Transcript
00:00:00 The following is a conversation with Carl Hart,
00:00:02 department chair and professor of psychology
00:00:04 at Columbia University.
00:00:06 He’s the author of several books on the topic of drugs,
00:00:10 including his most recent, called Drug Use for Grownups,
00:00:14 that challenges us to, quote,
00:00:16 use empirical evidence to guide public policy
00:00:19 even if it makes us uncomfortable.
00:00:21 His research on drugs, including hard drugs,
00:00:24 like heroin and cocaine, challenges much of what we think
00:00:28 we know about drugs and their role in society.
00:00:31 His main thesis is that drug addiction
00:00:34 has less to do with the drugs themselves
00:00:36 and more to do with cooccurring psychiatric disorders,
00:00:39 such as depression and schizophrenia,
00:00:42 and socioeconomic factors, such as unemployment,
00:00:46 underemployment, and resource deprivation
00:00:48 within the community.
00:00:49 In addition, he believes that we should legalize all drugs
00:00:53 so that if people choose to use them,
00:00:55 they could do so responsibly and openly
00:00:58 and get help if needed in a controlled, safe environment.
00:01:02 His ideas are controversial,
00:01:04 but are fundamentally grounded in empirical data
00:01:07 and rigorous scientific studies.
00:01:09 I don’t know if his conclusions are right,
00:01:12 but they are at least worth thinking about.
00:01:14 So I ask that you consider these ideas with an open mind
00:01:18 and as always, make sure you exercise
00:01:21 your critical thinking skills in making decisions
00:01:24 about substances you put in your body.
00:01:26 You are a free thinking being,
00:01:30 the main character, if you will,
00:01:32 the hero in a story that’s being written by you.
00:01:35 So at the end of the day,
00:01:37 you are responsible for the choices you make.
00:01:40 So choose wisely.
00:01:42 This is the Lex Friedman podcast.
00:01:44 To support it, please check out our sponsors
00:01:46 in the description.
00:01:48 And now, here’s my conversation with Carl Hart.
00:01:52 I think it is bold and powerful to admit
00:01:55 to using in your private life
00:01:57 the drugs that you study in your research,
00:01:59 including heroin and cocaine.
00:02:01 So let me ask, what is the experience of taking heroin like?
00:02:05 What happens to the body?
00:02:06 What happens to the mind when you take it?
00:02:08 Well, you know, I take MDMA, cannabis,
00:02:11 and all the rest of these drugs too.
00:02:13 I’ve tried those drugs.
00:02:15 The experience in the body and the mind,
00:02:18 I don’t really know what people wanna know
00:02:21 in that regard.
00:02:22 It’s like saying, what is the experience
00:02:24 of having an orgasm in the body and the mind?
00:02:27 Or some other sort of event that you really enjoy.
00:02:32 So I don’t really know what people…
00:02:34 Is that what poetry is for,
00:02:35 for describing these kinds of experiences?
00:02:37 I mean, I guess, given MDMA, given psilocybin,
00:02:41 in the full context of that,
00:02:42 maybe it’s more useful to say,
00:02:45 what are the differences in experiences
00:02:48 that your mind goes through?
00:02:50 Like chemically, biologically.
00:02:53 So like keeping it strictly to sort of the biology of it
00:02:59 versus the full environmental human experience.
00:03:01 Yeah, see, this is a mistake that people make all the time.
00:03:04 They try to act as if biology
00:03:07 is the only determinant of drug effects.
00:03:10 And that’s just not how it works.
00:03:12 You need the environment.
00:03:13 You need the cage, as they say.
00:03:15 If you don’t have the cage,
00:03:17 you don’t get the full extent of the effects.
00:03:20 And so like you can take MDMA and have an awful time.
00:03:23 You can have a time in which you get paranoid and so forth.
00:03:27 And then you can take that drug under the right conditions
00:03:31 and it just be like one of the best moments you’ve ever had.
00:03:34 It certainly enhanced a number of my relationships.
00:03:39 But I’ve also had some times with MDMA
00:03:42 that haven’t been so lovely.
00:03:43 When the people who you are hanging out with,
00:03:46 you don’t know them, you’re distrustful
00:03:48 and all of those kinds of things.
00:03:49 So it’s important to put context in it.
00:03:52 Now we can talk about drugs at a biochemical level,
00:03:55 at a biological level.
00:03:57 And we kind of do that in this country
00:03:58 with this fascination with neuroscience.
00:04:01 And that’s an inappropriate kind of fascination
00:04:06 in the way we talk about it.
00:04:07 So we can talk about opioids
00:04:08 and then we can talk about endogenous opioid system
00:04:12 in the brain.
00:04:13 We can talk about dopamine
00:04:14 and other sort of monoamine transmitters
00:04:17 and what opioids are doing to them.
00:04:20 And we can do the same thing with MDMA.
00:04:24 And we won’t be any closer to understanding
00:04:27 the sort of experience that is induced by these drugs.
00:04:32 Certainly the experience that we all seek.
00:04:35 You know what I’m saying?
00:04:36 So getting a positive experience
00:04:38 or getting a negative experience
00:04:39 is strongly defined by the environment.
00:04:42 Strongly dependent upon it.
00:04:44 But the environment is a very,
00:04:45 it’s a short word that can describe a lot of things.
00:04:48 So would you say the environment is important
00:04:51 or the people where you are currently in your life?
00:04:55 Or is it also dependent on the full trajectory
00:04:58 of your psychology of your life experiences
00:05:00 of your parents or the people you came up with
00:05:03 of the trauma you’ve experienced
00:05:04 of the hopes and dreams that were crushed
00:05:07 or not or the opposite or the success levels
00:05:10 or all those things.
00:05:11 Like what are the interesting sort of landscape
00:05:15 of experiences that contribute to how you actually feel
00:05:19 when you take a drug?
00:05:20 Right on.
00:05:21 So all of those things are important.
00:05:23 But you know, like if someone had trauma in childhood
00:05:26 and they did the work and they dealt with it
00:05:28 that’s not so important in this case.
00:05:30 But if they didn’t deal with it
00:05:31 and that trauma is being triggered in that event
00:05:34 in that moment, then it’s important.
00:05:38 But let’s just take somebody like me.
00:05:40 I’m 54 years old.
00:05:42 I’ll be 55 this month actually.
00:05:43 And you know, I’ve done a lot of work
00:05:47 in terms of figuring out who I am
00:05:50 and I’m comfortable with myself.
00:05:52 And I know how to set limits for whatever it is I’m doing.
00:05:59 And so I know I need to work out.
00:06:02 I know I need to eat well.
00:06:03 I know I need to sleep well.
00:06:05 I know I need to be in an environment
00:06:07 with people within my trust.
00:06:10 And then if all of those things are met,
00:06:13 oh, it’s likely to be a good time.
00:06:16 You know what I’m saying?
00:06:17 But if I haven’t slept, if I haven’t worked out,
00:06:20 if I don’t feel good, it won’t be a good time.
00:06:23 But I try and be responsible
00:06:25 and take care of my eating habits, sleeping habits,
00:06:30 make sure my responsibilities are taken care of.
00:06:34 And so when I’m in that moment, I just enjoy that moment.
00:06:39 I’m there.
00:06:39 I’m not thinking about a bill that I didn’t pay.
00:06:42 I’m not thinking about, oh, I forgot to do this for my kid.
00:06:46 I’m not thinking about that
00:06:47 because all of those things are taken care of.
00:06:49 If they’re not taken care of, it will impact the experience
00:06:53 and it may negatively impact the experience.
00:06:57 Well, that is the counterintuitive,
00:06:59 even controversial finding from your recent book.
00:07:03 So we should kind of, I know it seems obvious to you,
00:07:06 but I think a lot of people hearing this
00:07:08 would think it’s quite non obvious.
00:07:11 So in your new book, Drug Use for Grownups,
00:07:15 you write for the finding section.
00:07:18 I discovered that the predominant effects produced
00:07:20 by the drugs discussed in this book are positive.
00:07:24 It didn’t matter whether the drug in question was cannabis,
00:07:27 cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, or psilocybin.
00:07:31 Overwhelmingly, consumers expressed feeling more altruistic,
00:07:35 empathetic, euphoric, focused, grateful, and tranquil.
00:07:39 They also experienced enhanced social interactions,
00:07:41 a great sense of purpose and meaning,
00:07:43 and increased sexual intimacy and performance.
00:07:46 This constellation of findings
00:07:49 challenged my original beliefs about drugs and their effects.
00:07:52 I had been indoctrinated to be biased
00:07:55 toward the negative effects of drug use.
00:07:57 But over the past two plus decades,
00:08:00 I had gained a deeper, more nuanced understanding.
00:08:03 These words are very counterintuitive to a lot of people.
00:08:09 I think like you also mentioned in the book and elsewhere,
00:08:12 people have come around to maybe psilocybin
00:08:16 being one such drug, maybe cannabis being one such drug,
00:08:20 but you also mentioned other drugs
00:08:22 like cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine.
00:08:26 Can you just linger on this point?
00:08:28 How do we get the positive effects of those drugs
00:08:33 and why in the media,
00:08:34 and the general conception we have of these drugs
00:08:36 is that they were going to make a bad life worse
00:08:41 or ruin a good life?
00:08:43 Well, so your first question was,
00:08:44 how do we harness the positive effects?
00:08:47 How do we increase the likelihood
00:08:49 of getting the positive effects?
00:08:51 Again, like I said,
00:08:53 we wanna make sure that people are responsible
00:08:55 and they’ve handled their responsibilities,
00:08:57 make sure they eat well, sleep well, exercise,
00:09:00 all of those sorts of things play an important role.
00:09:03 And also if they know exactly what they’re getting
00:09:06 and then they’re not paranoid about,
00:09:08 it’s something contaminated in some adulterant in my drug.
00:09:13 So you wanna make sure you know exactly what you have.
00:09:16 Once you satisfy those kinds of things,
00:09:18 you understand the dose and potency,
00:09:20 you understand all of those things
00:09:22 to decrease any sort of anxiety you might have
00:09:25 about the substance itself, it increases the likelihood
00:09:29 that you will have a better time.
00:09:30 So anxiety is a big one, you need to remove the anxiety.
00:09:33 Anxiety is critical, it’s huge.
00:09:36 Many of the negative effects that we see with drugs
00:09:39 have to do with anxiety
00:09:41 and not necessarily anxiety because a drug induced it,
00:09:44 it’s the anxiety that the situation induced a lot of times.
00:09:49 And then you ask like,
00:09:50 well, why does this sound counterintuitive?
00:09:53 Why does the media report differently?
00:09:59 Well, because there’s money in reporting
00:10:01 the negative effects almost exclusively.
00:10:04 Think about writing a newspaper article.
00:10:08 It’s really easy to get the population all ginned up
00:10:11 about something like an opioid crisis, overdoses,
00:10:14 and you don’t even have to tell people
00:10:17 how to keep people safe if you’re talking about overdose.
00:10:20 You don’t even have to say why people are dying
00:10:23 from overdoses.
00:10:24 Like overdoses in our country happen largely
00:10:27 because people get contaminated drugs,
00:10:30 because people are combining sedatives
00:10:33 and they don’t know that this enhances
00:10:36 the respiratory depressing effects of drugs.
00:10:38 They don’t know.
00:10:39 But when you read these newspaper articles,
00:10:41 they don’t say this.
00:10:43 They don’t say how to keep people safe.
00:10:45 All they do is frighten the population.
00:10:48 There’s money in that.
00:10:49 And then we think about people who write TV shows,
00:10:54 the people who write movies.
00:10:56 Most of the stuff written about drugs is just bullshit.
00:11:01 I think about, I love going to watch comedians
00:11:04 and the comedians when they talk about drugs,
00:11:06 again, most of the things that they say about drugs
00:11:09 is bullshit.
00:11:10 I mean, you can say the stupidest things about drugs
00:11:13 and be believed.
00:11:14 You can write a movie and you don’t even have
00:11:19 to develop your characters.
00:11:20 If you throw drugs into the mix, you say,
00:11:23 oh, he’s a drug dealer.
00:11:24 You don’t have to say anything
00:11:25 about that person’s background
00:11:27 or about that person being developed as a character
00:11:31 because the population think they know.
00:11:33 And the writer is lazy
00:11:37 and does not do any sort of development.
00:11:39 Just think about any more.
00:11:42 Oh, let’s think about the Sopranos, for example.
00:11:45 They have a new program coming out.
00:11:48 So let’s think about them for a second.
00:11:50 The Sopranos is a show in which the lead character,
00:11:54 Tony, kills people for a living.
00:11:57 That’s what he does, right?
00:11:59 This character actually made a sympathetic for him
00:12:05 when he is besmirching and denigrating his nephew,
00:12:10 Christopher, for using a drug.
00:12:13 And we feel sympathy for Tony, the character,
00:12:17 who just killed somebody, who is a horrible person,
00:12:22 but being a drug user is a worse person.
00:12:26 That’s what the show wants us to believe.
00:12:28 Tony’s a racist, murderer, all of these things,
00:12:32 but we feel sympathy for him.
00:12:34 But we don’t feel sympathy for anyone who uses drugs.
00:12:38 That’s some crazy shit.
00:12:39 I mean, and the American public buys into it.
00:12:42 That is, that’s wild to me,
00:12:44 and that we all bought into this crap.
00:12:47 And that’s what we do in damn near everything
00:12:50 that’s in film, on television.
00:12:52 And it’s like, what’s wrong with you people?
00:12:55 So why aren’t there not more stories
00:12:59 of grownups using drugs?
00:13:03 The full spectrum of drugs that we’re talking about.
00:13:05 Why isn’t there?
00:13:06 So we talked offline about Joe Rogan.
00:13:09 He’s somebody who started smoking weed later in life,
00:13:12 which is an interesting story.
00:13:13 Like when he’s already very successful
00:13:16 and he has a very interesting way
00:13:17 of describing his experience with weed,
00:13:19 that it was like enhancing just productivity.
00:13:22 It actually, I think he says,
00:13:23 like it increases anxiety a little bit
00:13:25 in a way that was productive, like paranoia, not anxiety.
00:13:29 And so that’s an interesting story of an adult
00:13:32 talking about the use of weed for productivity purposes.
00:13:36 But you don’t get those stories very often.
00:13:39 Why?
00:13:40 I think fear.
00:13:41 People are afraid that they will be belittled, dismissed,
00:13:46 all of these things, that’s a drug addict
00:13:48 or some negative thing, but cannabis is lightweight.
00:13:51 Come on, you can admit cannabis these days.
00:13:54 And the fact that I don’t know when Joe started,
00:13:58 but if he did start later in life, that’s cool.
00:14:01 I mean, you are mature, developed,
00:14:04 you have developed some responsibility skills,
00:14:08 all of these kinds of things.
00:14:09 This is a good thing.
00:14:12 You don’t want people to engage in any kind of behaviors
00:14:17 when they’re young and immature
00:14:19 that might put them in harm’s way.
00:14:21 And so we want people to be developed at least.
00:14:26 I mean, whether it’s being in a relationship with a partner
00:14:32 or whether it’s driving an automobile,
00:14:35 all of these things that can be potentially harmful,
00:14:38 but extremely beneficial
00:14:40 if you are responsible enough to handle them.
00:14:44 You want people to be mature, so that’s a good thing.
00:14:46 So how are you supposed to, like somebody like me,
00:14:49 somebody like Joe, how are you supposed to understand
00:14:52 what the dangers are, what the negative effects are?
00:14:55 So you said automobile, relationships.
00:14:59 I think I have a reasonably, it’s crappy,
00:15:03 but reasonable understanding of all the troubles
00:15:06 I can get with in relationships and what things to avoid.
00:15:09 Same thing with driving a car.
00:15:11 I have no idea.
00:15:12 I’m in the dark in terms of what are the things
00:15:16 to be careful about, what to avoid with drug use
00:15:21 when we’re talking about the heavy drugs.
00:15:24 Have you ever drank alcohol?
00:15:25 Yes.
00:15:26 That’s drug use.
00:15:27 I know, I drank a lot.
00:15:28 But I understand that because culturally I came up,
00:15:31 I was taught a lot of like, this is what you don’t do
00:15:35 and this is what you do.
00:15:37 This is when you drink a lot.
00:15:38 I mean, you see the effects, you see the,
00:15:40 there’s a lot of negative examples,
00:15:42 there’s positive examples of social stimulant.
00:15:45 There’s examples of great artists using alcohol
00:15:49 to sort of, I don’t know, to help be the catalyst
00:15:52 for that magic moment, for all of that.
00:15:55 I have some examples now, especially in America,
00:15:59 the same with weed, more and more you’re starting
00:16:02 to get a lot of stories of psychedelics of different kinds.
00:16:07 There’s psilocybin where you have mushrooms
00:16:12 or even MDMA used sort of positively.
00:16:15 There’s kind of like negative stories from the past
00:16:19 about acid, about LSD being used,
00:16:22 ultimately for productive ends,
00:16:26 but it destroyed the person.
00:16:28 That’s kind of how the story goes.
00:16:29 It was like a trade off.
00:16:30 You take, it’s like, what is it?
00:16:33 Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil to learn guitar.
00:16:36 Like it’s a trade off.
00:16:37 You can take the drug, you’re gonna create some good stuff,
00:16:40 but you have to pay for it.
00:16:41 Those are the stories.
00:16:42 That’s some bullshit we tell children, come on.
00:16:45 That’s exactly right.
00:16:46 You’re exactly right.
00:16:47 These fairy tales, these cautionary tales
00:16:49 that we tell people, we have to grow up.
00:16:52 That’s what the book is about, drug use for grownups.
00:16:56 We tell people, Pinocchio, if you lie, your nose grow.
00:17:02 Who believes that?
00:17:03 Who believes that there are fairy tales?
00:17:04 But that’s exactly what these stories are.
00:17:06 They’re in the same vein as those kind of stories,
00:17:11 as Pinocchio.
00:17:13 Like you said, when you were learning about alcohol,
00:17:16 you were told what to do, what not to do, so forth.
00:17:20 The same can be true with MDMA, with cocaine, with heroin.
00:17:24 The same is true, because there are some times
00:17:28 when there are some potential dangers that you should avoid.
00:17:32 And I wrote about some of them,
00:17:36 certainly in my work, just throughout all of my writings.
00:17:39 I talk about those kinds of things
00:17:40 and other people talk about these things.
00:17:43 The problem is, is that we’re getting our education
00:17:47 from bullshit sources, from people who believe
00:17:51 in this kind of Pinocchio thing.
00:17:54 And it just does not fit with the evidence.
00:17:58 And the evidence we all publish in the scientific literature,
00:18:01 all these things that I’m saying,
00:18:04 it’s there in the literature.
00:18:05 I mean, at a place like Columbia,
00:18:07 we give these drugs thousands of doses every year.
00:18:13 Do you think we would be doing this?
00:18:15 And we do this with research grants
00:18:18 that’s funded by the public, taxpayers dollars.
00:18:22 Do you think we would be allowed to do this
00:18:25 if these drugs were so dangerous?
00:18:29 It’s just nonsense.
00:18:30 I mean, and the drugs we’re talking about,
00:18:33 they are all approved for medical use
00:18:37 somewhere in the world.
00:18:40 And the studies you conduct are basically
00:18:42 asking what kinds of questions.
00:18:44 So you take the full range of drugs you’re talking about
00:18:49 from marijuana to psilocybin to MDMA to cocaine and heroin.
00:18:53 What is the study looking at?
00:18:55 Like what the actual experience with the positive
00:18:56 and negative effects of the experience on the drug are
00:18:59 in the control conditions.
00:19:01 Yeah, so we did these kinds of experiments with alcohol,
00:19:05 nicotine, all these drugs in order to have
00:19:08 an empirical database to tell people
00:19:12 exactly what these drugs do and what they don’t do.
00:19:15 The conditions under which the drugs
00:19:17 will produce positive effects,
00:19:19 the conditions under which the drugs were more likely
00:19:21 to produce negative effects.
00:19:23 All of this information is important for society to know.
00:19:28 And we do know, and that’s why we’re collecting the data.
00:19:31 We’re collecting the data to help us with treatment
00:19:35 if someone is having problems with these data.
00:19:38 Hopefully we’ll understand more about how to help them
00:19:45 deal with their problems based on some of the research
00:19:48 that we’re doing.
00:19:49 So what kind of negative effects are we looking out for?
00:19:51 Like what are the properties of drugs
00:19:53 we should be careful about?
00:19:55 Is it addictive properties?
00:19:56 How addictive it is, how destructive or painful,
00:20:01 whatever the withdrawal processes,
00:20:06 what kind of things are we looking out for?
00:20:07 Yeah, those are certain kind of questions
00:20:09 we certainly have asked because like something like
00:20:12 crack cocaine versus alcohol or heroin
00:20:16 when it comes to withdrawal of physical dependence.
00:20:20 Like cocaine has a very limited sort of withdrawal symptoms.
00:20:24 I mean, it’s hard to see.
00:20:26 Same is true with methamphetamine.
00:20:28 But with heroin, you certainly can see a withdrawal syndrome
00:20:32 that’s unpleasant, but with alcohol that withdrawal
00:20:36 can actually kill you.
00:20:39 So heroin is unpleasant and not lovely,
00:20:42 but with alcohol withdrawal, that’s the one,
00:20:44 that’s the most dangerous.
00:20:45 I mean, all of these kind of questions
00:20:47 we wanna know answers to.
00:20:50 And so when we think about heroin or some other drugs
00:20:55 and you say like, what kind of negative effects?
00:20:57 Negative effects, we don’t talk about much in the society.
00:21:00 The main thing that really concerns me
00:21:02 about like heroin use really is constipation.
00:21:06 So if people are using heroin on a regular basis
00:21:11 and then they have a sort of slowing of their gut modality,
00:21:16 they’re likely to increase constipation and that’s not good.
00:21:20 I mean, for your general health,
00:21:22 but we never talk about that in this society.
00:21:25 And that’s probably the most important thing
00:21:28 aside from the fact that people get contaminated street drugs
00:21:32 and that sort of stuff and increase the likelihood
00:21:34 of maybe dying from some contaminant
00:21:37 or people who are inexperienced
00:21:40 and they’re mixing heroin with other sedatives.
00:21:42 That’s not good, but the constipation is a huge one.
00:21:47 And then other sort of drugs, negative effects
00:21:51 like the amphetamines, all of the amphetamines,
00:21:54 they disrupt sleep, food intake,
00:21:56 all of these things are so critical
00:21:59 for sustaining human life, but we never talk about that
00:22:02 because it’s not as sexy as this nonsense
00:22:05 that people write about like addiction.
00:22:08 Addiction has almost nothing to do
00:22:10 with the drugs themselves.
00:22:11 And I make that comment because the vast majority of users
00:22:16 for any drug never become addicted.
00:22:19 And so if the vast majority of users don’t become addicted,
00:22:23 then you have to move beyond the drug
00:22:25 when you’re talking about the phenomenon interest
00:22:27 in this case, addiction.
00:22:29 And so when we think about addiction,
00:22:31 it has much more to do with our psychosocial environment
00:22:35 than the drug itself, but that’s not sexy.
00:22:38 So addiction is even the property of the environment,
00:22:41 not a property, a result of the environment.
00:22:44 It certainly can be.
00:22:45 There are people who are suffering
00:22:47 from cooccurring mental illness like depression, anxiety.
00:22:52 I mean, that’s within the person, of course,
00:22:55 and that increases the likelihood for addiction.
00:22:57 So that’s not so much the environment,
00:23:01 but there are people who, for example,
00:23:03 they have chronic unrealistic expectations heaped on them.
00:23:07 And those people are more likely
00:23:09 to have some problems with drugs.
00:23:12 There are people who are just immature,
00:23:14 not having developed responsibility skills.
00:23:18 They are likely to have some problems
00:23:20 if they engage in some of these behaviors.
00:23:23 There are people who lost their jobs, COVID,
00:23:27 factories went away, a wide range of things.
00:23:30 And those people used to have standing in their community.
00:23:33 Now they have none.
00:23:35 Those people might be susceptible
00:23:37 to having a drug related problem if they indulge.
00:23:41 All of these kinds of issues are far more important
00:23:44 than the drug itself.
00:23:46 And so they could seek escape in a particular drug.
00:23:48 I mean, there is a biochemical thing
00:23:51 to each of these drugs,
00:23:52 and some pull you in harder than others
00:23:55 when you need the escape, right?
00:23:56 When you’re not doing well in life.
00:23:58 What evidence you have for that bullshit?
00:24:00 I don’t.
00:24:01 Yeah, because there is none.
00:24:02 There is absolutely none.
00:24:03 I mean, people say stuff like that,
00:24:06 and that’s the problem.
00:24:09 That’s precisely the problem.
00:24:11 See, I’m operating from limited personal evidence.
00:24:14 Well, this is a problem though,
00:24:16 but we have a scientific database.
00:24:18 We don’t need personal evidence for this.
00:24:21 We have, in my book, I try to go through some of the science
00:24:24 so people could understand.
00:24:26 It’s like when you have a math problem,
00:24:29 you don’t want people saying,
00:24:31 well, you know, I feel like this.
00:24:32 Fuck what you feel.
00:24:33 What does the data say?
00:24:35 So one of the problems with the data,
00:24:38 so one data is there’s the studies that you’re doing,
00:24:41 this is excellent research work,
00:24:43 but there’s some of the drugs that are illegal.
00:24:45 Yes. And some are legal.
00:24:47 So you have just,
00:24:50 it’s unfortunate that some of the drugs are illegal
00:24:53 or whatever you believe,
00:24:54 but there’s not enough of a data set of public
00:24:57 and the open use.
00:24:58 That’s like you got in the wild data set.
00:25:01 It’d be nice to do, you know, thousands of people
00:25:03 and see from all the different kinds of environments
00:25:06 and all that kind of stuff to get an understanding.
00:25:08 I think we have a substantial database,
00:25:13 but people just ignore it.
00:25:15 Got it.
00:25:17 That said, let me ask you the question of legalization.
00:25:21 So should, in your view, all drugs be legalized?
00:25:26 The drugs that people seek
00:25:27 certainly should be legally regulated
00:25:30 and available to adults.
00:25:32 So when I say the drugs people seek,
00:25:33 like cannabis, MDMA, cocaine, heroin,
00:25:39 those drugs certainly should be available.
00:25:42 And some of the psychedelics that people seek.
00:25:45 Now, the thing about it is that some people think that,
00:25:50 oh, it will be a free fall.
00:25:52 These drugs are available to everyone.
00:25:54 That’s not true.
00:25:54 I mean, there will be age requirements
00:25:57 and maybe other requirements,
00:25:59 but they should be available.
00:26:01 And we should also do like what we do with alcohol.
00:26:04 We can put enough alcohol in a bottle to kill you,
00:26:08 but we don’t.
00:26:09 So we regulate it such that the amount that’s in the bottle
00:26:13 enhances the safety and minimizes the potential harms.
00:26:18 We can do the same thing with these other drugs.
00:26:20 And we can also say, okay,
00:26:22 we won’t be selling intravenous preparations
00:26:25 of any of these drugs.
00:26:28 The drugs that the routes of administration will be oral
00:26:32 and I don’t know, let’s say intranasal.
00:26:38 Again, routes of administration,
00:26:40 the dose that you have in each unit,
00:26:43 all can minimize harm based on how you do these things.
00:26:49 And we can do that.
00:26:50 We have the technology, we have the knowhow.
00:26:53 So you’re actually making me think
00:26:55 about alcohol a little bit.
00:26:56 So if I were, say the drugs become legalized
00:26:58 in the way you’re describing,
00:27:00 and me, Lex, wanted to, as an adult,
00:27:04 explore some of these drugs,
00:27:06 what are some procedures do you think
00:27:10 for sort of safe, positive exploration of those drugs?
00:27:14 The reason I say I’m thinking about alcohol
00:27:16 because I don’t think,
00:27:18 besides not putting enough alcohol in a bottle to kill you,
00:27:22 I don’t think anyone ever gave me specific instructions.
00:27:25 I think it’s kind of word of mouth
00:27:27 and examples of people doing the wrong thing.
00:27:30 You kind of get it through osmosis that way.
00:27:33 Is that basically what we would do,
00:27:36 this kind of free exploration of use?
00:27:38 No, we have to change our education about these things.
00:27:41 I mean, let’s just take a drug like cocaine.
00:27:44 Cocaine’s a stimulant.
00:27:46 You want to make sure people understand
00:27:47 that they shouldn’t be taking cocaine near bedtime.
00:27:50 You know, they need to get a certain amount of hours of sleep
00:27:54 and they need to get up in the morning.
00:27:57 Cocaine probably isn’t a drug for you at night.
00:28:00 Certainly not.
00:28:01 Certainly not amphetamines at night for most people.
00:28:04 And also, if you want to make sure that you,
00:28:06 they need to understand that cocaine
00:28:09 can also disrupt your food intake.
00:28:11 Not as much as the amphetamines,
00:28:13 but all of these kinds of things people need to know
00:28:15 so they can have proper nutrition
00:28:18 and they can time their drug use
00:28:22 around these other important functions
00:28:25 that’s the same human life.
00:28:26 So we have to make sure that we educate people.
00:28:30 We can’t just throw people in a while.
00:28:34 That’s stupid.
00:28:36 I gotta tell you, I mean, for me,
00:28:37 and even given your book and for people listening to this,
00:28:40 it’s still tough to hear that the thing
00:28:44 we should be concerned about with cocaine
00:28:48 is the same as with caffeine.
00:28:50 Don’t take it before bed.
00:28:52 And the thing we should be concerned with heroin
00:28:54 is constipation.
00:28:55 Yeah.
00:28:58 Okay.
00:29:00 But the questions I keep wanting to ask you,
00:29:04 I should be asking the same things of alcohol,
00:29:07 but when you’re not doing well psychologically
00:29:10 in the ways you describe,
00:29:11 when the environment is not right,
00:29:17 there’s some aspect in which saying that drugs
00:29:19 can be used responsibly and effectively
00:29:22 and mostly positive can give those folks a pass
00:29:28 to use it instead of working on themselves
00:29:30 and fixing their environment first.
00:29:32 I don’t know, what do you want me to say to that?
00:29:35 I mean, they have access to alcohol,
00:29:37 they have access to the…
00:29:39 You know, we live in this country called the United States
00:29:42 where our Declaration of Independence says
00:29:45 that we are free to live like we wanna live
00:29:48 so long as we don’t disrupt other people
00:29:51 from doing the same.
00:29:53 But it’s remarkable to me
00:29:55 how we try to control the behaviors of other people.
00:29:58 That’s just remarkable.
00:30:00 Yeah.
00:30:01 And that’s partially what your book is about.
00:30:03 I mean, it’s not just about drugs, it’s about freedom.
00:30:06 That’s the bigger issue that we can’t get to.
00:30:09 It’s like this issue of freedom
00:30:12 and freedom comes with a tremendous amount
00:30:14 of responsibility.
00:30:15 I am responsible for my neighbors, my brothers.
00:30:18 I mean, I can’t impede their freedoms.
00:30:22 Like some people think that their freedom
00:30:24 supersedes everybody else’s freedoms.
00:30:26 No.
00:30:27 And that’s what I’m trying to remind people in this book.
00:30:30 I am responsible to you as a citizen
00:30:36 and we’re in this together.
00:30:39 And I tried to make that point in the book
00:30:41 and people have conveniently ignored things like that.
00:30:47 Do you think the war on drugs
00:30:49 has done more positive or negative for the world?
00:30:53 Depends on which world you live in.
00:30:55 The war on drugs has been hugely beneficial
00:30:58 to law enforcement, to the media,
00:31:02 to people who make bullshit TV shows.
00:31:06 The Sopranos, The Wire, all of those shows,
00:31:10 they benefit from this kind of nonsense.
00:31:15 Who else have benefited?
00:31:17 People who provide treatment,
00:31:19 many of them benefit from the war on drugs.
00:31:21 The folks who do urine testing for drugs,
00:31:25 they’ve all benefited.
00:31:26 They’re making mad money.
00:31:28 People who run prisons,
00:31:31 the phone companies who charge the prisoners,
00:31:35 the people who run the hotels that are around the prisons
00:31:38 where people’s family have to come and stay,
00:31:41 the restaurants, they are making out like bandits.
00:31:45 But many of us are getting screwed as a society.
00:31:49 In general, we’re getting screwed,
00:31:51 but there are people who are just benefiting handsomely.
00:31:54 That’s why it continues.
00:31:56 Politicians benefit.
00:31:58 I mean, whether you’re Democrat or Republican,
00:32:00 you have the same stance on drugs anyway,
00:32:02 so they all benefit from this.
00:32:05 So many questions I want to ask you,
00:32:07 because you’re challenging a lot of beliefs
00:32:08 that people have about drugs, about society in general.
00:32:13 So it’s difficult for me to ask the right questions here.
00:32:18 If you were with a sort of a snap of a finger,
00:32:23 change the world, what from a policy perspective would you,
00:32:28 and from just a, I don’t know, human to human perspective,
00:32:33 what would you like to see in the United States of America
00:32:36 in terms of if that fixes some of the problems
00:32:37 we’re discussing here?
00:32:39 First of all, we wouldn’t be arresting anybody
00:32:41 for drugs anymore.
00:32:42 That would go away.
00:32:45 The folks who are in prison for drugs, that would go away.
00:32:48 Their records would be expunged, that would just go away.
00:32:52 And then we work on a system to make sure
00:32:56 that responsible adults can legally obtain these substances
00:33:02 and we’ll have a corresponding educational system
00:33:05 to teach people how to do this.
00:33:08 That’s where I would start initially.
00:33:12 Yeah, the arresting for drug use
00:33:15 or anything drug related is absurd,
00:33:18 especially in the context of hard destructive alcohol
00:33:20 and tobacco.
00:33:22 Alcohol can be destructive to some people,
00:33:25 but alcohol also is a hugely beneficial drug.
00:33:28 To be honest, which I couldn’t have gotten through
00:33:31 many of the sort of receptions and functions
00:33:34 I had to go through as the chair of the department
00:33:37 without alcohol.
00:33:38 Yeah, you have a line I really liked.
00:33:41 The vast amount of predictably favorable drug effects
00:33:44 intrigued me, so much so that I expanded my own drug use
00:33:47 to take advantage of the wide array
00:33:49 of beneficial outcome specific drugs can offer.
00:33:52 The part that entertained me was this.
00:33:54 To put this in personal terms,
00:33:56 my position as department chairman from 2016 to 2019
00:34:00 was far more detrimental to my health
00:34:02 than my drug use ever was.
00:34:04 I mean, there is a standard we’re treating drugs,
00:34:07 certain kinds of drugs that’s completely different
00:34:10 than the standard we’re treating everything else
00:34:11 in our lives.
00:34:13 Yeah, I mean, it’s almost difficult to snap out of it
00:34:17 as I’m listening to you and reading your work.
00:34:24 It’s difficult because it’s like,
00:34:27 why is everybody living this idea that certain drugs
00:34:31 are so horribly destructive and others are not?
00:34:35 And we just kind of fix that idea.
00:34:37 And then there’s this narrative,
00:34:41 I hate to be so cynical to think that there is just
00:34:43 like a system that just propagates narratives.
00:34:46 I always kind of think that truth wins out.
00:34:50 Truth is the best narrative.
00:34:51 I believe that too.
00:34:52 Obviously, that’s why I’m out here and putting,
00:34:54 subjecting myself to this sort of criticism and so forth,
00:34:58 but because I believe that truth ultimately wins out,
00:35:01 but I might be wrong,
00:35:02 but I have to live my life like it’s true.
00:35:07 Otherwise, then I have no hope, then why be here?
00:35:11 Well, kind of, if you can steal man
00:35:12 or at least show respect to a criticism,
00:35:15 you’ve I’m sure received quite a bit of criticism
00:35:19 for your work.
00:35:20 I’ve heard quite a bit of BS criticisms,
00:35:23 sort of ignorant stuff that don’t actually pay attention
00:35:27 to your work, but is there some serious,
00:35:30 like is there some pushback that makes you think twice?
00:35:34 People say like, I’m presenting a too rosy picture of drugs.
00:35:40 I don’t wanna do that.
00:35:42 I don’t want people to think that I’m not aware of the
00:35:45 potential negative effects of any activity,
00:35:49 including drug use.
00:35:51 And so I do acknowledge that there are potential harms
00:35:56 associated with drugs.
00:35:57 I acknowledge that in the book,
00:35:59 but the fact remains the beneficial effects far outweigh
00:36:03 the potential harmful effects.
00:36:05 And we have technology information to help people
00:36:09 to minimize the likelihood of negative effects.
00:36:12 But this sort of approach that we have where we say
00:36:16 we’re only exclusively presenting the harmful effects
00:36:20 and that should make people, keep people safe.
00:36:23 I just have a problem with that.
00:36:25 But I certainly, I take the point that people say
00:36:31 there are negative effects.
00:36:32 Absolutely, I absolutely agree.
00:36:35 What do you, if I can just talk about specific drugs,
00:36:39 what’s the difference between opioids and benzos,
00:36:42 for example, specifically, I mean,
00:36:47 these are drugs that you often read about
00:36:50 being misused at scale.
00:36:53 I mean, the misuse is the problem, right?
00:36:56 No matter what the drug is.
00:36:58 And that’s actually what you’re pushing for is education
00:37:00 and it should be legal and should be good.
00:37:03 So people should know what’s the difference in proper use,
00:37:08 positive use and misuse.
00:37:10 I mean, one public figure who has been going through this
00:37:13 is Jordan Peterson, he’s been public about his struggle
00:37:17 of getting off benzos, the withdrawal he’s going through.
00:37:20 I mean, what are your thoughts about the misuse of benzos
00:37:25 or opioids and so on, the epidemic that people talk about?
00:37:30 Yeah, I don’t know Jordan’s specific case,
00:37:33 but certainly with benzodiazepines in general,
00:37:36 we talked about withdrawal earlier.
00:37:37 When I said that with alcohol withdrawal, you can die.
00:37:40 So benzos and alcohol, they’re closely related.
00:37:43 So benzo withdrawal too can kill you just like alcohol.
00:37:47 So when we think about the effects
00:37:49 that benzodiazepines produce,
00:37:51 think about the effects that alcohol produce,
00:37:53 they’re comparable or similar.
00:37:55 And so I know that it’s a difficult one to wean yourself off
00:38:01 if you develop the dependence,
00:38:03 but we have protocols for that and I hope he’s okay.
00:38:09 It’s interesting you say we have protocols for that,
00:38:11 but from my understanding was that
00:38:13 like the protocols aren’t standardized.
00:38:16 It feels like a lot of doctors aren’t as helpful
00:38:19 as they could be in this process.
00:38:20 Like it’s a bit of a mess.
00:38:22 Certainly with withdrawal,
00:38:23 they’re more standardized than anything.
00:38:27 So like if someone is going through alcohol withdrawal,
00:38:30 there is a standard protocol that most physicians
00:38:33 in this business, they follow.
00:38:36 The same is true with a benzo withdrawal.
00:38:39 But the thing where it gets murky
00:38:41 is when they’re treating addiction itself.
00:38:44 So when you’re thinking about the substance use disorder
00:38:47 in the DSM, not just withdrawal, but the entire addiction,
00:38:51 that’s where you have this sort of a divergence
00:38:56 or diversity in terms of approaches.
00:39:00 And many of those approaches are rubbish.
00:39:03 Can you just elaborate like technically
00:39:06 what the term addiction means that you’re referring to?
00:39:09 When I use the term addiction,
00:39:11 I’m referring to the Diagnostic Statistical Manual
00:39:16 of the American Psychiatric Association,
00:39:18 number five now, the DSM five.
00:39:20 That’s never been wrong, right?
00:39:24 I’m just kidding.
00:39:25 You’re absolutely, that point is well taken.
00:39:28 And your point is that their definition
00:39:33 of substance use disorder, that’s addiction.
00:39:35 That’s what I’m talking about.
00:39:36 But that definition continues to evolve.
00:39:39 And so you’re right.
00:39:41 They still are working it out.
00:39:44 We’re getting new information from scientific studies
00:39:47 and so forth.
00:39:48 And so it’s supposed to be incorporated into the DSM,
00:39:51 but there are some problems with the DSM.
00:39:53 Like for example, they also have this sort of once an addict,
00:39:58 always an addict thing.
00:40:00 And there’s no evidence to support that, but it’s evolving.
00:40:05 And it’s the definition that people in science
00:40:09 and medicine use.
00:40:10 And so we all know we’re talking about the same language
00:40:13 when we call someone a substance use disorder patient
00:40:17 or someone who meets criteria for addiction.
00:40:19 We all are speaking the same language.
00:40:22 We’re not saying that simply because this person
00:40:24 use heroin, they are an addict.
00:40:26 That’s not what we’re saying.
00:40:28 You have to meet these criteria where you have disruptions
00:40:32 in your psychosocial functioning.
00:40:34 That’s one.
00:40:35 And two, you, the person are distressed
00:40:39 by these disruptions.
00:40:43 So people have to meet those two basic criteria
00:40:46 before we say they are addicted.
00:40:48 So once an addict, always an addict, this idea.
00:40:53 So I’ve, I mean, some of it is always mapped
00:40:57 to the person, all right.
00:40:58 But just the people I’ve interacted with
00:41:01 who have struggled with alcohol addiction,
00:41:04 I don’t know what the proper term is.
00:41:06 It seems like with Alcohol Anonymous,
00:41:09 the process of putting that addiction behind you
00:41:14 is a very, very long process.
00:41:16 It’s surprisingly long to me.
00:41:18 That almost seems like a whole life.
00:41:20 Like, he’s not always an addict, but it takes decades.
00:41:24 It seems like, what is that?
00:41:27 What, can you maybe just, from your understanding
00:41:31 as a scientist, from your understanding as a human
00:41:33 who studies human nature, why does it take so long
00:41:36 to treat, to deal with that addiction?
00:41:42 Well, you cited Alcohol Anonymous, right?
00:41:46 And so I don’t think of Alcohol Anonymous
00:41:49 as like a treatment that I would send any relative to,
00:41:54 like for a drug related problem.
00:41:57 I think Alcohol Anonymous AA is really good
00:42:01 for social interactions, making sure people
00:42:07 have a social group and they have peers.
00:42:10 I mean, that’s a good thing.
00:42:11 We all need that social interaction.
00:42:14 But I don’t think they know much about drugs.
00:42:16 That’s not, it’s like saying, well, you know,
00:42:21 my uncle broke his knee and he has this support group
00:42:25 and they said this, and then we follow that.
00:42:30 That doesn’t make any sense.
00:42:31 But in our society, judges even sentence people
00:42:36 to go to AA.
00:42:39 Are you kidding me?
00:42:40 But that’s the kind of thing that has been allowed to happen
00:42:44 in this society because we think of drugs
00:42:48 as this moral failing or drug addiction
00:42:51 as this moral failing.
00:42:54 And any idiot can provide treatment
00:42:56 and no disrespect to AA because I think what they do
00:43:00 is a lot more than what some people do
00:43:02 because at least they have this social,
00:43:05 these social interactions, you have a social group.
00:43:09 That’s better than what a lot of these other idiots
00:43:12 out here do.
00:43:13 Well, and that social support group unrelated to the drug,
00:43:18 it helps cure some of the environment issues
00:43:20 you might be in.
00:43:21 That’s the whole point.
00:43:23 So we kind of coupled the drug to the environment,
00:43:25 but the reality is, as you argue,
00:43:28 most of the problems come from the environment.
00:43:31 Certainly with people who are experiencing
00:43:32 drug related problem with most of the people,
00:43:34 not all, but most.
00:43:36 There are differences like that psychedelics
00:43:40 and like psilocybin has versus alcohol.
00:43:43 I personally think I’ve enjoyed both experiences
00:43:49 in different ways.
00:43:51 Is it possible or are we getting into the realm of poetry
00:43:54 to describe the benefits, like how it alters the mind,
00:43:59 how the different drugs alter the mind
00:44:03 and the places it can take you
00:44:05 that produce a positive experience?
00:44:06 Yeah, no, it’s very real.
00:44:09 Like some drugs take people in places that other drugs can
00:44:14 and that’s very real.
00:44:17 I have friends, some of them you know,
00:44:21 they, for example, say that they’ve never had an experience
00:44:27 like the one they had with ayahuasca
00:44:29 and they’ve done a number of sort of things,
00:44:32 but they did the ayahuasca in a setting with a shaman
00:44:38 and this group and they felt like they actually began
00:44:45 to heal or solve some problems
00:44:47 that they were trying to solve for some years.
00:44:50 And that’s great, that’s great for them.
00:44:54 And nothing else does it for them like that.
00:44:56 And that’s absolutely fantastic.
00:44:59 All I argue is that if that kind of thing happens for you
00:45:06 with ayahuasca, with psilocybin,
00:45:09 with some other psychedelic,
00:45:12 why isn’t it possible that heroin does that for someone
00:45:16 or cocaine does that for someone else
00:45:19 or MDMA does it for someone, that’s it.
00:45:23 That’s interesting to imagine like a shaman for heroin.
00:45:27 Like why not?
00:45:29 Or cocaine, you said creating an environment for yourself,
00:45:31 for use of these different substances
00:45:33 and that environment has a very strong impact
00:45:39 on the actual experience that you have.
00:45:41 But I mean, so cocaine is an upper and then.
00:45:47 Yeah, the way we define drugs like uppers and downers,
00:45:50 that’s a really kind of inappropriate way
00:45:55 but it’s a quick way.
00:45:57 So we certainly say cocaine is an upper or stimulant.
00:46:01 But it depends on the activity of the person
00:46:05 before they take the drug.
00:46:06 Say like if you’re like really active
00:46:08 before taking a drug like cocaine,
00:46:10 it might actually calm you.
00:46:12 So it all depends on the activity of the person
00:46:15 before they take the drug.
00:46:16 I remember, I don’t know if you know Matthew Johnson is.
00:46:19 Of course.
00:46:21 He did all these studies on,
00:46:22 or I remember just reading a paper,
00:46:25 I didn’t get a chance to talk with him much about it,
00:46:27 but it was about condom use and cocaine.
00:46:30 And then like the doses
00:46:33 and whether people are more or less likely.
00:46:35 Like the unsafe thing there is the using or not using,
00:46:40 or not using, I guess, condoms during sexual intercourse.
00:46:45 I don’t know, I just, I love that these drugs
00:46:48 that have connotation probably because of Hollywood,
00:46:52 negative connotations are actually being studied by science.
00:46:54 And then the actual impact they have,
00:46:56 and what are the negative effects.
00:46:57 Again, in those studies often,
00:47:01 the positive effects are difficult to quantify, I think.
00:47:05 Maybe I guess you can from self report and so on.
00:47:08 Positive effects are not difficult to quantify.
00:47:11 You ask people about their euphoria,
00:47:15 you can see how well people are getting along.
00:47:18 Like in our studies that we have people sometimes in groups
00:47:22 and you see how well they get along
00:47:25 on the various drug conditions or placebo conditions.
00:47:29 It’s really, it’s not that difficult.
00:47:32 And then you can see these amazing studies
00:47:34 with like Rick Doblin, like the looking at MDMA
00:47:37 and combined with therapy,
00:47:41 like how you can overcome certain PTSD things
00:47:44 or depression and so on.
00:47:46 Yeah, it’s really interesting.
00:47:48 It’s really interesting.
00:47:50 I had to ask you, cause you mentioned The Wire.
00:47:53 Do you think The Wire, you think movies like Trainspotting,
00:47:56 do you think they’re ultimately destroying?
00:47:58 Cause okay.
00:47:59 Yes, they celebrate murder, right?
00:48:02 The Godfather a little bit.
00:48:04 Yeah.
00:48:05 But another one, I mean,
00:48:07 it’s like these racist ass motherfuckers
00:48:10 and they also are killing people,
00:48:12 but yet they say, we don’t do drugs.
00:48:14 What kind of shit is that?
00:48:16 I mean, people who are doing drugs, psilocybin or whatever.
00:48:21 The thing is we’re trying to be better people
00:48:24 and trying to make our society better
00:48:27 and you’re killing people
00:48:28 and you are denigrating people for using drugs.
00:48:32 Are you fucking kidding me?
00:48:33 And we let them get away with that as a society.
00:48:35 Do you see those movies?
00:48:37 I apologize if I’m not sufficiently informed.
00:48:39 You see them as denigrating drugs?
00:48:41 Of course.
00:48:42 I mean, The Godfather.
00:48:44 Yes, that’s right.
00:48:45 That’s a good example.
00:48:46 The Godfather, The Sopranos is all about that.
00:48:49 I mean, Christopher is using heroin in The Sopranos
00:48:53 and they have an intervention in one season
00:48:58 and they are denigrating him.
00:49:02 Are you kidding me?
00:49:03 You just cut somebody’s head off.
00:49:05 Yeah, but they’re, to be fair,
00:49:07 they were denigrating, I think, all drugs.
00:49:10 And then they’re drinking alcohol in the butterbeam.
00:49:13 Yeah, yeah.
00:49:13 Come on, I mean, first of all, they’re killing people.
00:49:18 They don’t have any space, none,
00:49:21 to denigrate somebody who’s just trying
00:49:23 to alter their consciousness.
00:49:26 Are you kidding me?
00:49:27 And not bothering anyone else.
00:49:29 But there’s a lot of other mob movies
00:49:31 that Scarface celebrates the murder and the drugs equally.
00:49:35 So, I mean, it doesn’t,
00:49:39 it celebrates all of the, not just drugs or so on,
00:49:44 it’s extreme.
00:49:45 All of those movies, you know,
00:49:46 I loved all those movies.
00:49:48 I’m from Miami, I loved Scarface.
00:49:50 I even liked The Sopranos that I started looking
00:49:52 at that shit with a critical eye and see what it’s doing.
00:49:56 But Scarface is dependent upon the American viewer
00:50:02 having a certain view of people who deal in drugs.
00:50:06 And that view is that these people are animals, basically.
00:50:10 And in the end, the animal kills himself
00:50:14 with too much cocaine and he was high.
00:50:16 That’s what they show.
00:50:17 And so it’s like, what the fuck?
00:50:20 So it’s leveraging, it’s playing
00:50:22 into not the better angels of our nature.
00:50:31 The question.
00:50:31 Don’t take away these great movies from me.
00:50:34 But it’s true, you have to think about them critically
00:50:36 in the context.
00:50:37 Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
00:50:38 I like these movies.
00:50:39 It’s not a matter of taking away.
00:50:41 It’s a matter of making the writers be more honest
00:50:45 to the reality.
00:50:46 That’s it.
00:50:47 That’s true.
00:50:48 That’s really true.
00:50:49 And the writers, the people, the culture, all of it.
00:50:52 I mean, they write these things.
00:50:54 I just think about some hip hop artists.
00:50:57 They say like, this is real.
00:50:58 This is my experience and so forth.
00:51:01 And that’s how these movie writers,
00:51:02 they write this bullshit and then say, well, this is real.
00:51:07 Anyway, I get so upset talking about it
00:51:10 because I know the harm it’s doing.
00:51:12 And I know those kinds of movies are the reason
00:51:16 that we have this war on drugs.
00:51:18 And all of these people are going to jail
00:51:21 because of those kinds of movies.
00:51:24 In the epilogue of your book, you quote James Baldwin.
00:51:28 You cannot know what you will discover on the journey,
00:51:31 what you will do with what you find
00:51:33 or what you find will do to you.
00:51:36 So let me ask, how has drug use or the study of drugs
00:51:40 changed you as a human being?
00:51:42 It has helped me think about other people’s experience.
00:51:46 So how we’re all connected, like going to Northern Ireland.
00:51:51 I don’t know if you know much about the situation
00:51:53 with the troubles and what those people went through.
00:51:57 And so I see people there.
00:51:59 Northern Ireland, by the way, is all white.
00:52:02 And you see those people there suffering
00:52:04 for the same reasons that people in Appalachia
00:52:08 are suffering for.
00:52:09 Neglected by politicians who told them lies about drugs
00:52:14 and not dealing with the real problems,
00:52:16 like West Virginia, for example.
00:52:19 Their water’s polluted, the factories have gone away,
00:52:22 people are desperate and they’re blaming drugs.
00:52:25 Are you kidding me?
00:52:27 So the politicians don’t have to bring back the jobs.
00:52:31 So we don’t have to really make sure
00:52:34 they have clean drinking water, things of that nature.
00:52:37 And so those people are connected
00:52:39 to the people in Northern Ireland.
00:52:40 They’re connected to the people in Brownsville.
00:52:43 They’re connected to the people in other places
00:52:46 in the United States for the same reason.
00:52:49 They’re connected to the people in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
00:52:54 Same thing, people are catching hell for the same reason
00:52:58 in the Philippines for the same reason.
00:53:01 And that’s why I feel so strongly about this thing
00:53:04 because I know there are people getting paid
00:53:08 and their paycheck is predicated on subjugating
00:53:13 and the suffering of those other people.
00:53:17 So when we hear about the destructive effects of drugs,
00:53:21 it’s essentially a scapegoat for the failures of leaders
00:53:28 and politicians to help alleviate the suffering
00:53:30 of people in those communities.
00:53:31 Absolutely, it’s so easy to say,
00:53:34 I’m gonna rid your community of drugs.
00:53:36 I’m gonna put more cops on the street.
00:53:40 If you want a problem not to be solved,
00:53:45 just give it to the military or the cops.
00:53:48 You had a tough childhood growing up in Miami, like you said.
00:53:51 What memory stands out in particular that was formative
00:53:56 and helping make you the man you are?
00:54:00 That’s so hard to say, my grandmother was really important.
00:54:08 So maybe just her trying to make sure that I think critically,
00:54:13 I guess that’s the biggest one.
00:54:15 So you moved in with your parents split?
00:54:19 Six, seven, yeah.
00:54:20 What have you learned about life from her?
00:54:23 Be self sufficient, be critical and keep your eyes open
00:54:28 and watch out for the okie doke.
00:54:30 And that’s what this whole drug thing is about.
00:54:33 It’s the okie doke, people, it really boils down
00:54:38 to just simple thing.
00:54:40 We’re all similar in that we’re all just trying
00:54:43 to live our life, trying to take care of our kids.
00:54:46 We want the best for our kids, all of us.
00:54:48 But yet somehow we’ve been made to believe
00:54:54 that we’re different in that way.
00:54:56 But fundamentally, we’re all the same.
00:54:58 So when people are seeking to feel pleasure, to feel better,
00:55:05 why don’t we celebrate that?
00:55:06 Instead, we denigrate people for that.
00:55:10 I mean, if I feel better, I’m more likely to treat you well.
00:55:15 I got to say still, though, you’re going against the grain
00:55:19 and you’re at Columbia, it takes a lot of guts
00:55:25 to sort of speak out about these ideas so boldly.
00:55:29 I don’t know how to ask this question.
00:55:32 Where do you find the guts?
00:55:34 What, because it’s also perhaps inspirational to others
00:55:39 in different disciplines that are sort of taking
00:55:41 on the conventional wisdom of the day.
00:55:43 And challenging it, what does it take to do that?
00:55:47 What advice would you give to others like you kind
00:55:50 of a little bit afraid to do so?
00:55:52 Once you know, you cannot not know, as they say.
00:55:56 And so I have to look in the mirror.
00:55:58 And then looking in the mirror, I have to face myself.
00:56:01 Have I lived honestly?
00:56:03 And if I can’t face myself, then what am I doing here?
00:56:10 You know, that’s how I see it.
00:56:14 One of the things that people don’t really talk about
00:56:19 with drugs and people who die from some drug related death.
00:56:23 And I’ve been thinking about this a whole lot
00:56:27 over the past couple of years.
00:56:28 It’s like some of these drugs can take you to a place
00:56:33 where you feel so optimistic and positive about humans,
00:56:37 our fellow humans.
00:56:39 And you want to do your best to contribute.
00:56:43 And because you know the possibilities
00:56:46 of what we can be as a society.
00:56:49 And then you come up with resistance and you, like you say,
00:56:54 there are a lot, there’s a lot of resistance
00:56:55 and people just have a hard time.
00:56:58 And so if you know humans can be better
00:57:03 and they refuse to be better, why be here
00:57:07 as someone who knows that we can do this better?
00:57:12 I certainly don’t want to do it the way we’re doing it.
00:57:15 So you kind of see drugs as mechanisms
00:57:19 for potentially elevating the human spirit,
00:57:21 sort of making people feel better.
00:57:24 So you want to communicate that message.
00:57:26 So it’s that plus the fact that drugs are used as scapegoat
00:57:32 to not alleviate the suffering of certain communities.
00:57:36 So those two things come together.
00:57:38 One of the sort of main points of the book too
00:57:41 was to try and get people to understand the possibilities
00:57:45 that we could have if we embraced certain drug use.
00:57:52 If we allowed adults to do this sort of thing.
00:57:56 Relationships can be better.
00:58:01 A wide range of beneficial effects.
00:58:04 People would be, or can learn to be more magnanimous.
00:58:09 All of these pro social things that we say we value.
00:58:15 In your previous book, High Price,
00:58:16 you talk about rap and DJing, chapter five.
00:58:21 There’s a nice picture of you DJing from 1983.
00:58:24 So let me ask who in your view,
00:58:28 this is the toughest question of this interview,
00:58:30 is the greatest hip hop artist of all time?
00:58:32 Maybe give some candidates.
00:58:34 Oh, wow.
00:58:35 Who is the greatest hip hop artist?
00:58:37 I don’t know if I’m qualified to make that bag
00:58:40 because I have to go back to like Gil Scott Heron.
00:58:47 Like people think of him as one of the fathers of hip hop.
00:58:52 That’s my all time favorite.
00:58:56 People like Chuck D from Public Enemy.
00:58:58 Some of the things that they were doing,
00:59:00 I was really digging, but even though I was digging
00:59:04 like Public Enemy, but even they got it wrong on drugs.
00:59:08 Even Gil Scott Heron got it wrong on drugs.
00:59:12 But they were doing so much other good stuff.
00:59:16 It helped me to develop as a person.
00:59:20 And so I think like my son is a hip hop artist now.
00:59:29 I think those folks who are in the game now,
00:59:31 they are a lot more qualified to talk about who’s
00:59:35 the greatest hip hop artist.
00:59:37 I’m not qualified.
00:59:38 The evolution, I mean, have you tracked the evolution
00:59:41 from sort of the 90s with Wu Tang and Tupac and Biggie
00:59:45 and then to what we have today?
00:59:48 So there’s just been a crazy amount of progress.
00:59:50 It’s like almost difficult to track.
00:59:52 Yeah, I mean, I really love what they’re doing.
00:59:55 I like what they accept the part where they get over 40
00:59:59 and they become fucking cops on TV.
01:00:01 I mean, other than that, I dig what’s that about.
01:00:05 Yeah, I don’t understand that, but that’s what they do.
01:00:08 Again, this sort of glorification of cops,
01:00:13 that’s dangerous for a society.
01:00:16 And those cats who do that kind of thing,
01:00:19 I have a problem with that.
01:00:21 Is it all sort of to push back a little bit?
01:00:23 Because I come from the Soviet Union
01:00:25 where there’s a huge amount of corruption.
01:00:26 And when I see what’s going on with cops in this country,
01:00:30 there’s a lot of proper criticism you can apply,
01:00:32 but like relative to other places,
01:00:36 this is, well, on so many ways, this country is incredible.
01:00:40 Is your criticism towards cops
01:00:44 or towards what cops are asked to do?
01:00:46 Yeah, towards what cops are asked to do.
01:00:49 Cops provide the shield for politicians and those in power.
01:00:54 Absolutely, because I was in the military,
01:00:57 I spent four years in the military
01:00:58 and I did what I was told to do.
01:01:00 And I was ignorant and thought I was doing the right thing.
01:01:06 And I did what I was told to do.
01:01:08 And so just like these guys are doing what they’re told to do.
01:01:11 But no, my real beef is with the power structure,
01:01:15 the folks who are telling them what to do.
01:01:17 And also the folks who go play cops on television.
01:01:22 That imagery, that sort of glorifying cops,
01:01:28 that’s a problem in a democracy.
01:01:30 Yeah, all sides of the glorification
01:01:32 of the drug war is a problem.
01:01:35 Yeah.
01:01:37 If I can just linger on a little longer
01:01:40 in terms of the effects of drugs,
01:01:42 on the positive like mind expanding components of it,
01:01:46 what have mind altering drugs teach you
01:01:53 about the human mind?
01:01:55 Sort of from a neuroscience, not even like a biochemical,
01:01:59 but just like the human mind is amazing, right?
01:02:02 The places it can go.
01:02:06 Like, are there some insights you’ve learned
01:02:09 from studying drugs about the mind?
01:02:11 Yeah, can I start from a neurochemical perspective first
01:02:15 and then we’ll go larger?
01:02:16 Just from a neurochemical perspective.
01:02:19 I mean, everything I know about the brain,
01:02:22 I learned through drugs because of my interest in drugs.
01:02:25 So I learned a lot about dopamine neurons
01:02:28 in certain regions of the brain, about neuro epinephrine
01:02:30 neurons and a wide range of other sort of neural transmission
01:02:35 happened because of drugs.
01:02:37 And so that’s a really valuable tool, lessons for me.
01:02:41 But then when we think that we move out a bit
01:02:45 and we think more globally,
01:02:46 what have I learned in terms of the mind from drugs?
01:02:52 I have really learned how to be more forgiving of people
01:02:59 and myself and tolerant, more tolerant of people
01:03:06 and certainly learned a lot more about empathy
01:03:10 as a result of drug use.
01:03:16 And like I said earlier, I’m learning what we can be
01:03:22 as a species and it’s quite incredible,
01:03:25 but because of drugs.
01:03:27 Yeah, there’s a certain property of drugs in different ways.
01:03:29 They take you out of your body,
01:03:31 like they help you evaluate yourself
01:03:34 from like a third person perspective.
01:03:36 It’s almost like you have a consciousness in here
01:03:38 and you get to step outside of it a little bit.
01:03:41 I mean, that’s kind of what meditation does too.
01:03:42 All of these processes,
01:03:44 that’s what a hell of a good workout does too.
01:03:47 It makes you evaluate yourself and then somehow
01:03:50 that allows you to be forgiving to yourself
01:03:54 and forgiving to others, sort of empathize.
01:03:57 It trains that part of your brain.
01:03:59 So stepping outside of yourself,
01:04:01 not taking yourself too seriously, that process.
01:04:03 And different drugs do that in different ways.
01:04:06 Obviously, I don’t know from personal experience
01:04:07 on some of them, but I’m now curious,
01:04:14 it’s unfortunate that the Hollywood and different stories
01:04:18 we have demonize certain drugs and sort of basically,
01:04:23 I don’t know, make it difficult for people like me
01:04:25 to explore those ideas, but then I’m really thankful
01:04:28 for people like you who are pushing the science forward
01:04:30 and are unafraid to talk about this kind of stuff.
01:04:34 Cause I’m really fascinated with consciousness
01:04:36 on the engineering side.
01:04:38 I really want to build robots that have elements
01:04:42 of intelligence, emotion, even consciousness.
01:04:45 And for that, we need to understand it in ourselves
01:04:47 and drugs is all the different kinds of drugs.
01:04:51 If you safely seems like an incredible tool
01:04:53 to understand ourselves.
01:04:55 And if we’re limiting ourselves from certain drugs
01:04:58 because of certain political games that are being played,
01:05:01 it’s sad.
01:05:03 And people know this, a lot of middle to upper class
01:05:06 people know this, the illicit drug trade business
01:05:10 is a multi million dollar industry,
01:05:12 multi billion dollar industry that could not be supported
01:05:17 by people who are poor.
01:05:19 And that has to be supported by a lot of customers.
01:05:23 And a lot of people around the world know this,
01:05:27 they’re in the closet and in the book,
01:05:30 I call for them to get out of the closet.
01:05:32 So we can start being more honest
01:05:35 and we can take the pressure off of those people
01:05:38 who are not as privileged.
01:05:40 Like I said, you’re brave, you’re bold.
01:05:43 I gotta ask you for some advice.
01:05:45 What advice would you give to a young person today?
01:05:48 High school, maybe undergrad, college,
01:05:52 thinking about their career,
01:05:54 thinking about how to live a life they can be proud of.
01:05:57 Yeah, whatever career they choose,
01:06:00 just make sure that they dedicate themselves to it
01:06:03 and be the best at what they do first.
01:06:06 That’s what you have to do first.
01:06:08 Like people see me advocating for this position.
01:06:13 30 years of science is in these opinions, this view.
01:06:18 And trust me, I would be dismissed
01:06:21 if I didn’t know my shit, if I was not.
01:06:24 Yeah, you did the work, you proved yourself,
01:06:26 you’re legit by the people in the eyes of the people
01:06:30 who know.
01:06:31 Absolutely, so that’s the main thing
01:06:33 that I would encourage people to do,
01:06:34 really know your craft.
01:06:36 If you know your craft,
01:06:38 and then maybe you will be a service
01:06:42 to your fellow citizens.
01:06:45 There are so many people out here faking the funk
01:06:48 and they don’t know their craft
01:06:50 and they’re not a service to the people
01:06:52 that they claim to serve.
01:06:54 And that’s a problem.
01:06:55 And when you have a fair number of people
01:06:59 like that in positions of power,
01:07:01 your society is going to crumble.
01:07:04 What about the scientific path?
01:07:06 You recommend people get a PhD?
01:07:09 Not necessarily, like my own children,
01:07:13 I don’t recommend that.
01:07:14 So science can, certainly my science
01:07:19 can be a very petty sort of space to be in.
01:07:22 But it was the only sort of path that I had.
01:07:26 And so I had to do it.
01:07:29 But no, I would really encourage people
01:07:34 to just do something that they enjoy
01:07:38 and something that makes them happy.
01:07:40 Because the greater number of happy people in our society,
01:07:45 the better off we all are.
01:07:48 All right, since you mentioned happiness,
01:07:51 gotta ask you about the pursuit of happiness
01:07:53 and the ridiculous question about meaning.
01:07:57 Do you think this life has meaning?
01:07:59 What do you think is the meaning of life?
01:08:01 I’m sorry.
01:08:02 I certainly hope it has meaning.
01:08:04 I mean, I’m certainly trying to live my life
01:08:07 like it has meaning.
01:08:08 You know, I really love my life now.
01:08:12 I just got back from Geneva.
01:08:14 I spent the summer abroad in Europe
01:08:17 and trying to be in a more civilized place
01:08:20 where you can enjoy yourself as a responsible adult.
01:08:25 And then it allowed me to decompress
01:08:27 and then come back here.
01:08:29 The thing about coming back here
01:08:31 is that you have to be ready to fight.
01:08:33 And I don’t wanna fight anymore.
01:08:35 I just wanna be able to help a society and people.
01:08:39 And so I’ll have to keep a place in Europe
01:08:42 to go and decompress and then come back
01:08:46 to be able to tolerate the situation.
01:08:48 So life for me has a lot of meaning.
01:08:51 I’m enjoying life.
01:08:53 And this is like the greatest,
01:08:57 the best part of my life ever right now at this moment.
01:09:00 So it’s the joy,
01:09:01 but you also enjoy the fight a little bit or?
01:09:03 No, I don’t really, I’m tired of that.
01:09:06 You know, it’s like, why?
01:09:08 You’re trying to,
01:09:11 I’m trying to help people to see how they can be happy
01:09:16 and then people are fighting me on that.
01:09:19 I don’t wanna be happy.
01:09:20 I wanna be ignorant.
01:09:21 Leave me alone.
01:09:22 That’s what people are saying.
01:09:24 Well, so what is the source of joy for you
01:09:25 when you decompress?
01:09:27 MDMA is a source, you know,
01:09:30 and a place where you don’t have to worry about laws,
01:09:34 that’s like Europe.
01:09:35 You can feel really free.
01:09:37 Yeah, heroin can even be a nice space
01:09:41 if I’m in my own head,
01:09:44 but with others, MDMA is great.
01:09:48 So, but good friends, good food.
01:09:52 The usual.
01:09:53 Yeah, yeah.
01:09:55 Family, love.
01:09:56 Yeah, that’s right.
01:09:57 Carl, you’re an incredible human being.
01:09:59 You really make me think.
01:10:00 Everyone who listens to this,
01:10:04 I mean, I’m really glad you exist.
01:10:07 I know you say you don’t like the fight,
01:10:08 but I’m really glad you’re fighting the fight
01:10:10 because it’s gonna help a lot of people.
01:10:11 It’s gonna help, at the very least,
01:10:15 help a lot of people think
01:10:16 and challenge the conventions of the day
01:10:19 and maybe challenge them to find joy.
01:10:22 I really appreciate you spending your valuable time with me.
01:10:24 This was an awesome conversation.
01:10:26 Thank you so much for talking to me.
01:10:27 Thank you for having me, man.
01:10:29 Thanks for listening to this conversation with Carl Hart.
01:10:32 To support this podcast,
01:10:34 please check out our sponsors in the description.
01:10:36 And now let me leave you with some words from Frank Zappa.
01:10:40 A drug is not bad.
01:10:41 A drug is a chemical compound.
01:10:44 The problem comes in when people who take drugs
01:10:47 treat them like a license to behave like an asshole.
01:10:50 Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.