Welcome to going mental. This is your host Eileen Kelly. I'm interested in the things many of us face, but don't always talk about after spending five months at McLean Hospital working on my mental health. I'm back a little more insightful and with plenty of stories to share expanding on my usual topics of sexuality, and intimacy. This season takes into account. Everything. I learned during my stay. I'll be bringing together a wide range of guest. Some beloved, some contentious to discuss work. Love.
In the bizarre phenomenon, that is Modern Life. Join me as we try to make sense of it all. Hey listeners. Today's episode is brought to you by Squarespace. Their platform can help you build a website, claim a domain and even start selling things online. So since Tumblr is dead. I suggest that you head over to Squarespace to create your own blog. Are you feeling depressed today? You can blog about it, picked up a new hobby or craft during quarantine. You can sell your Creations online. Do you take photos or
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On today's episode. I'm joined by chemists and filmmaker Hamilton Morris. He's the Creator and director of the vice docu-series Hamilton's pharmacopoeia where he investigates the chemistry history and cultural impact of various psychoactive drugs. He also conducts pharmacological research at Philadelphia's University of Science.
Can you introduce yourself for my listeners who are not
familiar? Yes, my name is Hamilton Morris. I created and directed A Documentary series called Hamilton's, pharmacopoeia. That was about psychoactive, drugs, primarily psychedelics. And now I am a chemist. I did chemistry research while I was making the show, but now I am a full-time chemist. That's the main work that I'm doing right now.
I work at a university in Philadelphia studying and synthesizing new psychedelic compounds.
Well, I'm excited to get into things today. Are a little bit of a different guest which is great. And what I'm always kind of hoping to do and how did you first get interested in the field? You're working on.
I have really always found psychoactive drugs. Very very interesting for as long as I can. Remember. I've been very impressed by the power that they have really. I even have memories of being a kid.
Under garden and watching the news and seeing reports about people overdosing on drugs or something like that and thinking wow that's amazing. The drugs are capable of killing people or that specific drug combinations can cause death and there was a decent bit of mental illness in my family. And so I was sort of aware of psychiatric medications from a young age and I've
Always felt that they were magical and fascinating and something worthy of serious exploration.
Did you experiment with drugs growing up? Or was it more of a thing later in life
a little bit? Yeah, I you know, I smoked cannabis a bit in middle school and high school, but it wasn't until I was in college that I became very interested in consuming.
drugs, it was always something that I
Read about. And I was curious about and I did use DXM and salvia. Divinorum, when I was in high school, but that was pretty much it. I never used a classical psychedelic like LSD or psilocybin containing mushrooms.
So your dad is a renowned filmmaker. I would think having like a filmmaker as a parent seems like more artistic than your average parent. So I wonder if like drugs or some of these
Oops were talked about and maybe not at all. But
yeah, they were talked about but I would not say that it was a major part of my relationship with my dad at least specifically, the drug aspect. I mean, you should check out his. It's funny people always ask me this in interviews, but then I find that they often haven't actually seen his films. So his films are great. I'm a big admirer of his work and and although he
In he has done a couple of things that involve drugs, but I think if I learned anything from him, it was a process for doing interviews and communicating with people that I've used throughout the documentaries that I've made. But in terms of this subject matter, I would not say that that was something that he influenced in any meaningful way and he's yeah, he is an artistic person, an artist, but he's not, he I think he's a very unusual person, really?
Sort of like a gives a very intellectual connection to interviews and evaluating truth and investigation used to be a detective. And so yeah, I think that in terms of that aspect of the work that I do he was influential in terms of answering
questions. Yeah, and how you go about kind of the more journalistic work which kind of brings me to the next question. Like how did you even first get involved with writing for vice?
I mean,
When I started, it was not difficult at all. I mean, I imagine it's still not difficult at the moment. It's pretty easy to write for magazines. The hard thing is making a living doing it. It's not a good way to support yourself, but most magazines will allow you to write an article. You just get paid terribly. So I was, you know, in college and started writing articles about psychoactive drugs and it's not a hard sell because people are very interested in drugs. What I
Wanted to do was to try to tell better stories about drugs.
I want to talk about your show. Yeah, so, can you give me a brief rundown of the show for people who aren't familiar with it? I have seen the show. Thank you.
Okay, good. Glad to hear it. Yeah, so I mean without getting too self-righteous or moralistic. I did have this feeling growing up that drugs are very important. Like they're kind of talked about in a
Civ way even in the way that people talk about my show. It's often a little bit dismissive like oh, how do I get that job? This guy gets high for a living, you know, and I get it. It's funny to pretend that that's what the show is but it's also emblematic of the way that people think about these issues. It's like a joke. It's either a joke, something that you make fun of fine, or it's something very very serious. Like, we've got to put the saker's in prison and we've gotta get them executed. And we've got to find the people that are
Selling fentanyl, we've got to kill him and put him in prison and and or there's all this anger or intensity and all these sorts of non-constructive non-rational attitudes toward these molecules that as far as I'm concerned. Our value neutral any value that comes to a molecule is a product of the humans that interact with them. And and I think that a lot of damage has been done historically.
In the way that we talk about drugs, whether it's during the Reagan Administration or the Nixon Administration, the War on Drugs, just say, no, the way that journalists historically have been complicit in the War on Drugs, the way that people don't learn from the mistakes of the past, and it has been very dark. When you look at the way things
were, even the way that the prison system has trickled down. And now with, like certain drugs being legalized, but
Being put away for you know smaller drug crimes. It's just it's a very layered
issue. Oh, yeah, and it's an immensely tragic to think what the repercussions of this have been. And it continues to this day, journalists are routinely complicit in the War on Drugs. It's basically this standard like if you look at the New York Times, there was an article where they were talking about George Floyd and they said you know that the police
Officer, who arrested George? Floyd for some kind of crack charge in. Maybe it was like 2005 or something. May have been corrupt and maybe he shouldn't have actually been arrested for that crack charge. Well, as far as I'm concerned, he should have been arrested for the crack charge regardless. It doesn't matter whether the police officer was corrupt. It's not something that people should be going to prison for, and the fact that people have to kind of go along with this, like, it makes sense. When there's
No acceptable way to allow the incarceration of people as a like, a valid strategy for either drug control or drug harm, reduction or anything. It just doesn't work and it is created this. Massive for-profit prison system. It's destroyed millions of lives because it's not just the people that go to prison, their families are destroyed. It causes, you know, like, I know so many people who grew up without a parent.
Because their father did something related to drugs and then that's it. They don't have a father growing up, that sort of thing, happens all the time, and it has far-reaching consequences. And so I was sort of just appalled, by the way, that everybody goes a long with this or that on the opposite side. You have people that are Ultra Pro Drug, who only talk about the positive aspects of these drugs, cannabis cures, all diseases, cannabis, cures, cancer, Canada.
It all pharmaceutical companies are evil, that kind of thing. You have so many extremes and I thought, okay, if somebody could just present a balanced depiction of the way these substances exist in our society that would be so valuable and and I wanted to try to do that and that was the origin of the show and the origin of so much of the work that I did was trying to look at these very controversial divisive issues and figure out a way to present.
Them. So that people had a better understanding. So that the harms associated, with either prohibition or misrepresentation, or abuse could be mitigated in some
way. And what was that process like, like, what's the process like of figuring out? Okay, which drug, you know, what location, how am I going to tell the story for this episode?
Well, it was very, very difficult because often there was an idea something that I thought would be interesting but
That doesn't always mean that it's possible to tell the story. The first episode of the first season was about the drug Quaalude in South Africa and I was fascinated by the history of Quaalude. Both in the United States, and in Europe, and in South Africa. Because I thought this is a rare instance of a drug that is prohibited. Usually prohibition just doesn't work. But sometimes it kind of works under some circumstances either because
Drug is not that desirable to begin with OR because it's supplanted by some other more accessible substance and it struck me as so unusual. That there would be this one place on Earth where people continue to use Quaalude and wouldn't it be cool to tell a story about how that came to be, and to interview the clandestine chemists who are manufacturing Quaalude in Laboratories, in South Africa. And so yeah, great story, but easier said than done
and even find them. Yeah.
Yeah. And it
Took two trips to South Africa and a lot of time building relationships to get to the point where I was able to do that, but it was a very gradual process. That began would spending time with people who used Quaalude there. It's called mandrax and befriending them asking where it came from talking to people, eventually meeting somebody who is involved in the synthesis and then gaining their trust.
And getting to the point where they allowed me to record them doing their work
to, then be shown on the show or edited that whole thing. Yeah. Have you ever had stories that you've wanted to tell that just were not
feasible? Oh, yeah, routinely routinely.
Yeah, what, what's like one of those that pops into mind?
Well, I mean more than anything. Most of these projects started as a question, a genuine.
Question. And the question is, you know, for example, PCP was once it actually remains its schedule to it, can still be prescribed. Although there are no pharmaceutical companies, manufacturing it as a treatment but hypothetically, a physician could prescribe PCP to someone and it initially was a surgical anesthetic. It was used in some psychiatric research as well. And at some point, it crossed over from Medical.
Patrick Veterinary laboratory use to manufacture on the street in the United States and the question is how did that happen? So simple question, it's never been answered. There. Is somebody that did that in the chemistry is non-trivial? It, you know, something like methamphetamine depending on how it's made. It can be either very easy or very difficult but the crucial aspect of its chemistry is that there are over-the-counter nasal decongestants to contain pseudo.
Ephedrine it's like DayQuil, right?
I don't know if DayQuil suppose, I'd probably, yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if they quote contain pseudoephedrine.
I always heard him. High school. Like if you bought too much, DayQuil it like alert someone at CVS and like they will stop you because they think you're going to make math.
Oh, yeah. I mean it might be the case at least in New York. You have to show ID when purchasing pseudoephedrine containing nasal decongestants. For that very reason because it is a single step away from methamphetamine. So,
Somebody with the know how can do that conversion somewhat easily but that is not the case for PC p. Pz p requires laboratory chemicals and more sophisticated chemical Transformations than the reduction of a single hydroxyl group. So a chemist would have needed to teach people how to do this in. The question is, who is that chemists? And I spent a lot of time trying to answer that question. I have some sort of preliminary answers, but that was something I was never able to defeat.
- Lee answer and there are all sorts of questions like that, you know, like to see B is very popular in South America, who is making it. What are those labs look like? That was something I wasn't able to entirely answer or you know, what is the process of distilling Xenon from the atmosphere? Look like that was very difficult to film partially because I was filming during the pandemic and one of the major distilling sites was in Wuhan so that was not
Possible to visit. But you know, sometimes there's logistical issues. Sometimes there are investigative issues and because of the legal problems, you know, people justifiably have serious concerns about losing their freedom as a result of talking to journalists in this area. It required a lot of care and integrity and
Trust I'm telling
you trust and time and so sometimes we were able to pull things off and
Sometimes it was impossible.
Well, I wonder are you behind the safety of being a journalist like legally? Are there any ramifications of, you know, being in a drug lab where they're producing illegal drugs?
Yes. I am protected. So it is, it is not illegal to be a journalist, witnessing a crime, essentially, if I know if if somebody has a operation where they're manufacturing methamphetamine and they
A,
I invite you to film as I make methamphetamine, that is not a crime. But, so, yeah, so it was never about my well being, that was never the concern. The concern was their well-being. And yeah, their safety people would always ask me. Well, weren't you afraid? And the answer is yes, I was afraid but not for myself. I was afraid for them. And and so there was always an enormous amount of attention paid to ensuring that the people who were involved in.
These projects were protected, legally, and
could you not be like subpoena? I'm just imagining like throwing throwing this out there, but could you not be subpoenaed of like, okay. We saw your show. You went to like a meth Factory. We need to know where this was who this was like, you can't run into any of those
issues. Uh-huh. No, I don't think you can be, we maybe you could be but we often built in.
Processes for ensuring that, that sort of information. Never existed to begin
with in the first place.
Gotta know, like, I wouldn't know people's names. I wouldn't know location. So even if I were subpoenaed about some sort of sensitive information, I wouldn't have that information to provide to anyone.
Well, that's just fascinating to think about like the layers and obviously the time and the care that you put into doing this work to like the best.
Of your
ability. Yeah. Yeah. I mean I really cared about it because I think that it's important for people to see how these things exist in the real world. You know, there's so many stereotypes surrounding all these substances and a lot of these stereotypes have been crafted by law enforcement. I mean, I think this is another thing that you often see is journalists will quote law enforcement sources as if they are like unbiased or is if
Our interpretation of events has any validity and it is insane to me. So, what you'll always hear is it's all about money. They're just doing it for the money. They don't care about People's Health. It's all about money money, money money. And it's like, yes, sometimes money is a motivation for many people for many things. But more often than not, people have complicated motivations for doing these things, especially in the realm of something like psychedelics. When it's often the case, that money is not
Not a primary motivation in something like methamphetamine synthesis with a cartel, for example, yes, money is a motivator. But also these people are not nefarious, you know, diabolical architects of human suffering who are waking up each day, trying to get people as addicted as possible to drugs. It's all very decentralized, you know, you have chemists that have learned a recipe and
Often, you know, like essentially like anyone else, you know, they have families, they want to survive, they want to do good work and please their employers and make the thing that they know how to make and take pride in making it well,
but I think it's also you have to address or even just acknowledge the social part of it.
Yeah, and it was something like methamphetamine. It's so complicated because there is this idea.
Idea that it's all extremely bad and the people that make it must be the worst people and the people that sell it must be the worst people in the people that use, it must be bad. And what you often realize is that, in fact, no one is bad. The users aren't bad. The dealers aren't bad. The manufacturers aren't bad. Each person is living their own complicated. Existence trying to survive as best. They can in a difficult and painful world. I
Many people choose that type of existence, but it's something that happens. They wouldn't want to choose a
rather. I don't know if I agree with that. I agree with you saying, like, obviously not everyone is bad. I do think there are some like, bad people out there.
Oh, yeah. I mean, yes, there are bad. There are some bad people. Of course. I think the overarching stereotype that this is a world of Predator.
Ders. And deranged addicts. As opposed to struggling and trying to survive is a. I think probably if one were to make an argument for the existence of bad, guys. Something like the Sackler family would be a better example of a bad guy, you
know, then like a low on the totem pole someone who's selling
math. Yeah. Yeah. And, and historically, those sorts of people haven't even been considered drug.
That was one thing I did in the meth episode of my show is, I didn't even use the word cartel. I just said, independent pharmaceutical manufacturers because there are FDA-approved methamphetamine products that are sold in the United States, are our meth labs in the US that are completely legal. But we draw this somewhat arbitrary, distinction, or we say, okay. Well if a physician prescribes methamphetamine to somebody that's okay, but if
If there's no physician and no pharmaceutical company, no, FDA approval of the laboratory, then it's a crime. Well, yes, in some very technical sense, it is. But as far as I'm concerned, they're the exact same thing.
Well, it's for me. I think of like someone who's taking opiates that maybe has a lot of money and they're buying, you know, Percocet but then someone who maybe can't afford that as soon as they switch over to heroin, which I feel like does, I mean, you can talk more to this like basically the same thing, then all of a sudden,
You're doing dope and you're a junkie,
right? Yeah, it's also complicated. That's the thing. Is the the more time that I spend thinking about these subjects, and I think about them every day and have for over a decade, the more
Unsure. I am about almost everything and it's very hard to. I don't find myself agreeing with almost any simple interpretation of anything that's happening. You know, I read these two books. It was a book that came out recently Empire of pain and then there was a book before that painkiller about the Sackler family and they make a very persuasive case that the Sackler family behaved in a totally unethical and greedy way in order to make an enormous amount of
Money selling oxycodone and
that but it's not only them certainly not. No I start. There were thousands and thousands of doctors and this and that I listened to her Joe Rogan episode where you guys talked about that who were complicit and I feel like sometimes people get so focused on like the one person as like a scapegoat. Instead of looking like the systematic issue of like, how did this even become a thing?
Right? Right. And
That's the crucial question because did Richard Sackler do all of this know, it was an enormous Network that involved. Thousands and thousands of people including the users themselves. And if we just pretend that no Physicians knew, none of the people using the drugs, knew no one had. Any idea what was going on except for Richard Sackler. Then we're doing everyone a disservice because we're buying into a lie, that feels good. It feels good to have one bad guy and you can say Richard Sackler.
Lock them up. Take a take away his money, give him the chair. But where does that put us in next time? Something like this happens and it's never going to stop happening. We will always live in a world where people are trying to sell us, things that make us feel good. That might be bad for us. Whether it's drugs or junk food, or social media, or who knows what else? I mean, this is just the reality of our existence and the only way that we will be able to survive.
Dive in this world is through cultivating. A
Sophisticated understanding of those Dynamics and learning to deal with our own suffering in the healthiest possible way. Let's go. Which is not easy, but that's the reality. And so like I have a friend who was very addicted to heroin and he said something to me recently that I thought was really useful and he said, you know, people in serious recovery people who are in Narcotics Anonymous meetings are not blaming the sack lers for their
Problems, right, that's journalists. That's people who are telling stories because it feels good to tell the story. But when you're in the thick of it, you're trying to get better. Where does blaming Richard Sackler? Get you, it gets you nowhere because ultimately, it's your life, your decisions and your own Survival, that matters and Richard Sackler is just some cartoon villain cackling in the distance that doesn't have anything to do with you.
This is kind of a complicated question. I'm like trying to think how I can ask it, but
From your years of research. Do you feel like you've come to any sort of conclusion or thesis about psychoactive drugs and like their impact in society,
huh? No, it's too complicated with any single thing about it. I do think that the kind of the primary axis that a lot of drug use operates on is one of mitigating suffering and
How we conceptualize our own suffering is ultimately like, the fundamental question in how we use drugs, like how we develop relationship with our own suffering and and drugs are very, very useful for mitigating, all sorts of suffering. That's why people love them. Whether it's boredom, physical pain, emotional pain, depression, insomnia, whatever they do that very effectively. And so it's a question of how much suffering can you.
Your how did, what is the calculus of attempting to remove that suffering with a molecule of some kind? What are the long-term consequences? It's very complicated.
What about just Joy? What about people? Who just try drugs? Because they genuinely enjoy them. Like I want to take a little bit of ketamine to go out and dance or I want to take mushrooms to like have a spiritual experience or do
Ayahuasca, right? Yeah, and that's I think that's, you know, a lot of people.
People will say that psychedelics are different from all other drugs and on one hand. I actually do agree with that. I do think that they are very different in fundamental ways. They don't tend to cause any kind of addiction. In fact, they tend to treat addiction. They at least the classical, most common ones, like LSD and psilocybin. Containing mushrooms are virtually impossible to fatally, overdosed on. There's a
Quite a large body of medical literature demonstrating, they have at the very least potential is treatments for depression. OCD addiction Etc. So, you know on one hand, I think that yes, you can argue that they are different from other drugs. I'm also aware of this slippery slope when you start to say, well the drugs that I like are different from all other drugs because you find that all the time where people say, well I take pharmaceutical drugs. I'm not like that junkie on the street, taking meth, I take Adderall.
All. And
that's just like the same thing in your brain,
essentially. Yes, and there's, I don't know if you're familiar with Carl Hart, but he has a great turned into that. He uses for this drug elitism. And this is a very real phenomenon that you encounter all the time, where people draw these distinctions hard drugs off drugs, listed drugs, illicit drugs, pharmaceutical drugs, non-medical drugs, psychedelics all other drugs, and it's it can be very damaging when you draw these sorts.
Distinctions because you can create these illusory moral binaries where one type of drug is good. And another type of drug is bad and it really just depends on the person circumstances in the dose and a million other factors. I will say that, you know, one of the back to the sort of suffering issue, one of the things that make psychedelics different is that instead of reducing suffering, reliably, they can actually increase suffering. And I think that is
one of the reasons that makes them very different is that they are. They, they can be Escapist. They can be highly euphoric, but they can also cause a difficult confrontation with painful dimensions of your of your existence. And I think that is precisely what makes them useful. And sometimes people talk about a bad trip like, oh, you know, you only want to have a good time with
X. Well, that's all fine and good. I'm certainly not one to say that people shouldn't have a good time. Life is short. People should have a good time. But but to completely dismiss the thing that makes psychedelics so valuable, which is that they can force you into uncomfortable, confrontations, with aspects of your personality and your life, that could ultimately be very constructive. I think that that's something that should be appreciated about psychedelics, not something that people should treat as
Like a undesirable outcome, that should be
avoided. I mean, have you ever had any bad experiences with them? Have you had a bad trip?
I don't even, I don't believe in the term bad trip. I think it's not a constructive idea. Yeah, I don't believe in it. I mean I've and I say this as someone who's seen people have extremely difficult experiences. Including you know, I had a friend who had a psychotic break while using psychedelics. Oh, but I wouldn't call that a bad trip. I just don't think it's a useful
phrase Herm. Okay, but the
Yeah. Vet like, have you ever been confronted with something that was really difficult to
digest? Oh, routinely, I mean, that's, that's the whole point of using a psychedelic for me, is to do that. That is why I care about them is that they challenge you. And, you know, I even remember when the pandemic hit, I was in the middle of filming the third season of my show and I certainly wasn't a covid denier or anything like that, but I was a covid minimizer at the
And I was, I was kind of had this attitude like, well, what like we're going to just not live anymore. We're going to all stop working. Now, we're going to start everyone's going to stop their lives. Going to stop Flying on airplanes. Like there's no way that can't happen. The world can't stop. And and so and people were saying like, well, we can't we have to start canceling shoots. We can't do this. I thought. Well, we're all going to get it. Anyway, I mean, what is this is this is really what's we're just going to hide.
Forever. What is the plan here? And and it wasn't until I smoked DMT that I had this, you know, very real confrontation with my own avoidant minimizing attitude toward the reality of a global pandemic, you know, I and I thought okay. This is real. Like there's you can't pretend this isn't happening and ignore it. This is very much happening and you have to now except that everything.
That you were doing and everything that you were in the middle of is basically over and and I think it helped me. It wasn't comfortable. I didn't, you know, come out of it thinking like yeah, that was a fun time, but it shook me into reality. I mean, I think that's another kind of paradoxical aspect of this is people think of psychedelics is hallucinogens. It detach you from reality, but they can have almost the opposite effect of forcing you to confront a reality that you are.
Avoiding avoiding entirely.
Yeah, I mean I've had that experience. I've done, I've done Alice tea and I've done mushrooms and both several times. And I've definitely had had trips or moments, where I've been avoiding something big in my life. And then it's like, okay. It's knocking on the door. I have to open it. Like, it's right there in my face and I wonder when you talk about your friend who had a psychotic break.
Break, you don't view that the same as like it was just a difficult thing to confront.
No, I mean, I was a freshman in college on this happen and I talked to him to this day about it and and he, you know, he has diagnosed and very severe schizophrenia and he had a psychotic break during that time and it was a
Process that got significantly worse over the years and knowing what I do about schizophrenia it, you know, occurred at the time that most people have psychotic breaks often. There is a stressor of some kind when people are in their late teens, early twenties and that stress or could be a breakup. It could be loss of a job. It could be academic stress. It could be any number, the loss of a parent, it could be any number of things and that in
Destabilizing effect of the stressor can precipitate a psychotic episode and I believe that is what happened with my friend. And yeah, so, you know, that's and and the reason that I even feel comfortable saying that is because they have done, epidemiological analysis, of the incidence of mental illness, among psychedelic drug users and the incidence of schizophrenia is not higher than the general population. So
These are substances that reliably induced schizophrenia. We would know that by now. They've been used for hundreds of years. And this is something that people would have noticed, but they certainly can act as a stressor for people who are unstable or vulnerable or prone to psychosis. And for that reason, I think that they have to be used very cautiously. That was actually one reason that I didn't use them in high school is because of the
Mental illness in my family, and concerns that they could have that sort of an effect on me.
And so when you do your show or when you talk so openly about you know, drugs drug usage. I wonder it's not for everyone.
What? And I don't think anything is for everyone.
I just think it's so normalizing of this stuff. It's, it's interesting. And I'm glad we touched on the friend who had the
Like break to hear like okay, if you have certain vulnerabilities, maybe it's not the best option to try certain things or I don't know. There is a risk involved.
There is a risk and often people contact me and say, you know, I have this or that mental disorder. Should I use a psychedelic and I really don't engage with those questions because I think it would be totally irresponsible to tell a person who I don't know. I also don't really know anything about there.
Their mental health or their history or anything to tell them what to do, you know. This is a decision that people have to make on their own very carefully and there aren't good answers. I mean, I get these questions all the time. People wanting me to, essentially, either drug use advisor of one kind or another
saying their
shamans. And, you know, and and and I wish I could say that there were simple answers to these questions. A mother was contacting me recently her.
And had become very addicted to a synthetic opioid and but also had chronic pain, which is often the case. So you have this kind of interplay of medical and non-medical users. A valid medical justification for the use of the opioid. But at the same time, everyone agrees that it's gotten out of control. So what do you do? And she's saying, you know, are there people that can continue using opioids constructively if they have a you know, some kind of Maintenance therapy like buprenorphine or methadone?
Don't, can they just continue doing that for the rest of their lives? And the answer, of course is yes, some people can do that, but I don't know if her son is one of those people and probably no one really knows whether her son is one of those people and this is why it's so hard to answer these questions because there isn't a single
answer. Do you feel like there's more and more research happening though on these questions.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's what's so exciting to me is to see this research getting done because the research
That was done before there were these widespread anti-drug biases was, you know, a lot of this psychedelic research from the 50s is fine and good but it's also from the 50s and this is like a time when medicine and science were very different and far less rigorous than they are today. If I'm Not For a Moment, suggesting the science is perfect today. It's not but a lot of the methods have gotten better. And so we are now reassessing a lot of these very basic.
Basic claims that were made in the 50s and 60s like are psychedelics a viable treatment for substance abuse disorders. There's someone named Matthew Johnson at Johns Hopkins. Who just got a big Grant to study psilocybin for treatment of smoking cessation or smoking addiction cigarette addiction and and you know, I think everyone assumes based on the preliminary work in that area that they're going to work quite well, but that doesn't mean the work doesn't need to be done.
And it needs to be evaluated in a larger Patient Group. I think his original group is only six or seven patients, something like that. Maybe a dozen at most and so what happens when you scale that up to 500 people and those are questions that were starting to answer their very basic questions. How does psilocybin compared to an SSRI antidepressant? This is a question that Robin Carhart Harris at Imperial College is answering again, very basic question, but these are crucial questions to answer.
So
you're working in Philly at the University of Sciences. Yes. Can you tell me a little bit about the research? You're doing at the moment
there? Yeah. Yeah. So I've worked at the University of the Sciences with a chemist named Jason Wallach for about 11 years and both of us are pretty seriously. Obsessed with psychedelics on a basic research, level on, trying to figure out, you know, what, what can be teased out of these molecules.
Is everyone knows that psychedelics are psychedelic, but what else can they do? Could they be used for treatment of inflammation? Could they be used for treatment of asthma? Could they be used for treatment of depression? If so, how can that be optimized if they have anti addictive properties? What can be done to maximize those anti addictive properties? So, we've been essentially just making a ton of drugs, a huge, huge number of new drugs. And
We send them off for pharmacological screening and wrote an evaluation and we've learned an enormous amount. But historically there was no money to do that research. So, you know sometimes someone like Tim Ferriss would give me a little bit of money and we would use that for research or I'd get a little bit of money from something and we use it for the synthesis, but we were really struggling to do that work. And now there's been this enormous.
Increase in pharmaceutical interest in psychedelics. There's literally hundreds of psychedelic startups that exist right now and everyone is clamoring to, you know, figure out the best way to use these things. And there's a lot of valid criticisms of the rollout of these psychedelic corporations that I am sympathetic to, but on the most basic level, I'm
Just so happy that this research is happening that it's possible to do it. And that's a dream come true and it's not just for me. It's for so many other chemists who inform ecologist, who want nothing more than to understand these substances that are clearly so important powerful. Yeah. I mean, it really like when you compare psilocybin to like Prozac or something like that. I'm not even making a claim about efficacy for treatment of depression because
You know, that's something that people are still assessing. But you know, of course my my guess is that it's a better treatment, but the fact unconsciousness is so dramatic that it doesn't even stop at the clinical applications. That's just the tip of the iceberg. There are really big questions about, you know, how does Consciousness operate and can these substances be used as tools for probing the
Chemical.
Scaffolds of
Consciousness. And also, I'm sure like, can these substances be like dosed out in a very specific way, that, you know, exactly what the effect is going to be. It's not like, let me just eat a bag of a Ziploc bag, you for
mushrooms, right? And that's it. That's another sort of tragic dimension of all. This is that so much of what we think we know about drugs, is really what we know about drugs in an environment where they are illegal.
So, you know, you take the two most commonly used psychedelic drugs, psilocybin, containing mushrooms and LSD. These are both psychedelics. We're essentially no one knows what dose they're taking. People will say one blotter contains 100 micrograms of LSD. They don't know that if anything, all signs point to one blotter, never containing 100 micrograms of LSD, there's an enormous amount of variation and you have some voters that
Large quantities of iso LSD, and so on. So, you have an entire culture whose understanding of these things is derived from an environment where people don't know the Purity or dosage of the substances. They're consuming, which is absolutely crucial to having. I think crucial to having a constructive experience. Sometimes people will say to me, like, you know, how is it that you don't have bad experiences or that you're not afraid of these things? And the simple answer. It's not because there's something about
About me that like I'm a daredevil or I'm immune to fear or anything like that. It's actually very much the opposite. It's because I'm so neurotic and because I have such concern for these fundamental questions of dosage impurity because if you are at a festival or something and somebody hands you a tablet and you take it and you start feeling really bad.
Well, where do you go with that? Feeling? You don't know anything. Did that tablet contain fentanyl? Did it. Contain methamphetamine is the Badness? Yeah. Yeah, and and those aren't neurotic crazy questions. Those are valid questions because you don't know the first thing about what you just put into your body. You don't know if you're on the verge of something that's eventually going to send you to the hospital or whether it's a transient psychosomatic, feeling of discomfort or what.
You don't know. And having this Baseline understanding of something as simple as I took 100 micrograms of LSD of known Purity. Therefore, whatever discomfort I feel is not life-threatening. And so if I breathe, I will get through this and I'll feel better soon.
Do you test a lot of the drugs you do before you do them? For example, I remember a couple of years ago. I had order fentanyl strips just to like take out with me.
I personally don't do uppers. I don't do cocaine or stuff, but I know a lot of people who do and I think there was just like a lot of cases of it getting, you know, a little bit of fentanyl there and so just like testing
it. Yeah. Well in terms of testing I will say this that again the deck is stacked against the typical user because you have fentanyl test strips. Well, that's all fine and good. If the substance contains fentanyl, but
We live in this Ultra diverse drug environment where it's not just fentanyl anymore it and it hasn't just been fentanyl for a long time. There's a settle fentanyl. There's Croton oil, fentanyl tetrahydrofuran, or fentanyl. There's a tone eye disease and derivatives at oh, night has a pine. I so tonight, I so tonight is Ian. Methyl Busan is Ian. There's all these different empty 45. There's all these different synthetic opioids. That will not show up on a fentanyl test strip.
So it can provide a false sense of security actually knew a chemist who overdosed on and Oxycodone tablet that he bought from an online pharmacy, that contained isotonic, asean and whatever fentanyl tester of he may or may not have used would not have helped him because the synthetic opioid is not chemically related to fentanyl. So it wouldn't have shown up. So all these reagent test, you know, I feel conflicted about it because on one hand, it's better than nothing.
And I from the harm reduction standpoint. I think that people should do whatever they can. But also the reality is that substance analysis is non-trivial, you know, like there's a reason that analytical chemistry is its own discipline and that's because testing these things is often very labor-intensive. It's not just something as simple as drop a marquis reagent on something and then you know, exactly what's in it. It might be better than
Thing, it might not be better than nothing because it might give you a false sense of security and I know that's not a helpful thing to say. I wish I could say, you know, everyone carrying our can use fentanyl test strips carry little reagent, test bottles with you and you'll be okay. It's not that simple. I think people should do that but in doing it, they should also recognize that the protection, they provide is incomplete and ultimately the things that will protect people most are.
Like not trusting any street drugs at all. And if you absolutely must do that, then doing it with somebody. Who's sober who's there for you? If something goes wrong and starting with the smallest dose and waiting and you know, that might that might protect you as well, but even that's incomplete, so we're, you know, more people died of drug overdoses in 2020 than any other year in history.
and,
20:21 based on preliminary projections will be even worse
their past that. Yeah.
I've lost three friends in the last year. I know people that have lost seven friends in the last year is, has been immensely painful and difficult to see what is happening. And I again wish that I had some kind of simple explanation or, you know, it's all fentanyl lock up the fentanyl dealers and we're all going to be okay, but it's not that simple.
All because we've tried the strategies endlessly. We've tried Draconian punishment for the people that sell fentanyl or sell whatever. And someone will just synthesize something else or the profit incentives are high enough that people risk their freedom to do it. And so, this is why I think that decriminalization, legalization and regulation are the only process that will actually protect people.
I mean, do you worry though? If
If and honestly, when these drugs start to get legalized that they'll eventually be co-opted, you know, by the Pharma
industry psychedelics.
I mean II think that mushrooms are starting to enter and will probably become legal as that's just my prediction. I don't know anything about drugs, but I don't know. Just let's say if they did legalized LSD or they start to legalize all drugs. Like is that not a scary thought?
That big Pharma it will make them even richer more powerful.
Okay. First of all, let me say that I am biased in my response is question. So because I, although I work for a university, a lot of the research is funded by pharmaceutical companies. So so let me just be clear in saying that from the get-go, but my fault, my hope in this is that everything will exist. I think what has happened in New York with cannabis is very close.
Has to an ideal scenario, it's not perfect. But it's also the best that I can think of realistically, which is, you have no one going to prison for selling or possession of cannabis. I think there are some limits but it's pretty liberal. You can grow I think five plants, something like that. Don't, please look for yourself before row operation, but it's you know, you can grow plants.
You can sell plans to your friends. You can possess it. You can smoke it in many different locations. So that's all fine and good. Maybe not perfect but a hell of a lot better than it has been in a very long time. Then you have an FDA-approved THC preparation Marinol that can be prescribed by a physician and it's federally legal. So that is legal anywhere in the country and in New York, good, then you have medical marijuana.
Wanna so a physician can prescribe a regulated Vape product or a regulated laws, indoor, gummy or whatever? That's good. And you have like adult use from dispensaries that are probably going to be opening within a year and that's good too. So that's what I would hope for with psychedelics is not this either or scenario, but both and so because I think that there's a lot of people that feel very
Gently that any kind of pharmaceutical involvement with psychedelics is evil and should be prevented at all costs. My take on. This is that that's all fine and good. If you are a young person who feels comfortable using psychedelics, but ninety percent of the American population has not used serotonergic. Psychedelic, a classical psychedelic, and many of those people are older. They're conservative. They are not friends with people that grow mushrooms. They're probably not.
Going to grow mushrooms themselves. They probably don't have friends with a lot of experience using mushrooms. And what if one of those people wants to use an FDA-approved psilocybin therapy and have a specially trained therapist and it's covered by their insurance that as an option, strikes me as a very good
thing. Well doc brings me to my next question of accessibility like even for I'm from Seattle where we eat has been legalized.
A while and I still feel like going to the dispensary and buying weed as much more expensive than having like buying it off your local drug dealer.
Yeah, and part of that has to do with the taxes that are applied to the Cannabis which then usually goes to things like public education or other useful causes. I think that the taxing of these things has generally been constructive. Although I'd have to really look on a state-by-state.
State basis to see exactly how good it's been. But my impression, at least in Colorado has been that like the amount of tax revenue generated through the regulated sale of cannabis has been enormous and has been actually very constructive. So is it more expensive? Yeah, but it seems like
it's regulated and it's like you're you're saying it's dosed out and they've done studies of, you know, it's helping chronic pain or it's helping depression.
Nur whatever they come out within the next. However, 10 years.
Yeah. And again, I think that it's ideally not an either or situation where you say, well, why I like dispensary versus buying from your friend. My ideal scenario is both and you decide what is appropriate for you. And I think that a lot of people enjoy the sort of Regulation where you get a product that specifies exactly how much THC CBD CBN and so on and so forth is present.
In the product and that it's all carefully Quantified and regulated and tested for the presence of pesticides and so on and so forth. I know that there are instances where there are problems, but I think it's clear that this is a lot better than the way things were in the past where you had, you know, essentially deliberate poisoning of the Cannabis by the government with paraquad, in order to deter people from consuming it, you know, so we're going from a world where people intentionally
Maximize the harm of using these things to one where it's not perfect. There's a lot of really important questions to be asked about. You know, what about the people that are in prison? How do we fairly ensure that they get their piece of the pie as well? And the people that have criminal records ensuring that those are expunged, right? And the and and it is tragic to know that as there are people becoming multi millionaires from selling cannabis. There are still people in prison for selling it as well.
All in the same country. It's deeply hypocritical and unsettling. But that's the reality. Is it? Perfect, absolutely not. I hope that we will continue moving toward a fairer more reasonable future. I think this is a stepping stone and given how bad things were in the not. So, distant past. I, I think that it's okay to feel good about the progress that has been made.
Do you personally use
Any of these drugs to treat your mental
health? Yeah. I mean, I love I love to smoke weed but I try not to do it so often I'm in graduate school right now. I, it's a guilty pleasure. There's no question that it really helps me calm down and just kind of relax and get out of this, like, very tense stressed out mindset that I'm typically in. I think it's valuable. I think that like everything it's best.
In moderation, but yeah, and again, this also exists on this, Continuum of like, well, what, if you're an alcoholic and you're destroying your body and your relationships, and your ability to function, professionally with the consumption of alcohol. And then it's a choice between that or being stoned all the time. Well, that's a pretty easy decision. I think because you have one substance that, you know, can very easily destroy you and another one that
So can have negative consequences but they tend to be far less severe.
Well, what drugs psychedelic or illegal drugs have been used for like mental health issues? I know like ketamine for example has been useful and like obsessive compulsive disorder
depression. Yeah. Yeah. Academy and ketamine is a complicated one because I think that generally the psychiatric establishment is in a desperate place right now where
We haven't figured out how to effectively treat depression. It could be the case. It will never effectively figure out how to treat it. Because there are so many causes and so many things that go into somebody's existence that they're probably never will be a single substance, that just cures depression for everyone and that's a tricky reality to contend with, you know, sometimes I see these Arguments for
People say like Joe Rogan or someone will say like, oh if people just, you know, eat healthy and exercise more, it will treat their depression. And then some part some mental health professionals. Say how dare you minimize the seriousness of depression and tell people that it's just about exercise and eating healthy. Well, they're kind of both wrong, right? Because it's like, no, that's not enough for everyone. But it would also be foolish not to encourage those things because they very clearly do have a benefit for people's mental.
To health and well-being. And so, this sort of holistic, understanding of all the contributors to depression is going to be crucial to helping people who are struggling. And I think that that is really, you know, like this question again of why have so many people died in the last two years. Well, obviously the global pandemic took a serious toll on people's mental health and isolated them. It destabilize them socially and professionally so this
I think a very Stark reminder of how these social and environmental factors can have very real consequences in people's. I mean, I think everyone already knew that but this if there was any doubt, this is it. And I think when you look at Empire of pain or you look at most of these treatments of the opioid epidemic, or opioid crisis or whatever people want to call it, they talk about it in this, like purely deterministic way, like somebody sells
An opioid people buy it and then everyone gets addicted. And that's that without talking about larger social and environmental factors. I mean, I think even the internet is playing a big role in terms of the way. Social media is algorithmically designed to promote engagement which often translates to like hyper divisive and angry communication Styles between people. Like it's very, it's become very hard to talk about anything.
Without it being hyperpolarizing and politicized. And I think that also has an effect on people. Everyone is at each other's throats. Everyone is hyper
aggressive.
Yeah. Yeah. And so, yeah, so there's a lot going on, but you know, will ketamine be the cure for all of that. Of course not. No. And I think it would be very naive to think that any drug will will treat these complicated, social ills, but what encourages me is not. So
Much ketamine specifically but a more open-minded attitude toward the treatment because there's a lot of things about ketamine that are very unusual. There's no other pharmacological and chemically. There's no other FDA-approved antidepressant that behaves that way, even in terms of the treatment where you have, somebody go into an office and take a drug and under the supervision of a
Mental health, professional and then leave. And there's no other treatment like that except for there's also it a drug called a low pregnenolone. That's used to treat postpartum depression that is used in a somewhat similar fashion. But and that's also a recent development. So with ketamine, I feel conflicted because there's so much enthusiasm for this. As a broadening of the way, depression is treated and a kind of new tactic, but at the same time cat
And has problems. I mean, I had a close friend died this year. No, not from ketamine most like well, I actually don't know how he died. But he had developed a very serious problem with dissociative anesthetics, not ketamine specifically, but really all dissociatives and it was very hard to help him. And unlike opioids, where you have an entire infrastructure that exists for treatment of
Of addiction you have methadone methadone clinics buprenorphine, you have countless professionals, who specialize in treatment of opioid, use disorders, but with ketamine, there isn't all that much there to help people who find themselves in trouble. And, and after he died. I remember going to this conference and everyone was celebrating the opening of new ketamine clinics and saying, you know, this has been the greatest psychiatric crime.
History that this substance hasn't been more widely available until now, and we're going to cure depression with this stuff and that, you know, all these grandiose claims and it felt a little bit like, you know, watching those videos of the Sackler is or something in the 90s where they saying, you know, we're going to revolutionize medicine. There is a world, there is a feeling of like, yeah, it because that's the complexity in it.
Well productive. Yeah. It's not addressing that. It is a more complicated.
Ated issue. It's not just, you know, one thing that's the end, all be all,
and like, let's assume. And I, this is maybe there are certainly counter-arguments here, but just for the sake of argument, let's assume that the Sackler is actually, we're trying to do something good. There's a lot of people in pain, a lot of people with chronic pain. Wouldn't it be nice if there were a pill that had reduced abuse potential due to its patented time release technology that would allow people to
Live a pain-free life. Wouldn't that be fantastic? And if that were the case, wouldn't it be nice to get that pill out to lots of people, you know, and I think that people are kind of operating from a similar perspective of ketamine. Wouldn't it be nice if this stuff really cure depression and save people's lives? Shouldn't we be getting it out to everyone that wants it and I feel conflicted about it. You know, I think that there isn't a simple answer it certainly after he died, all these people are saying like why don't you make an anti ketamine PSA?
Say well, quite simply because I don't think ketamine is bad. I also don't think it's good. I think that it is neutral and its benefits benefits, and it's harms, both need to be recognized to use it in a constructive way.
But do you think the more research they do in the more normalized, ketamine usage becomes, then they will start to have kind of that same safety net that opiates has
Maybe maybe, but yet, maybe I think, what I'm afraid of is that it will be a repetition. It won't be exactly the same because ketamine is extremely, extremely difficult to fatally overdose on, it's virtually unheard of. So, it won't be like the opioid crisis, where you have enormous numbers of people dying. So it will be a more subtle problem where you'll have enormous numbers of people gradually become.
Dysfunctional damaging their bladders and possibly harming themselves in more complicated ways than taking too much and not waking up. But again, it's just not as simple as ketamine is good or ketamine is bad. Ketamine is neither. It is something that can help people and has helped enormous numbers of people. It's also something that under some circumstances can be extremely damaging and dangerous and this is the reality for all drugs.
And, you know, in our enthusiasm, to end the war on drugs, which is something that's extremely important to do, often people have to say that you're, they feel, they have to say that drugs are so good, you know, Academy in it's a cure for depression cannabis. It's the answer to all the pharmacy, the predatory pharmaceutical tactics, it will cure all diseases and and so on and so forth, but it's only through a nuanced appreciation of both the positive, and negative aspects of these things that we can ever use them constructively.
Yeah, that makes sense.
But again, like I just hope with the more funding in the more research that they'll start to figure out at least partially some of these
questions. Yeah, and I think they, I think they will gradually be answered. You know, like one example is the barbiturates. Like, you know, there was a time. When know what that is. Yeah. Yeah, like secobarbital or phenobarbital or
Sodium thiopental the supposed truth serum. Have you heard of any of these things?
Now? I'm like does it have a street
named? Ha ha? Well didn't the reason that you haven't heard of them is because they're not they haven't been used really since the 70s but there was a time when these things were discovered when this was an incredible medical breakthrough because there weren't very good treatments for epilepsy or it's Omnia or anxiety. And then someone finds these substances that are really good for that better than anything that existed, everyone.
It's using them but the problem is that they were fatal and overdose. So people would accidentally overdose in a manner, very similar to the way that people accidentally overdosed on opioids. And if you combine them with alcohol, the effect was disastrous was extremely, extremely dangerous and this is how Marilyn Monroe died Jimi, Hendrix, enormous numbers of people in the 60s and 70s died this way, and then they were supplanted by benzodiazepines benzodiazepines have their own constellation of problems, specifically with dependents, but
But for the most part, they are not fatal. An overdose. Of course, you don't want to push it, you want to try, but it's not like it was in the past where you'd have people routinely accidentally overdosing. It's in fact, there are numerous cases in the medical literature of people attempting to end their own lives with benzodiazepines, and not dying because of their very high therapeutic index. Again. I'm not suggesting anyone try this, but the, this is why they're prescribed. So liberally because
They don't have the same respiratory depression that the barbiturates had. Okay. So I think something similar might happen where you gradually refine. These substances. You don't eliminate the danger, as you don't eliminate the harms, but you make things better. So are the benzodiazepines like Valium Xanax. Diazepam. Are they? Perfect, of course not. But they're better. They're a lot better than the way things were in the past. And so, do you mean
better or safer? I think both like, what do you mean by the term
better? I mean,
I'm a clinical therapeutic perspective. They have a higher therapeutic index. They tend not to kill people accidentally, and I think that they're also Superior for their intended uses. I mean, the barbiturates have been phased out almost entirely. There's some instances where there used to treat epilepsy or insomnia, but it's very, very uncommon. And the reason is simply because better drugs exist. I mean, there isn't an evolution in this
Things like, we haven't been doing this for that long. It's only been, you know, a couple hundred years of people playing around with this stuff in a serious way. And and so I think there's a lot of room for improvement and I do hope that one day. We look back on all this and we think oh how terrible it was in, you know, the early 2000s when everyone was dying of opioid overdoses. We just hadn't yet figured out that if you do this to the molecule, you can eliminate the respiratory.
Pression and people still become dependent, but at least they don't die, you know, something like that. That that's the kind of evolution or the betterness and I'm describing is, you know, you'll never make anything perfect. There's always will have to be a cost-benefit analysis, but I think some of these problems can be reduced with research and careful drug design.
I mean, yeah, I haven't really thought of it that way. Just thinking about our culture's like very complicated relationship with drugs. If you think that
In mix or is related to the complicated relationship with sex. And I'm asking this because I actually started my career really mainly focusing on sexual health and I used to do a lot of sex education but I think of two very taboo topics and like if you think some of that complicated relationship comes from like this puritanical view.
Yeah, I mean, of course there's endless overlap in
The sort of, you know, just say no rhetoric of the Reagan Administration and abstinence-only sex education. And the idea that if certain behaviors are prohibited, then we can just sweep the problems under the carpet and no one will see them anymore. Which for what it's worth. I think it's worth a try. We tried it doesn't work. It's, you know, it would be nice if it were that simple. It just doesn't happen to work.
And so you also have a lot of problems with closeted drug use, which is, I think analogous to closeted sexual preferences of one kind or another, because there are stigmatized because they are considered unhealthy or embarrassing or bad people.
Hyah cheering fall. Yeah,
they hide their drug use. And that is something that I really like when Carl Hart wrote this book recently. I think a lot of the things that he was trying to say were
were misinterpreted by people and one of the ideas was D stigmatizing opioid use and people would say in the midst of a crisis you're saying this needs to be destigmatize. How could you? This is the worst possible advice is is trying to remove these stigmas should exist. People are dying. People should not feel. Okay, using opioids? And I don't think they understood what he was saying. He was never saying people should use heroin or heroin is good or anything like that.
What he was saying is that people shouldn't be so ashamed of their use that they hide it and this is really an important point that I don't think is made very often when somebody is struggling with a problem using drugs. They often hide it. And when they do, it becomes almost impossible to help them. It's the worst thing a person can do in anyone who has ever had a friend.
Who was struggling with a substance abuse disorder of one kind or another will know exactly what I'm talking about. If people deny what they're doing, if they lie about it, if they hide it because they're ashamed, it becomes. It's already extremely difficult to help someone. If they're being honest, about what they're struggling with if they are in denial and hiding what they're doing. It's almost impossible. And so I think that Carl Hearts idea was an extremely important one because in reducing
That stigma in allowing people to feel comfortable saying, this is what I do. This is what I struggle with. Then you are better equipped to help those people. I think that. Yeah, I think that removing those stigmas is immensely important for that reason so that people don't hide what they're doing.
Yeah, and then they can ask for help. I mean for me I think of like automatically okay the states in the Bible Belt where it is the most shameful to you know, talk about sex or
use birth control of protection and like where abstinence-only education is the most prevalent and where we get funding for that are the states with the highest. STI rates, are the states with the most teen pregnancy and loads of other issues and it's again, yeah, it's this idea of like behind closed doors.
Yeah, and I think it's through openness through communication, through transparency and honesty that we can even begin to understand these things because yeah,
I've been through it many times with different people that I've known where the question was. Simply. What is happening. I knew something was wrong. That much was clear, but I didn't know. Is this undiagnosed mental illness. Is this extreme depression? Is it alcohol? Is it? Are you a? What is happening? And if you don't know, there's nothing that you can do and yes, I think it also applies to sacks where anytime people feel the need to hide what they're doing. They put themselves in a very vulnerable.
Ball position where they can ask for help. And if something goes wrong, there isn't a lot. They can do
for the can't even make informed decisions yet. You have to kind of yeah. Have openness to even figure out your options. Are your thoughts on these issues and how they affect your
life. Yeah, and there's a lot of overlap between sex and drugs in the way that they're treated by Society. I think another is that like if a celebrity sex tape or something comes out, everyone's so blown away.
By the fact that like Kim Kardashian has had sex like, it's and it's like, really, why is that so amazing to you? Like this is something that is not unusual at all. Do one thing if she were having sex with like a corpse or something, but just having sex with her or something extraordinary but it's like, oh she had sex with her.
Was that
extraordinary extraordinary. Yeah. I mean, I think it's, you know, it's currently not ordinary to do so, but if it's
Oh, she had sex with her boyfriend, but that's because all these things are hidden and I think the same happens with drug use wear it, like a video comes out of a celebrity using drugs or talking about drugs and people are so blown away. Like, oh my God, Miley Cyrus used Salvia, of
course, like it came out of the woodwork, you know, like Cara Delevingne, like I remember she dropped like a baggie of cocaine and there's some Paparazzi. This is like huge like five six years ago and she like put her foot over it, but they got the
It's of her dropping this bag of white powder.
And this is, of course, like actually totally mundane yet. People make it into this huge deal because they've decided that it's scandalous or that, it's something to Mock and in that way. Yeah. I think it's interesting that something so commonplace something. So, totally mundane could also be so Sensational the same time and that's something both drugs and sex certainly have in common.
So if there was a parent who is listening,
To our conversation, listening to this podcast right now and they're like, fuck this conversation. I don't want my kid to be going out and trying everything and they don't agree with these views or what we've been talking about. What would you tell
them? Well, I would agree. I mean, I don't think a parent should want their child to go out and try everything necessarily. I don't think I don't think this needs to exist in terms of like what people should or shouldn't do as much as recognizing a reality.
That these sorts of things are done. And so it's a question of how, can they be done in the safest and most constructive way possible. I mean, within certain guidelines, you know, like, I think for what it's worth. I think that recreational use of opioids is not a good idea, period. I think that I'm not suggesting they should be illegal. I don't think that the people that sell them are evil, but I think if the point is to live a good life, unless you have a serious Medical
all need to consume opioids. I think they are best avoided. I think they are unsuitable as recreational drugs. And I can say that and at the same time, believe that they shouldn't be illegal. It's just it's like that's the kind of attention that a lot of people have where they, they can't simultaneously recognize that something isn't good and recognize that it should be regulated and available to the people that want it. I mean, I don't like cigarettes. I don't think they're gonna
Good, but I also don't think they should be illegal. I think that ultimately this comes down to education personal responsibility. Recognizing what is appropriate for you and what you want out of your life and attempts to try to, you know, use prohibition to get out of that problem, which will always exist. There will always be something like that will never work.
One last question. Where can people find you?
Yeah. Yeah. I have a podcast on patreon patreon.com slash Hamilton Morris. That's about chemistry and pharmacology and psychoactive drugs in general. And you can watch the most recent season of my documentary series on Hulu or Amazon or iTunes called Hamilton's pharmacopoeia.
