaker 2: alone use Twitter. But it's uncomfortable because it's so disinhibiting.
• 2:26:37
  Speaker 2: I might do something weird. I don't know, take off
• 2:26:39
  Speaker 2: my shirt. I have no idea. Who's to predict what
• 2:26:42
  Speaker 2: you're going to do when you have no inhibitions whatsoever?
• 2:26:45
  Speaker 2: So I remember once I was on the plane to
• 2:26:47
  Speaker 2: Berlin and I did take Ambien. And I start in
• 2:26:49
  Speaker 2: a sort of delusional state thinking that the cabin crew
• 2:26:53
  Speaker 2: and the person that's announcing over the intercom is saying
• 2:26:58
  Speaker 2: various Nazi things. That's like an unfair stereotype that all
• 2:27:02
  Speaker 2: Germans are Nazis. That's offensive. But I had no control
• 2:27:06
  Speaker 2: over this. Like just because they're German talking in German
• 2:27:09
  Speaker 2: doesn't mean that this is like a Nazi airship because
• 2:27:12
  Speaker 2: you're just completely out of your mind. Wow. But again,
• 2:27:16
  Speaker 2: I mean, I'll like another story. Um, I used to
• 2:27:20
  Speaker 2: be friends with a girl whose dad was a psychiatrist,
• 2:27:22
  Speaker 2: prescribed her immense quantities of Ambien, and she would snort it.
• 2:27:26
  Speaker 2: There's no reason to snort it. It's water-soluble. It has
• 2:27:28
  Speaker 2: a fast onset of action. There's no benefit in snorting it.
• 2:27:31
  Speaker 2: It's fine orally if you're going to take it at all.
• 2:27:33
  Speaker 2: And there's no reason to take high doses. It's already
• 2:27:35
  Speaker 2: a delirium at the therapeutic dose. You don't need to
• 2:27:37
  Speaker 2: take more. Even five milligrams induces delirium. But I remember
• 2:27:43
  Speaker 2: I was at some party and someone was saying that
• 2:27:48
  Speaker 2: they wanted ketamine. Did anyone at the party have ketamine?
• 2:27:51
  Speaker 2: And just a complete stranger. And I said, oh, I
• 2:27:54
  Speaker 2: actually have a little bit of ketamine, but it's at
• 2:27:55
  Speaker 2: my apartment. here are the keys and here's my address,
• 2:27:58
  Speaker 2: and just run over to my apartment and help yourself.
• 2:28:01
  Speaker 2: Talk to you later. And then I'm one of these people,
• 2:28:06
  Speaker 2: I've never lost my phone, never lost my keys, I
• 2:28:09
  Speaker 2: don't lose things. So then I wake up the next morning,
• 2:28:12
  Speaker 2: go to my apartment, reach into my pocket, my keys
• 2:28:13
  Speaker 2: are gone. And then it hits me, this flash of,
• 2:28:16
  Speaker 2: oh my God, I gave my keys away to a
• 2:28:19
  Speaker 2: complete stranger to go to my apartment and take ketamine
• 2:28:22
  Speaker 2: from me. What on earth happened? was I thinking what
• 2:28:27
  Speaker 2: level of disinhibition is required to do something that insane? Luckily,
• 2:28:32
  Speaker 2: I then had to spend the rest of the day tracing,
• 2:28:34
  Speaker 2: finding out who that person was, getting my keys, and
• 2:28:36
  Speaker 2: these people happened to be very courteous people and actually
• 2:28:38
  Speaker 2: did go to my apartment, did take the small amount
• 2:28:41
  Speaker 2: of ketamine that I had, and then just locked the
• 2:28:44
  Speaker 2: door after themselves and didn't make a mess. But again,
• 2:28:48
  Speaker 2: I mean, this is a profoundly disinhibiting, substance. And also,
• 2:28:53
  Speaker 2: I think the idea that a drug couldn't modulate racist
• 2:28:58
  Speaker 2: activity is interesting as well, because there's a study that
• 2:29:00
  Speaker 2: you can look up where they use the beta blocker propranolol,
• 2:29:04
  Speaker 2: and they found that it actually seems to block implicit
• 2:29:08
  Speaker 2: racial bias in people in certain tests. What they're suggesting
• 2:29:13
  Speaker 2: is that there's an adrenergic component to implicit racial bias.
• 2:29:18
  Speaker 2: There's a certain maybe heart rate or fear response. And
• 2:29:21
  Speaker 2: once that's physiologically blocked, you become less racist in a sense, implicitly.
• 2:29:28
  Speaker 2: It's not a conscious decision. Conscious racism isn't reduced, but
• 2:29:31
  Speaker 2: an implicit racial bias is. I mean, these are like
• 2:29:34
  Speaker 2: really complicated, higher level questions about how drugs impact cognitive functioning.
• 2:29:40
  Speaker 2: And the bottom line, I think, is be careful being
• 2:29:46
  Speaker 2: certain about anything, about what drugs can or can't do.
• 2:29:50
  Speaker 1: What is this, Jamie?
• 2:29:51
  Speaker 2: Oh, this is the story.
• 2:29:52
  Speaker 1: Blood pressure drug reduces inbuilt... What is that word? Inbuilt racism.
• 2:29:59
  Speaker 1: Common heart disease drug may have an unusual side effect
• 2:30:02
  Speaker 1: of combating racism. Wasn't that a fucking... That stupid movie
• 2:30:08
  Speaker 1: with Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt, As Good As It Gets.
• 2:30:12
  Speaker 1: He was a racist and they gave him a pill.
• 2:30:15
  Speaker 1: They gave him some medication and it reduced racism. It
• 2:30:18
  Speaker 1: stopped him from being racist.
• 2:30:20
  Speaker 2: Whoa, I completely forgot about that part.
• 2:30:21
  Speaker 1: I remember it because I was angry because a bunch
• 2:30:24
  Speaker 1: of people from the– I was working on a television
• 2:30:27
  Speaker 1: show at the time. A bunch of people were talking
• 2:30:29
  Speaker 1: about how great a movie it was because it was
• 2:30:30
  Speaker 1: this weird, dark sort of film. And I was like,
• 2:30:34
  Speaker 1: that movie fucking sucked. It was so depressing. Here's this woman.
• 2:30:38
  Speaker 1: She's got, you know, she's like a waitress. And Jack
• 2:30:42
  Speaker 1: Nicholson is this old racist asshole. And she's relying on
• 2:30:46
  Speaker 1: him for some real reason because she can't find anyone
• 2:30:48
  Speaker 1: who's nice to her. And he's racist. But the resolve
• 2:30:53
  Speaker 1: of the film was that he just was sick. And
• 2:30:55
  Speaker 1: they gave him some medication. He wasn't racist anymore. I'm like,
• 2:30:57
  Speaker 1: get the fuck out of here. That doesn't make any sense. Meanwhile,
• 2:31:01
  Speaker 1: maybe it does.
• 2:31:02
  Speaker 2: I mean, Ambien is an amazing, amazing substance. I made
• 2:31:05
  Speaker 2: a piece about it called The Ambien Effect years ago.
• 2:31:07
  Speaker 2: I don't know if you're familiar. There are people who
• 2:31:09
  Speaker 2: are paralyzed who can take Ambien and start walking again.
• 2:31:12
  Speaker 2: It has the power to regenerate activity in regions of
• 2:31:18
  Speaker 2: the brain that look dead on fMRI. It is a
• 2:31:21
  Speaker 2: wacky drug. It's also chemically very similar to 5-methyl DMT.
• 2:31:26
  Speaker 2: It's not like a benzodiazepine like Valium. It has its
• 2:31:29
  Speaker 2: own bizarre properties.
• 2:31:30
  Speaker 1: Structure.
• 2:31:31
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's a weird drug.
• 2:31:33
  Speaker 1: So when these people are paralyzed, why are they paralyzed?
• 2:31:37
  Speaker 1: What is wrong with them?
• 2:31:38
  Speaker 2: Strokes, traumatic brain injury, various reasons. There's a book about
• 2:31:42
  Speaker 2: it called Hope in Brain Damage, I believe the title
• 2:31:45
  Speaker 2: of it is.
• 2:31:46
  Speaker 1: And Ambien somehow or another temporarily fixes it?
• 2:31:50
  Speaker 2: Yes, only for the duration of the drug effect. So
• 2:31:53
  Speaker 2: there's people that are in a persistent vegetative state. They
• 2:31:57
  Speaker 2: take Ambien and suddenly they wake up.
• 2:32:00
  Speaker 1: What the fuck? Yes. Yeah.
• 2:32:02
  Speaker 2: It's pretty. It's well documented. And it's a really bizarre
• 2:32:06
  Speaker 2: effect that is exclusively present in Ambien and maybe slightly
• 2:32:10
  Speaker 2: in Baclofen as well. Yeah.
• 2:32:12
  Speaker 1: I thought that the statement that the pharmaceutical company made
• 2:32:16
  Speaker 1: about racism not being a side effect was kind of cute.
• 2:32:21
  Speaker 1: It's kind of witty.
• 2:32:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:32:22
  Speaker 1: It was very snarky. Yes. But the problem with that
• 2:32:26
  Speaker 1: shit is, well, what are the side effects? And then
• 2:32:29
  Speaker 1: you go into the actual side effects. You're like, holy shit.
• 2:32:32
  Speaker 1: How is this legal? And then you go into the
• 2:32:33
  Speaker 1: side effects of like, what is this doing to people? Oh, yeah.
• 2:32:37
  Speaker 2: Here's another one. It supposedly increases consolidation of negative memories.
• 2:32:42
  Speaker 1: Whoa. Yeah.
• 2:32:43
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of weird stuff.
• 2:32:45
  Speaker 1: Negative memories.
• 2:32:46
  Speaker 2: Increases consolidation of negative memories, causes just total hallucinatory insanity
• 2:32:51
  Speaker 2: at higher doses, maybe the most powerful disinhibiting agent I'm
• 2:32:55
  Speaker 2: aware of, and is able to restore cognitive and motor
• 2:33:00
  Speaker 2: functioning in people with traumatic brain injuries. What a weird drug.
• 2:33:04
  Speaker 1: Very weird. And not something people should be taking every day.
• 2:33:10
  Speaker 1: Just not.
• 2:33:11
  Speaker 2: It's certainly addictive. I mean, it binds to, even though
• 2:33:13
  Speaker 2: it's not a benzodiazepine itself, it binds to the benzodiazepine
• 2:33:16
  Speaker 2: site on the GABA-A receptor. But yes, no, it's addictive.
• 2:33:20
  Speaker 2: It's super addictive. So for that reason alone, people shouldn't
• 2:33:23
  Speaker 2: be taking it every day because you'll become horrendously dependent
• 2:33:26
  Speaker 2: on it.
• 2:33:27
  Speaker 1: And withdrawal is ruthless.
• 2:33:29
  Speaker 2: Yes, withdrawal is total insomnia.
• 2:33:36
  Speaker 1: So most people just go right back to it.
• 2:33:39
  Speaker 2: Or you can transition on to different types of hypnotics,
• 2:33:42
  Speaker 2: like taking an anticholinergic like Benadryl to sleep, or cannabinoids, cannabis,
• 2:33:48
  Speaker 2: things like that, or just things that don't bind to
• 2:33:51
  Speaker 2: the GABA-A receptor in order to try to reduce tolerance.
• 2:33:54
  Speaker 2: There's ways around it. You're not doomed if you start
• 2:33:57
  Speaker 2: taking it, but it's certainly habit-forming and something that's best
• 2:34:02
  Speaker 2: to avoid if you don't require it.
• 2:34:04
  Speaker 1: And it doesn't give you real sleep, correct? I mean,
• 2:34:06
  Speaker 1: you're missing some part of the sleep cycle. Dr. Matthew
• 2:34:10
  Speaker 1: Walker was on here as a sleep specialist, and he
• 2:34:13
  Speaker 1: went into depth about it, but I really don't remember
• 2:34:15
  Speaker 1: his exact description. But he was talking about how it
• 2:34:19
  Speaker 1: bypasses certain cycles, and you're not getting a real night's sleep.
• 2:34:24
  Speaker 2: I'm not aware of that. I mean, it wouldn't surprise
• 2:34:28
  Speaker 2: me hugely. There's still debate about what the most restful
• 2:34:32
  Speaker 2: part of sleep is, um, I think most literature points
• 2:34:37
  Speaker 2: to actually non-REM sleep, uh, slow wave sleep being the
• 2:34:40
  Speaker 2: most restful type. And that's actually supported or promoted by
• 2:34:45
  Speaker 2: chemicals like muscimol from the Amanita muscaria mushroom. Um, that, that, and,
• 2:34:50
  Speaker 2: and there was one pharmaceutical derivative called Gabox at all
• 2:34:52
  Speaker 2: that I did an episode about on the most recent
• 2:34:55
  Speaker 2: season of my show. And that really does produce incredibly
• 2:34:59
  Speaker 2: restful sleep that is superior to Ambien. But like Ambien,
• 2:35:01
  Speaker 2: it was also psychedelic, even more psychedelic probably. So this
• 2:35:06
  Speaker 2: is an issue. It seems that for whatever reason, a
• 2:35:08
  Speaker 2: lot of these drugs that really promote sleep effectively also
• 2:35:12
  Speaker 2: happen to be hallucinogenic. And nobody knows exactly why. But
• 2:35:16
  Speaker 2: it's been a pharmaceutical barrier because we don't live in
• 2:35:21
  Speaker 2: a culture that allows people to go nuts at night.
• 2:35:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no kidding. I'm glad you brought up the Amanita
• 2:35:30
  Speaker 1: Muscaria because that's another one that is almost like a
• 2:35:37
  Speaker 1: drug of lore more than a drug of application. You
• 2:35:41
  Speaker 1: don't really hear too much about people getting real good experiences. No,
• 2:35:45
  Speaker 1: you don't. But it's also connected to the Sacred Mushroom
• 2:35:50
  Speaker 1: and the Cross. The cover of it from John Marco
• 2:35:52
  Speaker 1: Allegro has the Amanita Muscaria. He thought that the Amanita
• 2:35:56
  Speaker 1: Muscaria was probably linked to psychedelic states and prehistoric Christianity. Well,
• 2:36:04
  Speaker 1: we don't know, right?
• 2:36:05
  Speaker 2: Oh, he's such a salacious, wacky guy.
• 2:36:07
  Speaker 1: Was he? Oh, yes.
• 2:36:09
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. I mean, he was getting off on it. He
• 2:36:12
  Speaker 2: loved it.
• 2:36:13
  Speaker 1: He would love getting off on freaking people out about.
• 2:36:16
  Speaker 2: On freaking out Christians. I mean, that was a... You
• 2:36:18
  Speaker 2: can't underestimate what he was saying.
• 2:36:20
  Speaker 1: He was saying.
• 2:36:21
  Speaker 2: all of Christianity is a sex cult that worships a
• 2:36:24
  Speaker 2: fungal phallus, and the semen of that phallus are the spores.
• 2:36:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:36:30
  Speaker 2: That all of Christianity is an ancient fertility cult. That's
• 2:36:32
  Speaker 2: a big claim from a serious Oxford-educated Dead Sea Scroll
• 2:36:38
  Speaker 2: scholar who was respected up until that point.
• 2:36:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, who was also an ordained minister.
• 2:36:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, there's a great book called Shroom that
• 2:36:46
  Speaker 2: argues that this was all some kind of cynical attack
• 2:36:49
  Speaker 2: on the Christian religion and that he didn't even believe
• 2:36:51
  Speaker 2: it himself. The issue is that in order to carefully
• 2:36:57
  Speaker 2: examine his claims, you need to speak, what is it,
• 2:36:59
  Speaker 2: ancient Aramaic or something? So it's like, it doesn't, I'm
• 2:37:02
  Speaker 2: not in a position reading his book, which is all
• 2:37:06
  Speaker 2: having to do with the etymology of these words, their
• 2:37:09
  Speaker 2: origins in different languages. I just don't know enough about
• 2:37:12
  Speaker 2: these ancient languages to make an informed assessment of his claims.
• 2:37:17
  Speaker 2: But which is, I think, one reason that they've kind
• 2:37:20
  Speaker 2: of hung around in this lore for such a long time,
• 2:37:23
  Speaker 2: because it's hard for people to say with certainty if
• 2:37:26
  Speaker 2: they're true or not, although I lean toward them probably
• 2:37:30
  Speaker 2: not being well-supported.
• 2:37:37
  Speaker 1: Big pause. Why is that? It just seems too wacky.
• 2:37:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because I haven't seen them integrated into any serious
• 2:37:45
  Speaker 2: work since. Not that that's necessarily a good argument.
• 2:37:49
  Speaker 1: It would take a lot of education to be able
• 2:37:52
  Speaker 1: to even understand whether or not that debate is cogent.
• 2:37:58
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 2:37:59
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 2:38:00
  Speaker 2: It's the same deal. I encounter this sometimes on like
• 2:38:02
  Speaker 2: really fringe aspects of physics and chemistry where someone will
• 2:38:05
  Speaker 2: make some kind of wacky argument about the way atoms
• 2:38:08
  Speaker 2: bond or something like that. And it's like, it gets
• 2:38:11
  Speaker 2: hard because you only have like a small handful of
• 2:38:13
  Speaker 2: people that are capable of seriously evaluating the claims, able
• 2:38:16
  Speaker 2: to weigh in, and then it doesn't really get vetted
• 2:38:20
  Speaker 2: in a serious way. So things just linger around as
• 2:38:22
  Speaker 2: maybe it's true, maybe it's not. But the bottom line
• 2:38:26
  Speaker 2: is that most people don't, get a valuable experience from
• 2:38:29
  Speaker 2: these mushrooms, but some do. Some people have figured out
• 2:38:32
  Speaker 2: how to make it work, and the experience is, again,
• 2:38:34
  Speaker 2: it's its own thing. It's a GABAergic delirium. It takes
• 2:38:38
  Speaker 2: you into a dreamy, drunk zone.
• 2:38:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's in many ways a toxin, right? It's
• 2:38:47
  Speaker 1: toxic in some forms.
• 2:38:49
  Speaker 2: Well, it contains another chemical, ibotenic acid. that is potentially
• 2:38:54
  Speaker 2: very toxic, although it hasn't really been examined. In fact,
• 2:38:57
  Speaker 2: it also contains a complex of this element, vanadium, that
• 2:38:59
  Speaker 2: could potentially be toxic as well. So there are some
• 2:39:02
  Speaker 2: legitimate toxicity concerns that I think anyone who's consuming it
• 2:39:06
  Speaker 2: should be aware of. You know, the ideal situation would
• 2:39:09
  Speaker 2: be isolated muscimol, but it's hard to extract.
• 2:39:14
  Speaker 1: But yet it's connected in so much artwork and so
• 2:39:18
  Speaker 1: much ancient depictions of particularly of Christmas cards. There's always
• 2:39:24
  Speaker 1: elves in these little Amanita muscaria caps.
• 2:39:27
  Speaker 2: Right. Well, drugs aside, you have to acknowledge that it's
• 2:39:30
  Speaker 2: a spectacularly beautiful mushroom. I've gone mushroom hunting all over
• 2:39:35
  Speaker 2: the world, and there is no question that when you
• 2:39:38
  Speaker 2: see that mushroom in habitat, that it's completely spectacular. There's
• 2:39:44
  Speaker 2: nothing else like it. It is a magical experience just
• 2:39:46
  Speaker 2: looking at it.
• 2:39:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I ran across it only once in Colorado in
• 2:39:50
  Speaker 1: the woods, and it was amazing. It was a big one, too.
• 2:39:53
  Speaker 1: It was this big, beautiful red with white dots on it.
• 2:39:57
  Speaker 1: It's like one of the most gorgeous things you could
• 2:39:58
  Speaker 1: ever see growing.
• 2:40:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:40:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's legal, right? It's legal to possess?
• 2:40:04
  Speaker 2: Again, yes, it's legal because it's not that enjoyable for
• 2:40:08
  Speaker 2: most people.
• 2:40:08
  Speaker 1: But is it possible that we just are doing it
• 2:40:12
  Speaker 1: wrong and that the information has been lost as to
• 2:40:15
  Speaker 1: how to– Because a lot of people felt like it
• 2:40:18
  Speaker 1: might have been a part of SOMA, which hasn't really
• 2:40:20
  Speaker 1: been defined as to what SOMA is. Right.
• 2:40:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, those debates are not really my cup of tea. Right.
• 2:40:27
  Speaker 2: Because it's like just tons of guys pushing this or
• 2:40:31
  Speaker 2: that argument without like a lot of evidence one way
• 2:40:33
  Speaker 2: or the other. And so I don't know. And then
• 2:40:36
  Speaker 2: there's people that argue that urine drinking is somehow required
• 2:40:39
  Speaker 2: to concentrate the muscimol in one way or another. You know,
• 2:40:45
  Speaker 2: if you want to learn about it, I think the
• 2:40:47
  Speaker 2: best way to do it is actually through this other
• 2:40:49
  Speaker 2: related drug, Gaboxadol, which was almost developed by Merck as
• 2:40:55
  Speaker 2: a competitor for Ambien. And there's some high dose reports
• 2:40:58
  Speaker 2: of Gaboxadol that give you a much clearer example, and
• 2:41:02
  Speaker 2: from my own experience as well, of what the potential
• 2:41:04
  Speaker 2: of that class is. And it's very different. It's every
• 2:41:07
  Speaker 2: bit as powerful as ayahuasca or something like that, but
• 2:41:10
  Speaker 2: completely different. And it's hard to articulate. All these things
• 2:41:15
  Speaker 2: are hard to articulate, but it's something that's been experienced
• 2:41:17
  Speaker 2: by relatively few people, so you don't even have this
• 2:41:21
  Speaker 2: spiritual or metaphorical vocabulary for it. The way that I
• 2:41:24
  Speaker 2: had it most powerfully was once I was doing a
• 2:41:27
  Speaker 2: shoot for Vice on HBO, and they told me I
• 2:41:30
  Speaker 2: had to go to Tokyo with less than 24 hours notice,
• 2:41:34
  Speaker 2: and that I had to start filming as soon as
• 2:41:36
  Speaker 2: the plane landed. Couldn't go to the hotel room, so
• 2:41:38
  Speaker 2: I thought, all right, this is serious. No messing around,
• 2:41:41
  Speaker 2: no time for jet lag. Like, I've got to fall
• 2:41:44
  Speaker 2: asleep at 10 p.m. that night, wake up at 8 a.m.
• 2:41:47
  Speaker 2: that morning, I've got to be awake all day, so
• 2:41:49
  Speaker 2: I'm going to pharmacologically force this a little bit. I'm
• 2:41:51
  Speaker 2: going to take a really high dose of this muscimol
• 2:41:54
  Speaker 2: derivative at night to induce sleep, and I'll take Adderall
• 2:41:56
  Speaker 2: during the day. That was the plan. So I took
• 2:41:59
  Speaker 2: a high dose, I believe it was 45 milligrams, but
• 2:42:02
  Speaker 2: don't quote me on that, of this muscimol derivative that's
• 2:42:05
  Speaker 2: about the same potency, and at the equivalent of what
• 2:42:09
  Speaker 2: would have been maybe 2 p.m. New York time, which
• 2:42:11
  Speaker 2: I think was crucial, because it These things are hypnotic.
• 2:42:14
  Speaker 2: They induce sleep. So if you take it during the day,
• 2:42:16
  Speaker 2: you're less likely to sleep through the whole experience. And
• 2:42:19
  Speaker 2: it was unbelievable. I mean, I couldn't fathom the intensity
• 2:42:27
  Speaker 2: of what I experienced. It was just this rushing sense
• 2:42:31
  Speaker 2: of becoming a passive observer in my own consciousness and
• 2:42:37
  Speaker 2: seeing all of my thoughts produced by someone else, that
• 2:42:43
  Speaker 2: were racing at a speed that was so fast that
• 2:42:46
  Speaker 2: I found it physically dizzying and had to lay down.
• 2:42:50
  Speaker 2: And I felt as if like the acceleration was pushing
• 2:42:53
  Speaker 2: me toward an ultimate state that was sleep and that
• 2:42:56
  Speaker 2: sleep and death represented the ultimate state of consciousness. Whoa.
• 2:43:01
  Speaker 2: So it was, it was, and then, you know, then
• 2:43:03
  Speaker 2: I had to wake up at eight and work the
• 2:43:04
  Speaker 2: next day. And if you will say, how did you sleep?
• 2:43:05
  Speaker 2: And it's like, well, I actually had this, uh, uh,
• 2:43:09
  Speaker 2: transformative existential, uh, trip accidentally.
• 2:43:13
  Speaker 1: Have you tried it since, just purposely?
• 2:43:18
  Speaker 2: A couple of times, yeah.
• 2:43:21
  Speaker 1: Did you ever recreate that kind of experience?
• 2:43:23
  Speaker 2: No, because it was a bit much, I would say.
• 2:43:26
  Speaker 2: And I know people that have taken even more, and
• 2:43:27
  Speaker 2: it turns into just your entire visual field transforming into
• 2:43:32
  Speaker 2: rotating cubes, where each face of the cube represents a
• 2:43:35
  Speaker 2: different aspect of your life, your future, your past, your present. Really,
• 2:43:41
  Speaker 2: dramatic stuff. So I think that potential exists with high
• 2:43:44
  Speaker 2: dose muscimol. It's just hard for people to ingest it
• 2:43:48
  Speaker 2: because of all the other material in the mushroom and
• 2:43:50
  Speaker 2: the disgustingness of consuming it.
• 2:43:53
  Speaker 1: So is it possible that we've just, much like people
• 2:43:58
  Speaker 1: have sort of altered many different things like wheat and
• 2:44:03
  Speaker 1: tomatoes and what have you, that at one point in time,
• 2:44:06
  Speaker 1: the mushroom was somehow different? Oh, yeah.
• 2:44:09
  Speaker 2: Well, yes, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, the evolutionary chemical history
• 2:44:14
  Speaker 2: of all these different plants is a fascinating subject that's
• 2:44:17
  Speaker 2: pretty much lost to history. You know, there's no, like,
• 2:44:21
  Speaker 2: archaeological alkaloid analysis that I'm aware of, but it would
• 2:44:25
  Speaker 2: be so fascinating to know because all of these natural
• 2:44:28
  Speaker 2: products evolved just like the plants that contain them. What
• 2:44:31
  Speaker 2: were the intermediate materials? What drugs have gone extinct? Have, did, are,
• 2:44:37
  Speaker 2: ancestors drive certain psychoactive plants to extinction. There's a plant
• 2:44:41
  Speaker 2: called silphium that some people have argued that may have
• 2:44:43
  Speaker 2: happened with, it was a fennel derivative, um, or like
• 2:44:46
  Speaker 2: a fennel related plant. But, um, yeah, I mean, it's,
• 2:44:50
  Speaker 2: it's really, and we've seen it with cannabis, you know,
• 2:44:53
  Speaker 2: the black market encouraged everyone to produce THC dominant strains
• 2:44:59
  Speaker 2: because it was the most potent, most stoning, most bang
• 2:45:02
  Speaker 2: for your buck. Now, Now we have the ability to
• 2:45:04
  Speaker 2: change the evolutionary direction of the plant and to encourage
• 2:45:07
  Speaker 2: the production of CBN or CBG or THCV or CBD
• 2:45:13
  Speaker 2: or whatever.
• 2:45:14
  Speaker 1: Hmm. So when you talk about a plant like the
• 2:45:20
  Speaker 1: peyote cactus that grows so incredibly slow and, you know,
• 2:45:26
  Speaker 1: if that became something that was highly sought after and very,
• 2:45:31
  Speaker 1: very valuable... it could conceivably be wiped out.
• 2:45:34
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 2:45:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, especially something really slow. So there could have been
• 2:45:39
  Speaker 1: substances like that that were very geographically local in a
• 2:45:43
  Speaker 1: very small area that are just gone.
• 2:45:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just a thought I just had, totally non-evidence-based,
• 2:45:50
  Speaker 2: but wouldn't it be crazy if a lot of, the
• 2:45:53
  Speaker 2: reason that a lot of these psychoactive plants that are
• 2:45:57
  Speaker 2: present today tend to be less addictive is because all
• 2:46:00
  Speaker 2: the addictive ones were harvested to extinction thousands of years ago, maybe.
• 2:46:05
  Speaker 2: Something like that. I mean, these things do happen.
• 2:46:07
  Speaker 1: We really wouldn't know. We really wouldn't have any way
• 2:46:10
  Speaker 1: of knowing. But it's not fossilized plants, right? Right.
• 2:46:13
  Speaker 2: It certainly didn't happen with coca, which contains cocaine, or
• 2:46:16
  Speaker 2: with cats, so it probably didn't happen that way. But,
• 2:46:19
  Speaker 2: you know, you just don't know.
• 2:46:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I had read some theories that it's conceivable
• 2:46:25
  Speaker 1: that the Amanita muscaria varies seasonably. So you have to
• 2:46:29
  Speaker 1: figure out when is the right time to harvest it
• 2:46:32
  Speaker 1: because there are some plants, although of course fungus isn't
• 2:46:35
  Speaker 1: really a plant. It's kind of the opposite of a
• 2:46:37
  Speaker 1: plant in the way it ingests oxygen. It takes in
• 2:46:41
  Speaker 1: oxygen and breathes out carbon dioxide like an animal does.
• 2:46:45
  Speaker 1: But it's possible that these things vary seasonably, that you
• 2:46:50
  Speaker 1: have to catch them within a window of time, and
• 2:46:53
  Speaker 1: that they also vary geographically. Like some places they might
• 2:46:57
  Speaker 1: be more potent Like, you know, Cuban cigars grown on
• 2:47:01
  Speaker 1: specific land have a distinctly more, you know, more potent
• 2:47:04
  Speaker 1: taste to them. Oh, yeah.
• 2:47:06
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. Because the biosynthetic precursors for all of these natural
• 2:47:09
  Speaker 2: products come from the soil, typically. You know, amino acids
• 2:47:13
  Speaker 2: and things like that. And it's all going to change.
• 2:47:16
  Speaker 2: There was an amazing experiment that was done where they
• 2:47:18
  Speaker 2: started doping the subterfuge. of psilocybin-containing mushrooms with other tryptamines.
• 2:47:24
  Speaker 2: So they used, instead of, they used DET and DIPT,
• 2:47:28
  Speaker 2: put it in the substrate, and they found that the
• 2:47:30
  Speaker 2: mushroom would take that completely synthetic chemical that does not
• 2:47:33
  Speaker 2: occur in nature. It would then 4-hydroxylate the indole ring,
• 2:47:37
  Speaker 2: just like it were a psilocin derivative, and create natural
• 2:47:40
  Speaker 2: product derivatives of these synthetic materials, creating these semi-synthetic hybrids
• 2:47:45
  Speaker 2: between man and mushroom creations. Jesus. Yeah.
• 2:47:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:47:51
  Speaker 2: I mean, this is like why the synthetic-natural dichotomy doesn't
• 2:47:54
  Speaker 2: make sense. Everything's evolving. It's a constant interplay between human
• 2:47:57
  Speaker 2: and plant and fungus. You know, after we're all gone,
• 2:48:01
  Speaker 2: all of our plastic bottles are going to be consumed
• 2:48:03
  Speaker 2: by some bacterium that evolves to degrade all of these,
• 2:48:09
  Speaker 2: you know, polymers and that will create natural products from them.
• 2:48:14
  Speaker 2: And will those natural products be natural products because they
• 2:48:16
  Speaker 2: were derived from a substrate that we created? You know,
• 2:48:19
  Speaker 2: it turns into like a very complicated issue, which is
• 2:48:22
  Speaker 2: why I don't believe in the idea of natural and synthetic.
• 2:48:25
  Speaker 2: Everything is simultaneously natural and simultaneously synthetic.
• 2:48:28
  Speaker 1: Well, everything comes from Earth. Yes. So even the most
• 2:48:32
  Speaker 1: unnatural things that human beings have created are in a
• 2:48:34
  Speaker 1: sense natural creations, like a bee creates a beehive. A
• 2:48:37
  Speaker 1: beehive is a natural creation. Right. Yeah, it's a mindfuck.
• 2:48:43
  Speaker 1: So to get back to Amanita muscaria, do you know
• 2:48:46
  Speaker 1: of anyone who's effectively regularly used it as a psychedelic?
• 2:48:51
  Speaker 2: Yes, I've met, but not people who I... Wacky people.
• 2:48:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I would imagine.
• 2:49:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, not people where it's like, oh, that guy's a
• 2:49:03
  Speaker 2: professor and he uses Amanita every night to go to sleep.
• 2:49:06
  Speaker 2: He's doing really well. But yes, wacky people.
• 2:49:09
  Speaker 1: There's so much lore, again, attached to it, specifically because
• 2:49:13
  Speaker 1: the Christian, I mean, the books by Allegro were big, right?
• 2:49:18
  Speaker 1: One of them was The Dead Sea Scrolls and The
• 2:49:20
  Speaker 1: Christian Myth. That was one of his books. And that
• 2:49:23
  Speaker 1: was the second book that he published after that. The
• 2:49:26
  Speaker 1: Sacred Mushroom and the Cross. I think he did that
• 2:49:28
  Speaker 1: because they took the Sacred Mushroom and the Cross off
• 2:49:30
  Speaker 1: the market, right? Didn't the Catholic Church buy out the
• 2:49:33
  Speaker 1: rights for that, or was that a myth as well?
• 2:49:36
  Speaker 2: I can't remember.
• 2:49:37
  Speaker 1: There's something along those lines, but Jan Ervin republished it
• 2:49:40
  Speaker 1: fairly recently with the blessings of the Allegro family. But
• 2:49:47
  Speaker 1: just the whole connection to Santa Claus and the whole
• 2:49:50
  Speaker 1: connection to Christmas with that mushroom, there's so much attached
• 2:49:54
  Speaker 1: to that mushroom. people want that mushroom to be Jesus.
• 2:49:58
  Speaker 1: That's the one, you know, that's the way it's the prettiest.
• 2:50:01
  Speaker 1: It's like it grows. It's got a mycorrhizal relationship with
• 2:50:05
  Speaker 1: coniferous trees. So you find it underneath pine trees, just
• 2:50:08
  Speaker 1: like the shiny presents underneath the Christmas tree. So people
• 2:50:12
  Speaker 1: get so excited about that mushroom. Yes, they do. But yeah,
• 2:50:16
  Speaker 1: no one gets off on it except wacky people.
• 2:50:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It's a, it's a complicated situation. And you know,
• 2:50:22
  Speaker 2: Just because something's convenient isn't a good reason to say
• 2:50:25
  Speaker 2: that it's the truth. Like there are other psychoactive mushrooms
• 2:50:29
  Speaker 2: that may have been used in the past. They're ones
• 2:50:30
  Speaker 2: that we've discovered recently. There's a species called Rhodocolibia maculata.
• 2:50:34
  Speaker 2: As far as I know, there's no information about humans
• 2:50:37
  Speaker 2: consuming this mushroom, but it contains a salvinorin A type
• 2:50:40
  Speaker 2: kappa opioid agonist. This could be a completely different type
• 2:50:44
  Speaker 2: of psychedelic mushroom. No information on it exists. Maybe someone
• 2:50:47
  Speaker 2: used it somewhere in the past.
• 2:50:48
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 2:50:49
  Speaker 2: Whoa.
• 2:50:51
  Speaker 1: Well, isn't there, there are some psychedelic substances that have
• 2:50:55
  Speaker 1: been discovered that have no history of human use. Like,
• 2:50:58
  Speaker 1: isn't Hawaiian baby wood rose, is that how you say it?
• 2:51:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:51:02
  Speaker 1: Doesn't have LSD-like properties, but no history of human use?
• 2:51:06
  Speaker 2: That's a complicated question. Yeah, there's maybe not with Hawaiian
• 2:51:09
  Speaker 2: baby wood rose, but with morning glory seeds, there does
• 2:51:12
  Speaker 2: seem to be some Mesoamerican history, although it's not as
• 2:51:17
  Speaker 2: well founded.
• 2:51:18
  Speaker 1: And morning glory seeds will put you on the moon, right?
• 2:51:21
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah, they contain LSA. And again, LSA is actually,
• 2:51:26
  Speaker 2: Albert Hoffman, the inventor of LSA, did an experiment where
• 2:51:29
  Speaker 2: he injected himself with small quantities of LSA, but there
• 2:51:32
  Speaker 2: aren't many evaluations of the pure material. So the exact
• 2:51:37
  Speaker 2: nature of the different components in those seeds remains a
• 2:51:41
  Speaker 2: little bit mysterious as far as I'm concerned. Some people
• 2:51:44
  Speaker 2: will suggest that it's the strongest naturally occurring psychedelic. Other
• 2:51:48
  Speaker 2: people will say that it's not even psychedelic at all,
• 2:51:50
  Speaker 2: that it's just a, um, hypnotic. It just has a
• 2:51:53
  Speaker 2: sort of sedating quality. I've used Hawaiian baby Woodrow's many,
• 2:51:57
  Speaker 2: many years ago. And, um, it's certainly psychoactive, whether I'd
• 2:52:01
  Speaker 2: call it classically psychedelic is a complicated issue. It's kind
• 2:52:05
  Speaker 2: of like a dreamy, unpleasant, um, delirium.
• 2:52:10
  Speaker 1: Hmm. Um, any other ones that we could go over
• 2:52:16
  Speaker 1: that are weird?
• 2:52:18
  Speaker 2: Watch my show. I think you'd really like it.
• 2:52:19
  Speaker 1: I'm sure I'd like it. I like all your stuff. Okay.
• 2:52:22
  Speaker 2: Because it goes into lots of weird stuff.
• 2:52:23
  Speaker 1: I just don't have enough time. I know. I can't imagine.
• 2:52:25
  Speaker 1: There's too many things that are cool now.
• 2:52:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:52:28
  Speaker 1: It's one of the problems with Netflix and HBO and
• 2:52:33
  Speaker 1: YouTube and just too much cool stuff. Yeah.
• 2:52:39
  Speaker 2: But this will be cool.
• 2:52:40
  Speaker 1: I will definitely watch it. Okay. That was three hours, man.
• 2:52:43
  Speaker 1: It just flew by.
• 2:52:44
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 2:52:44
  Speaker 1: Isn't that crazy?
• 2:52:45
  Speaker 2: That is crazy.
• 2:52:46
  Speaker 1: We're going to time warp over here. So listen, this
• 2:52:49
  Speaker 1: is way better than the first time we did it.
• 2:52:52
  Speaker 1: We were here. I think we got a lot of
• 2:52:54
  Speaker 1: cool information out. And I really appreciate you coming back, man.
• 2:52:56
  Speaker 2: Thanks for having me.
• 2:52:57
  Speaker 1: Let's try to do this again, but not in seven years. Quicker.
• 2:53:00
  Speaker 2: Yes, I hope so.
• 2:53:01
  Speaker 1: For sure. Thank you. And on Twitter and Instagram, it's
• 2:53:04
  Speaker 1: Hamilton Morris. And your show is Hamilton's Pharmacopia. Is it
• 2:53:09
  Speaker 1: available online? Because people watch it online.
• 2:53:12
  Speaker 2: Yes, it's on Hulu and streaming on Amazon and streaming
• 2:53:15
  Speaker 2: on iTunes. And it's on Viceland as well. Beautiful. Yeah,
• 2:53:19
  Speaker 2: it's easy to find.
• 2:53:19
  Speaker 1: Thanks, man. That was awesome. Appreciate it. Thank you.