12 - Hamilton Morris on the Expansive World of Drugs

I almost feel as if there's been some sort of conspiracy against making chemistry interesting. And it's a shame because it's one of the most fascinating subjects in the world, and there's no reason everyone shouldn't know at least a little bit about it. But it's such a powerful realm of knowledge that it's been sterilized in both high school and college education because, the fact of the matter is, that it's dangerous knowledge. If you know too much or you know the wrong things about chemistry, you're capable of making all sorts of drugs; you're capable of making all sorts of weapons, explosives, nerve agents, and on, and on, and on.

I think that that's something that you find all the time with psychoactive drugs—people are self-censoring; they're policing themselves. They're so afraid to talk about this subject that they are unconsciously promoting a prohibitionist agenda.

I think that's one of the biggest problems with the contemporary cannabis community is their complete unwillingness to acknowledge the possibility that there might be anything bad about being stoned every waking moment of your life.

That's one of the powerful things about psychedelics is that, even though they're typically quite safe, they're very good at giving you the impression that you're dying. That's one of the things that makes them so powerful ... At high doses, they can reliably give you a sensation that you're dying, and it's often that very sensation that, in my experience, is responsible for their therapeutic effect...

After smoking a very high dose 5-MeO-DMT last year, there was a period where I completely, without logic or reason, suddenly had a sense of God. This is something that is very alien to me ... It wasn't that I logically believed in it or even that I strongly believed it, I just had this nebulous sense of God.

And because LSD is so safe, it makes other things less safe because it raises the bar. It gives people this impression that all psychedelics must be safe at 50 times the desirable dose. Well, I guess, in that case, it's almost unfortunate that LSD is so safe because it creates a standard that almost no other drug can live up to.

My own personal perspective on this is that, if you can avoid it, it's probably better not to use a drug everyday.