Carl Hart: Heroin, Cocaine, MDMA, Alcohol & the Role of Drugs in Society

00:00:00.000 | The following is a conversation with Carl Hart,

00:00:02.880 | department chair and professor of psychology

00:00:04.920 | at Columbia University.

00:00:06.880 | He's the author of several books on the topic of drugs,

00:00:10.120 | including his most recent called "Drug Use for Grownups"

00:00:14.360 | that challenges us to, quote,

00:00:16.520 | "Use empirical evidence to guide public policy,

00:00:19.360 | "even if it makes us uncomfortable."

00:00:21.800 | His research on drugs, including hard drugs

00:00:24.400 | like heroin and cocaine,

00:00:26.160 | challenges much of what we think we know

00:00:28.680 | about drugs and their role in society.

00:00:31.520 | His main thesis is that drug addiction

00:00:34.160 | has less to do with the drugs themselves

00:00:36.600 | and more to do with co-occurring psychiatric disorders,

00:00:39.800 | such as depression and schizophrenia,

00:00:42.320 | and socioeconomic factors,

00:00:44.840 | such as unemployment, underemployment,

00:00:47.160 | and resource deprivation within the community.

00:00:49.840 | In addition, he believes that we should legalize all drugs

00:00:53.480 | so that if people choose to use them,

00:00:55.320 | they could do so responsibly and openly

00:00:58.160 | and get help if needed in a controlled, safe environment.

00:01:02.640 | His ideas are controversial,

00:01:04.720 | but are fundamentally grounded in empirical data

00:01:07.520 | and rigorous scientific studies.

00:01:09.520 | I don't know if his conclusions are right,

00:01:12.040 | but they are at least worth thinking about.

00:01:14.680 | So I ask that you consider these ideas with an open mind,

00:01:18.960 | and as always, make sure you exercise

00:01:21.400 | your critical thinking skills

00:01:23.040 | in making decisions about substances you put in your body.

00:01:26.520 | You are a free-thinking being,

00:01:30.120 | the main character, if you will,

00:01:32.080 | the hero in a story that's being written by you.

00:01:35.920 | So at the end of the day,

00:01:37.240 | you are responsible for the choices you make.

00:01:40.200 | So choose wisely.

00:01:42.520 | This is the Lex Friedman Podcast.

00:01:44.640 | To support it, please check out our sponsors

00:01:46.940 | in the description.

00:01:48.320 | And now, here's my conversation with Carl Hart.

00:01:52.220 | I think it is bold and powerful to admit

00:01:55.760 | to using in your private life

00:01:57.400 | the drugs that you study in your research,

00:01:59.540 | including heroin and cocaine.

00:02:01.200 | So let me ask,

00:02:02.720 | what is the experience of taking heroin like?

00:02:05.700 | What happens to the body?

00:02:06.680 | What happens to the mind when you take it?

00:02:08.920 | - Well, you know, I take MDMA, cannabis,

00:02:11.760 | and all the rest of these drugs too.

00:02:13.480 | I've tried those drugs.

00:02:14.880 | The experience in the body and the mind,

00:02:18.760 | I don't really know what people wanna know in that regard.

00:02:22.560 | It's like saying,

00:02:23.400 | what's the weirdest experience of having an orgasm

00:02:26.040 | in the body and the mind?

00:02:27.440 | Or some other sort of event that you really enjoy.

00:02:31.260 | So I don't really know what people--

00:02:34.240 | - Is that what poetry is for,

00:02:35.280 | for describing these kinds of experiences?

00:02:37.060 | I mean, I guess,

00:02:38.580 | given MDMA, given psilocybin,

00:02:41.240 | in the full context of that,

00:02:42.960 | maybe it's more useful to say,

00:02:45.360 | what are the differences in experiences

00:02:48.960 | that your mind goes through?

00:02:50.840 | Like chemically, biologically,

00:02:52.880 | so it's like keeping it strictly to sort of

00:02:56.360 | the biology of it

00:02:59.080 | versus the full environmental human experience.

00:03:01.780 | - Yeah, see, this is a mistake

00:03:03.200 | that people make all the time.

00:03:04.760 | They try to act as if biology

00:03:07.800 | is the only determinant of drug effects,

00:03:10.120 | and that's just not how it works.

00:03:12.280 | You need the environment.

00:03:13.640 | You need the cage, as they say.

00:03:15.600 | If you don't have the cage,

00:03:17.320 | you don't get the full extent of the effects.

00:03:20.240 | And so you can take MDMA and have an awful time.

00:03:23.840 | You can have a time in which you get paranoid and so forth,

00:03:27.880 | and then you can take that drug under the right conditions,

00:03:31.760 | and it just be one of the best moments you've ever had.

00:03:34.880 | It certainly enhanced a number of my relationships,

00:03:39.640 | but I've also had some times with MDMA

00:03:42.040 | that haven't been so lovely

00:03:43.680 | when the people who you are hanging out with,

00:03:46.760 | you don't know 'em, you're distrustful,

00:03:48.600 | and all of those kind of things.

00:03:49.960 | So it's important to put context in it.

00:03:52.800 | Now, we can talk about drugs at a biochemical level,

00:03:55.840 | at a biological level,

00:03:57.120 | and we kind of do that in this country

00:03:58.840 | with this fascination with neuroscience,

00:04:01.000 | and that's an inappropriate kind of fascination

00:04:05.320 | in the way we talk about it.

00:04:07.520 | So we can talk about opioids,

00:04:08.760 | and then we can talk about endogenous opioid system

00:04:12.360 | in the brain.

00:04:13.200 | We can talk about dopamine

00:04:14.760 | and other sort of monoamine transmitters

00:04:17.640 | and what opioids are doing to them,

00:04:20.840 | and we can do the same thing with MDMA,

00:04:23.120 | and we won't be any closer to understanding

00:04:27.880 | the sort of experience that is induced by these drugs,

00:04:32.880 | certainly the experience that we all seek.

00:04:35.360 | You know what I'm saying?

00:04:36.400 | - So getting a positive experience

00:04:38.040 | or getting a negative experience

00:04:39.360 | is strongly defined by the environment.

00:04:42.040 | - Strongly dependent upon the environment.

00:04:44.000 | - But the environment is a very,

00:04:45.920 | it's a short word that can describe a lot of things.

00:04:48.840 | So would you say the environment is important,

00:04:51.880 | or the people, where you are currently in your life,

00:04:55.720 | or is it also dependent on the full trajectory

00:04:58.400 | of your psychology, of your life experiences,

00:05:00.640 | of your parents, of the people you came up with,

00:05:03.040 | of the trauma you've experienced,

00:05:04.880 | of the hopes and dreams that were crushed,

00:05:07.160 | or not, or the opposite, or the success levels,

00:05:10.880 | or all those things.

00:05:11.720 | Like what are the interesting sort of landscape

00:05:15.600 | of experiences that contribute to how you actually feel

00:05:19.480 | when you take a drug?

00:05:20.440 | - Right on.

00:05:21.400 | So all of those things are important,

00:05:23.160 | but you know, like if someone had trauma in childhood

00:05:26.200 | and they did the work and they dealt with it,

00:05:28.200 | that's not so important in this case.

00:05:30.520 | But if they didn't deal with it

00:05:31.720 | and that trauma is being triggered in that event,

00:05:34.840 | in that moment, then it's important.

00:05:38.120 | But let's just take somebody like me.

00:05:40.400 | I'm 54 years old, I'll be 55 this month, actually.

00:05:43.640 | And you know, I've done a lot of work

00:05:47.080 | in terms of figuring out who I am,

00:05:50.120 | and I'm comfortable with myself.

00:05:52.640 | And I know how to set limits for whatever it is I'm doing.

00:05:57.640 | And so I know I need to work out.

00:06:02.040 | I know I need to eat well.

00:06:03.520 | I know I need to sleep well.

00:06:05.240 | I know I need to be in an environment

00:06:07.880 | with people within my trust.

00:06:10.920 | And then if all of those things are met,

00:06:13.200 | oh, it's likely to be a good time.

00:06:16.560 | You know what I'm saying?

00:06:17.400 | But if I haven't slept, if I haven't worked out,

00:06:20.040 | if I don't feel good, it won't be a good time.

00:06:23.400 | But I try and be responsible

00:06:25.840 | and take care of my eating habits, sleeping habits,

00:06:30.840 | make sure my responsibilities are taken care of.

00:06:34.120 | And so when I'm in that moment, I just enjoy that moment.

00:06:39.080 | I'm there, I'm not thinking about a bill that I didn't pay.

00:06:42.920 | I'm not thinking about, oh, I forgot to do this for my kid.

00:06:46.760 | I'm not thinking about that

00:06:47.880 | because all of those things are taken care of.

00:06:49.780 | If they're not taken care of, it will impact the experience

00:06:53.080 | and it may negatively impact the experience.

00:06:55.560 | - Well, that is the counterintuitive,

00:06:59.520 | even controversial finding from your recent book.

00:07:03.080 | So we should kind of, I know it seems obvious to you,

00:07:06.860 | but I think a lot of people hearing this

00:07:08.640 | would think it's quite non-obvious.

00:07:11.120 | So in your new book, "Drug Use for Grownups,"

00:07:15.360 | you write for the finding section,

00:07:17.960 | "I discovered that the predominant effects

00:07:20.040 | produced by the drugs discussed in this book are positive.

00:07:24.160 | It didn't matter whether the drug in question was cannabis,

00:07:27.320 | cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, or psilocybin.

00:07:31.400 | Overwhelmingly, consumers expressed feeling more altruistic,

00:07:35.280 | empathetic, euphoric, focused, grateful, and tranquil.

00:07:39.320 | They also experienced enhanced social interactions

00:07:41.840 | that create a sense of purpose and meaning

00:07:43.680 | and increased sexual intimacy and performance.

00:07:46.320 | This constellation of findings

00:07:49.480 | challenged my original beliefs about drugs

00:07:51.600 | and their effects.

00:07:52.960 | I had been indoctrinated to be biased

00:07:55.520 | toward the negative effects of drug use,

00:07:57.520 | but over the past two plus decades,

00:08:00.020 | I had gained a deeper, more nuanced understanding."

00:08:03.080 | These words are very counterintuitive to a lot of people.

00:08:08.480 | I think, like you also mentioned in the book and elsewhere,

00:08:12.480 | you know, people have come around to maybe psilocybin

00:08:15.520 | being one such drug, maybe cannabis being one such drug,

00:08:20.640 | but you also mentioned other drugs

00:08:22.400 | like cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine.

00:08:24.660 | Can you just linger on this point?

00:08:28.700 | How do we get the positive effects of those drugs

00:08:33.020 | and why in the media and the general conception

00:08:35.760 | we have of these drugs is that they were going to

00:08:38.240 | make a bad life worse or ruin a good life?

00:08:43.360 | - Well, so your first question was

00:08:44.880 | how do we harness the positive effects?

00:08:47.520 | How do we increase the likelihood

00:08:49.840 | of getting the positive effects?

00:08:51.080 | Again, like I said, we wanna make sure

00:08:53.700 | that people are responsible

00:08:55.600 | and they've handled their responsibilities,

00:08:57.720 | make sure they eat well, sleep well, exercise,

00:09:00.260 | all of those sorts of things play an important role.

00:09:03.200 | And also, if they know exactly what they're getting

00:09:06.280 | and then they're not paranoid about,

00:09:08.320 | it's something contaminated in some adulterant,

00:09:11.480 | it's in my drug.

00:09:13.620 | So you wanna make sure you know exactly what you have.

00:09:16.080 | Once you satisfy those kind of things,

00:09:18.800 | you understand the dose and potency,

00:09:20.960 | you understand all of those things,

00:09:22.480 | to decrease any sort of anxiety you might have

00:09:25.560 | about the substance itself,

00:09:27.520 | it increases the likelihood

00:09:29.000 | that you will have a better time.

00:09:30.560 | - So anxiety is the big one,

00:09:31.840 | you need to remove the anxiety.

00:09:33.120 | Anxiety is critical, it's huge.

00:09:36.600 | Many of the negative effects that we see with drugs

00:09:39.400 | have to do with anxiety.

00:09:41.280 | And not necessarily anxiety because the drug induced it,

00:09:44.640 | it's the anxiety that the situation induced a lot of times.

00:09:49.160 | And then you ask like,

00:09:50.200 | well, why does this sound counterintuitive?

00:09:53.400 | Why does the media report differently?

00:09:58.400 | Well, because there's money in reporting

00:10:01.200 | the negative effects almost exclusively.

00:10:04.320 | Think about writing a newspaper article.

00:10:08.320 | It's really easy to get the population all ginned up

00:10:11.680 | about something like an opioid crisis, overdoses,

00:10:15.000 | and you don't even have to tell people

00:10:17.680 | how to keep people safe if you're talking about overdose.

00:10:21.000 | You don't even have to say,

00:10:22.560 | why people are dying from overdoses?

00:10:24.740 | Like overdoses in our country happen largely

00:10:27.640 | because people get contaminated drug,

00:10:30.220 | because people are combining sedatives

00:10:33.360 | and they don't know that this enhances

00:10:36.120 | the respiratory depressing effects of drugs.

00:10:38.680 | They don't know.

00:10:39.600 | But when you read these newspaper articles,

00:10:41.980 | they don't say this.

00:10:43.240 | They don't say how to keep people safe.

00:10:45.640 | All they do is frighten the population.

00:10:48.640 | There's money in that.

00:10:49.480 | And then we think about people who write TV shows,

00:10:53.040 | the people who write movies.

00:10:56.480 | Most of the stuff written about drugs is just bullshit.

00:11:01.140 | I think about, I love going to watch comedians

00:11:04.020 | and the comedians, when they talk about drugs,

00:11:06.260 | again, most of the things that they say about drugs

00:11:09.580 | is bullshit.

00:11:10.620 | I mean, you can say the stupidest things about drugs

00:11:13.660 | and be believed.

00:11:14.780 | You can write a movie

00:11:17.820 | and you don't even have to develop your characters

00:11:20.740 | if you throw drugs into the mix.

00:11:22.820 | You say, oh, he's a drug dealer.

00:11:24.540 | You don't have to say anything

00:11:25.980 | about that person's background

00:11:27.220 | or about that person being developed as a character

00:11:31.300 | because the population think they know.

00:11:33.540 | And the writer is lazy

00:11:37.040 | and does not do any sort of development.

00:11:39.560 | Just think about any,

00:11:41.680 | oh, let's think about "The Sopranos," for example.

00:11:45.780 | They have a new program coming out.

00:11:48.260 | So let's think about them for a second.

00:11:50.340 | "The Sopranos" is a show

00:11:52.300 | in which the lead character, Tony,

00:11:56.140 | kills people for a living.

00:11:57.380 | That's what he does, right?

00:11:58.780 | This character actually made us sympathetic for him

00:12:04.940 | when he is besmirching

00:12:08.540 | and denigrating his nephew, Christopher, for using a drug.

00:12:13.220 | And we feel sympathy for Tony, the character,

00:12:17.780 | who just killed somebody,

00:12:20.980 | who is a horrible person,

00:12:22.580 | but being a drug user is a worse person.

00:12:26.820 | That's what the show wants us to believe.

00:12:28.800 | Tony's a racist, a murderer, all of these things,

00:12:32.900 | but we feel sympathy for him.

00:12:34.380 | But we don't feel sympathy for anyone who uses drugs.

00:12:38.180 | That's some crazy shit.

00:12:39.640 | I mean, and the American public buys into it.

00:12:42.420 | That's wild to me, that we all bought into this crap.

00:12:47.100 | And that's what we do,

00:12:48.060 | we condemn everything that's in film, on television.

00:12:52.940 | And it's like, what's wrong with you people?

00:12:56.020 | - So why are there not more stories

00:12:59.780 | of grownups using drugs,

00:13:03.180 | the full spectrum of drugs that we're talking about?

00:13:05.820 | Why isn't there?

00:13:06.660 | So we talked offline about Joe Rogan.

00:13:09.140 | He's somebody who started smoking weed later in life,

00:13:12.580 | which is an interesting story.

00:13:13.660 | Like when he's already very successful,

00:13:16.140 | and he has a very interesting way

00:13:17.420 | of describing his experience with weed,

00:13:19.260 | that it was like enhancing his productivity.

00:13:22.380 | It actually, I think he says,

00:13:23.460 | like it increases anxiety a little bit

00:13:25.300 | in a way that was productive, like paranoia, not anxiety.

00:13:29.580 | And so that's an interesting story of an adult

00:13:32.420 | talking about the use of weed for productivity purposes.

00:13:36.980 | But you don't get those stories very often, why?

00:13:39.800 | - I think fear, people are afraid

00:13:43.060 | that they will be belittled, dismissed,

00:13:46.700 | all of these things as a drug addict or some negative thing.

00:13:49.780 | But cannabis is lightweight, come on.

00:13:52.260 | You can emit cannabis these days.

00:13:54.660 | And the fact that, I don't know when Joe started,

00:13:58.420 | but if he did start later in life, that's cool.

00:14:01.500 | I mean, you are mature, developed.

00:14:05.020 | You have developed some responsibility skills,

00:14:08.900 | all of these kinds of things.

00:14:10.060 | This is a good thing.

00:14:12.180 | You don't want people to engage in any kind of behaviors

00:14:17.180 | when they're young and immature

00:14:19.300 | that might put them in harm's way.

00:14:21.820 | And so we want people to be developed at least.

00:14:26.780 | I mean, whether it's being in a relationship with a partner,

00:14:31.780 | or whether it's driving an automobile,

00:14:35.620 | all of these things that can be potentially harmful,

00:14:38.280 | but extremely beneficial

00:14:40.920 | if you are responsible enough to handle them.

00:14:43.260 | You want people to be mature, so that's a good thing.

00:14:46.840 | - So how are you supposed to, like somebody like me,

00:14:50.040 | somebody like Joe, how are you supposed to understand

00:14:52.880 | what the dangers are, what the negative effects are?

00:14:55.360 | So you said automobile, relationships.

00:14:58.340 | I think I have a reasonably, it's crappy,

00:15:03.640 | but reasonable understanding of all the troubles

00:15:06.520 | you can get with in relationships,

00:15:08.400 | and what things to avoid.

00:15:09.840 | Same thing with driving a car.

00:15:11.720 | I have no idea, I'm in the dark in terms of

00:15:14.560 | what are the things to be careful about,

00:15:18.920 | what to avoid with drug use

00:15:21.680 | when we're talking about the heavy drugs.

00:15:24.120 | - Have you ever drank alcohol?

00:15:25.960 | - Yes, I'm a rush user. - That's drug use.

00:15:27.320 | - I know, I drink a lot.

00:15:28.920 | But I understand that because culture came up.

00:15:31.920 | I was taught a lot of like, this is what you don't do,

00:15:35.920 | and this is what you do.

00:15:37.360 | This is when you drink a lot.

00:15:38.640 | I mean, you see the effects, you see the,

00:15:40.800 | there's a lot of negative examples,

00:15:42.320 | there's positive examples of social stimulant,

00:15:45.080 | there's examples of great artists using alcohol

00:15:49.280 | to sort of, I don't know, to help be the catalyst

00:15:53.000 | for that magic moment, for all of that.

00:15:55.880 | I don't, I have some examples now,

00:15:58.600 | especially in America, the same with weed.

00:16:01.240 | More and more, you're starting to get a lot of stories

00:16:04.080 | on psychedelics of different kinds.

00:16:07.280 | There's psilocybin, where you have mushrooms

00:16:12.280 | or even MDMA used sort of positively.

00:16:15.500 | There's kind of like negative stories from the past

00:16:19.800 | about acid, about LSD being used,

00:16:22.640 | ultimately for productive, like for productive ends,

00:16:26.840 | but it destroyed the person.

00:16:28.120 | That's kind of how the story goes.

00:16:29.560 | It was like a trade-off.

00:16:30.960 | You take, it's like, what is it,

00:16:33.640 | Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil to learn guitar.

00:16:36.840 | Like, it's a trade-off.

00:16:37.880 | You could take the drug,

00:16:39.080 | you're gonna create some good stuff,

00:16:40.240 | but you have to pay for it.

00:16:41.480 | Those are the stories.

00:16:42.320 | - Yeah, that's some bullshit we tell children.

00:16:44.080 | Come on.

00:16:45.200 | That's exactly right.

00:16:46.360 | You're exactly right.

00:16:47.420 | These fairy tales, these cautionary tales

00:16:49.840 | that we tell people, we have to grow up.

00:16:52.900 | That's what the book is about, drug use for grownups.

00:16:57.720 | We tell people, Pinocchio, if you lie, your nose grow.

00:17:02.720 | Who believes that?

00:17:04.240 | Who believes that there are fairy tales?

00:17:05.800 | But that's exactly what these stories are.

00:17:07.880 | They're in the same vein as those kind of stories,

00:17:12.140 | as Pinocchio.

00:17:13.400 | Like you said, when you were learning about alcohol,

00:17:17.400 | you were told what to do, what not to do, so forth.

00:17:21.280 | The same can be true with MDMA, with cocaine, with heroin.

00:17:25.680 | The same is true because there are some times

00:17:29.360 | when there are some potential dangers that you should avoid.

00:17:33.320 | And I wrote about some of them,

00:17:35.940 | certainly in my work just throughout all of my writings.

00:17:40.520 | I talk about those kinds of things

00:17:41.880 | and other people talk about these things.

00:17:44.120 | The problem is, is that we're getting our education

00:17:48.920 | from bullshit sources,

00:17:50.600 | from people who believe in this kind of Pinocchio thing.

00:17:55.180 | And it just does not fit with the evidence.

00:17:58.480 | And the evidence, we all publish

00:18:00.920 | in the scientific literature.

00:18:02.280 | All these things that I'm saying,

00:18:04.520 | it's there in the literature.

00:18:06.200 | I mean, at a place like Columbia,

00:18:08.160 | we give these drugs thousands of doses every year.

00:18:13.160 | Do you think we would be doing this?

00:18:16.200 | And we do this with research grants

00:18:18.600 | that's funded by the public, taxpayers' dollars.

00:18:22.780 | Do you think we would be allowed to do this

00:18:25.640 | if these drugs were so dangerous?

00:18:28.440 | It's just nonsense.

00:18:31.280 | I mean, and the drugs we're talking about,

00:18:33.720 | they are all approved for medical use

00:18:37.720 | somewhere in the world.

00:18:39.360 | - And the studies you conduct

00:18:42.280 | are basically asking what kinds of questions.

00:18:44.920 | So you take the full range of drugs you're talking about,

00:18:49.600 | from marijuana to psilocybin to MDMA

00:18:52.680 | to cocaine and heroin.

00:18:54.140 | What is the study looking at?

00:18:55.480 | Like what the actual experience

00:18:56.800 | with the positive and negative effects

00:18:58.100 | of the experience on the drug are in control conditions?

00:19:01.680 | - Yeah, so we did these kind of experiments

00:19:04.320 | with alcohol, nicotine, all these drugs

00:19:07.200 | in order to have an empirical database

00:19:11.240 | to tell people exactly what these drugs do

00:19:15.160 | and what they don't do.

00:19:16.440 | The conditions under which the drugs

00:19:18.960 | will produce positive effects,

00:19:20.600 | the conditions under which the drugs

00:19:22.440 | were more likely to produce negative effects.

00:19:25.080 | All of this information is important

00:19:27.280 | for a society to know, and we do know.

00:19:30.720 | And that's why we're collecting the data.

00:19:33.360 | We're collecting the data to help us with treatment

00:19:37.300 | if someone is having problems with these data.

00:19:39.800 | Hopefully we'll understand more about

00:19:44.040 | how to help them deal with their problems

00:19:48.340 | based on some of the research that we're doing.

00:19:50.560 | - So what kind of negative effects

00:19:51.920 | are we looking out for?

00:19:53.080 | Like what are the properties of drugs

00:19:55.060 | we should be careful about?

00:19:56.120 | Is it addictive properties?

00:19:57.760 | How addictive it is?

00:19:59.600 | How destructive or painful, whatever,

00:20:02.600 | the withdrawal processes?

00:20:06.960 | What kind of things are we looking out for?

00:20:09.140 | - Yeah, those are certain kind of questions

00:20:10.800 | we certainly have asked because something like

00:20:13.800 | crack cocaine versus alcohol or heroin

00:20:17.840 | when it comes to withdrawal or physical dependence.

00:20:21.600 | Like cocaine has a very limited sort of withdrawal symptoms.

00:20:25.960 | I mean, it's hard to see.

00:20:27.760 | Same is true with methamphetamine.

00:20:29.080 | But with heroin, you certainly can see

00:20:31.920 | a withdrawal syndrome that's unpleasant.

00:20:35.440 | But with alcohol, that withdrawal can actually kill you.

00:20:39.080 | So heroin is unpleasant and not lovely,

00:20:42.480 | but with alcohol withdrawal, that's the one,

00:20:44.620 | that's the most dangerous.

00:20:45.840 | I mean, all of these kind of questions

00:20:47.640 | we wanna know answers to.

00:20:51.320 | And so when we think about heroin or some other drugs

00:20:55.440 | and you say like, what kind of negative effects?

00:20:57.880 | Negative effects, we don't talk about much in the society.

00:21:00.920 | The main thing that really concerns me

00:21:02.800 | about like heroin use really is constipation.

00:21:06.260 | So if people are using heroin on a regular basis

00:21:11.200 | and then they have a sort of slowing of their gut motility,

00:21:16.480 | they're likely to increase constipation.

00:21:19.360 | And that's not good, I mean, for your general health.

00:21:22.960 | But we never talk about that in this society.

00:21:25.680 | And that's probably the most important thing

00:21:28.840 | aside from the fact that people get contaminated

00:21:32.000 | street drugs and that sort of stuff

00:21:33.480 | and increase the likelihood of maybe dying

00:21:35.760 | from some contaminant or people who are inexperienced

00:21:40.200 | and they're mixing heroin with other sedative.

00:21:42.600 | That's not good, but the constipation is a huge one.

00:21:46.840 | And then other sort of drugs, negative effects,

00:21:51.100 | like the amphetamines, all of the amphetamines,

00:21:54.400 | they disrupt sleep, food intake.

00:21:56.860 | All of these things are so critical

00:21:59.480 | for sustaining human life.

00:22:01.600 | But we never talk about that

00:22:02.960 | because it's not as sexy as this nonsense

00:22:05.880 | that people write about, like addiction.

00:22:08.120 | Addiction has almost nothing to do

00:22:10.080 | with the drugs themselves.

00:22:11.480 | And I make that comment because the vast majority of users

00:22:16.480 | for any drug never become addicted.

00:22:19.760 | And so if the vast majority of users don't become addicted,

00:22:23.040 | then you have to move beyond the drug

00:22:25.200 | when you're talking about the phenomena interest,

00:22:27.560 | in this case, addiction.

00:22:29.320 | And so when we think about addiction,

00:22:31.540 | it has much more to do with our psychosocial environment

00:22:35.080 | than the drug itself, but that's not sexy.

00:22:38.520 | - So addiction is even the property of the environment,

00:22:41.260 | not a property, a result of the environment.

00:22:44.320 | - It certainly can be.

00:22:45.320 | There are people who are suffering

00:22:47.760 | from a co-occurring mental illness,

00:22:50.760 | like depression, anxiety.

00:22:52.800 | I mean, that's within the person, of course,

00:22:55.400 | and that increases the likelihood for addiction.

00:22:57.920 | So that's not so much the environment,

00:23:01.420 | but there are people who, for example,

00:23:03.600 | they have chronic unrealistic expectations heaped on them.

00:23:07.760 | And those people are more likely

00:23:09.760 | to have some problems with drugs.

00:23:11.960 | There are people who are just immature,

00:23:14.320 | not developed, haven't developed responsibility skills.

00:23:18.240 | They are likely to have some problems

00:23:20.600 | if they engage in some of these behaviors.

00:23:23.600 | There are people who lost their jobs,

00:23:26.160 | COVID, factories went away, a wide range of things.

00:23:30.040 | And those people used to have standing in their community.

00:23:33.540 | Now they have none.

00:23:35.520 | Those people might be susceptible

00:23:37.680 | to having a drug-related problem

00:23:39.620 | if they indulge.

00:23:41.240 | All of these kind of issues

00:23:42.880 | are far more important than the drug itself.

00:23:45.520 | - And so they could seek escape in a particular drug.

00:23:48.560 | I mean, there is a biochemical thing

00:23:51.320 | to each of these drugs,

00:23:52.400 | and some pull you in harder than others

00:23:55.280 | when you need the escape, right?

00:23:56.960 | When you're not doing well in life.

00:23:58.880 | - What evidence you have for that, Boosh?

00:24:00.200 | - I don't.

00:24:01.040 | - Yeah, 'cause there is none.

00:24:02.000 | There is absolutely none.

00:24:03.760 | I mean, people say stuff like that,

00:24:06.800 | and that's the problem.

00:24:09.520 | That's precisely the problem.

00:24:11.460 | - See, I'm operating from limited personal evidence.

00:24:14.840 | - Well, this is a problem, though,

00:24:16.180 | but we have a scientific database.

00:24:18.680 | We don't need personal evidence for this.

00:24:21.320 | In my book, I try to go through some of the science

00:24:24.600 | so people could understand.

00:24:26.480 | It's like when you have a math problem,

00:24:29.840 | you don't want people saying,

00:24:30.880 | "Well, you know, I feel like this."

00:24:32.760 | Fuck what you feel.

00:24:33.960 | What does the data say?

00:24:35.940 | - So one of the problems with the data,

00:24:38.460 | so one data is there's the studies that you're doing.

00:24:41.840 | This is excellent research work,

00:24:43.280 | but there's some of the drugs are illegal.

00:24:45.600 | - Yes. - And some are legal.

00:24:47.100 | So you have just, it's unfortunate

00:24:51.320 | that some of the drugs are illegal,

00:24:53.200 | or whatever you believe,

00:24:54.960 | but there's not enough of a data set

00:24:56.640 | of public and the open use.

00:24:58.840 | That's like you got in the wild data set.

00:25:01.480 | It'd be nice to do thousands of people

00:25:03.960 | and see from all the different kinds of environments

00:25:06.120 | and all that kind of stuff to get an understanding.

00:25:08.580 | - I think we have a substantial database,

00:25:13.300 | but people just ignore it.

00:25:15.380 | - Got it.

00:25:16.220 | That said, let me ask you the question of legalization.

00:25:21.480 | So should, in your view, all drugs be legalized?

00:25:26.260 | - The drugs that people seek

00:25:27.980 | certainly should be legally regulated

00:25:30.500 | and available to adults.

00:25:32.420 | So when I say the drugs people seek,

00:25:34.020 | like cannabis, MDMA, cocaine, heroin,

00:25:38.140 | those drugs certainly should be available,

00:25:42.300 | and some of the psychedelics that people seek.

00:25:45.500 | Now, the thing about it is that some people think that,

00:25:50.500 | oh, it'll be a free fall.

00:25:52.340 | These drugs are available to everyone.

00:25:54.260 | That's not true.

00:25:55.140 | I mean, it will be, there will be age requirements

00:25:57.900 | and maybe other requirements,

00:25:59.540 | but they should be available.

00:26:01.340 | And we should also do like what we do with alcohol.

00:26:04.700 | We can put enough alcohol in a bottle to kill you,

00:26:08.420 | but we don't.

00:26:09.500 | So we regulate it such that the amount that's in the bottle

00:26:14.060 | enhances the safety and minimizes the potential harms.

00:26:18.460 | We can do the same thing with these other drugs.

00:26:20.740 | And we can also say, okay,

00:26:23.060 | we won't be selling intravenous preparations

00:26:26.180 | of any of these drugs.

00:26:28.180 | These, the drugs that the routes of administration

00:26:31.540 | will be oral and I don't know, let's say intranasal.

00:26:36.540 | Again, routes of administration,

00:26:40.900 | the dose that you have in each unit,

00:26:43.820 | all can minimize harm based on how you do these things.

00:26:49.260 | And we can do that.

00:26:50.100 | We have the technology, we have the know-how.

00:26:52.300 | - You're actually making me think

00:26:55.100 | about alcohol a little bit.

00:26:56.140 | So if I were, say the drugs become legalized

00:26:58.820 | in the way you're describing,

00:27:00.220 | and me, Lex, wanted to, as an adult,

00:27:04.500 | explore some of these drugs,

00:27:06.420 | what are some procedures do you think

00:27:10.140 | for sort of safe, positive exploration of those drugs?

00:27:14.940 | The reason I say I'm thinking about alcohol,

00:27:16.900 | because I don't think besides not putting enough alcohol

00:27:20.660 | in a bottle to kill you,

00:27:22.460 | I don't think anyone ever gave me specific instructions.

00:27:25.820 | I think it's kind of word of mouth

00:27:27.300 | and examples of people doing the wrong thing.

00:27:30.900 | You kind of get it through osmosis that way.

00:27:33.100 | - Yeah.

00:27:34.020 | - Is that basically what we would do?

00:27:36.300 | This kind of free exploration of use?

00:27:38.220 | - No, we have to change our education about these things.

00:27:41.300 | I mean, let's just take a drug like cocaine.

00:27:44.220 | Cocaine's a stimulant.

00:27:45.540 | You wanna make sure people understand

00:27:47.940 | that they shouldn't be taking cocaine near bedtime.

00:27:50.380 | You know, they need to get a certain amount of hours

00:27:53.980 | of sleep and they need to get up in the morning.

00:27:57.380 | Cocaine probably isn't a drug for you at night.

00:27:59.980 | Certainly not.

00:28:00.820 | Certainly not amphetamines at night for most people.

00:28:04.580 | And also, if you wanna make sure that you,

00:28:06.820 | they need to understand that cocaine

00:28:09.500 | can also disrupt your food intake.

00:28:11.780 | Not as much as the amphetamines,

00:28:13.260 | but all of these kinds of things people need to know

00:28:15.780 | so they can have proper nutrition

00:28:18.420 | and they can time their drug use

00:28:22.460 | around these other important functions

00:28:25.540 | that sustain human life.

00:28:26.860 | So we have to make sure that we educate people.

00:28:30.940 | We can't just throw people in a while.

00:28:34.380 | That's stupid.

00:28:36.140 | - I gotta tell you, I mean, for me,

00:28:37.900 | and even given your book and for people listening to this,

00:28:40.420 | it's still tough to hear that the thing

00:28:44.180 | we should be concerned about with cocaine

00:28:46.700 | is the same as with caffeine.

00:28:50.580 | Don't take it before bed.

00:28:52.100 | And the thing we should be concerned with heroin

00:28:54.500 | is constipation.

00:28:55.460 | - Yeah.

00:28:56.300 | - Okay.

00:29:00.460 | But the questions I keep wanting to ask you,

00:29:04.820 | I should be asking the same things of alcohol.

00:29:07.860 | But when you're not doing well psychologically

00:29:10.780 | in the ways you described, when the environment's not right,

00:29:13.780 | there's some aspect in which saying that

00:29:19.340 | drugs can be used responsibly and effectively

00:29:22.540 | and mostly positive can give those folks a pass

00:29:27.540 | to use it instead of working on themselves

00:29:30.620 | and fixing their environment first.

00:29:32.860 | - I don't know, what do you want me to say to that?

00:29:35.260 | I mean, they have access to alcohol.

00:29:37.300 | They have access to the...

00:29:38.660 | You know, we live in this country called the United States

00:29:42.900 | where our Declaration of Independence says that

00:29:46.380 | we are free to live like we wanna live

00:29:48.420 | so long as we don't disrupt other people from doing the same.

00:29:52.420 | But it's remarkable to me how we try to control

00:29:56.660 | the behaviors of other people.

00:29:58.140 | That's just remarkable.

00:30:00.740 | - Yeah.

00:30:01.780 | And that's partially what your book is about.

00:30:03.900 | I mean, it's not just about drugs, it's about freedom.

00:30:06.460 | - That's the bigger issue that we can't get to.

00:30:09.180 | It's like this issue of freedom.

00:30:12.380 | And freedom comes with a tremendous amount of responsibility.

00:30:16.060 | I am responsible for my neighbors,

00:30:18.300 | my brothers, I mean, I can't impede their freedoms.

00:30:22.940 | Like some people think that their freedom

00:30:24.940 | supersedes everybody else's freedoms.

00:30:26.780 | No, and that's what I'm trying to remind people in this book.

00:30:31.020 | I am responsible to you as a citizen

00:30:36.020 | and we're in this together.

00:30:39.620 | And I tried to make that point in the book

00:30:42.020 | and people have conveniently ignored things like that.

00:30:47.340 | - Do you think the war on drugs

00:30:49.700 | has done more positive or negative for the world?

00:30:52.500 | - Depends on which world you live in.

00:30:55.540 | The war on drugs has been hugely beneficial

00:30:58.820 | to law enforcement, to the media,

00:31:02.740 | to people who make bullshit TV shows,

00:31:05.520 | the Sopranos, The Wire, all of those shows,

00:31:10.220 | they benefit from this kind of nonsense.

00:31:12.800 | Who else have benefited?

00:31:17.100 | People who provide treatment,

00:31:19.780 | many of them benefit from the war on drugs.

00:31:21.860 | The folks who do urine testing for drugs,

00:31:25.500 | they've all benefited, they're making mad money.

00:31:28.980 | People who run prisons,

00:31:31.260 | the phone companies who charge the prisoners,

00:31:35.340 | the people who run the hotels that are around the prisons

00:31:38.660 | where people's family have to come and stay,

00:31:41.340 | the restaurants, they are making out like bandits.

00:31:45.820 | But many of us are getting screwed as a society.

00:31:48.980 | In general, we're getting screwed,

00:31:51.460 | but there are people who are just benefiting handsomely.

00:31:54.980 | That's why it continues.

00:31:56.340 | Politicians benefit.

00:31:58.020 | I mean, whether you're Democrat or Republican,

00:32:00.340 | you have the same stance on drugs anyway,

00:32:02.680 | so they all benefit from this.

00:32:05.860 | - So many questions I wanna ask you

00:32:07.540 | 'cause you're challenging a lot of beliefs that people have

00:32:10.780 | about drugs, about society in general.

00:32:13.140 | So it's difficult for me to ask the right questions here.

00:32:16.100 | If you were with a sort of a snap of a finger,

00:32:23.020 | change the world, what from a policy perspective,

00:32:28.140 | would you, and from just a, I don't know,

00:32:32.300 | human to human perspective,

00:32:34.020 | what would you like to see in the United States of America

00:32:37.140 | in terms of that fixes some of the problems

00:32:38.780 | we're discussing here?

00:32:39.900 | - First of all, I would not,

00:32:40.940 | we wouldn't be arresting anybody for drugs anymore.

00:32:43.820 | That would go away.

00:32:45.080 | The folks who are in prison for drugs, that would go away.

00:32:49.320 | Their records would be a sponge.

00:32:50.940 | That would just go away.

00:32:52.740 | And then we work on a system to make sure

00:32:56.540 | that responsible adults can legally obtain these substances,

00:33:01.540 | and we'll have a corresponding educational system

00:33:05.720 | to teach people how to do this.

00:33:08.820 | That's where I would start initially.

00:33:11.100 | - Yeah, the arresting for drug use

00:33:15.660 | or anything drug-related is absurd,

00:33:18.460 | especially in the context of how destructive

00:33:20.460 | alcohol is and tobacco.

00:33:22.960 | - Alcohol can be destructive to some people,

00:33:25.020 | but alcohol also is a hugely beneficial drug,

00:33:28.620 | to be honest, which I couldn't have gotten through

00:33:31.300 | many of the sort of receptions and functions

00:33:34.300 | I had to go through as the chair of the department

00:33:37.660 | without alcohol.

00:33:38.500 | - Yeah, you have a line I really liked.

00:33:41.100 | The vast amount of predictably favorable drug effects

00:33:44.580 | intrigued me, so much so that I expanded my own drug use

00:33:47.880 | to take advantage of the wide array of beneficial outcomes

00:33:50.380 | specific drugs can offer.

00:33:52.360 | The part that entertained me was this.

00:33:54.620 | To put this in personal terms,

00:33:56.140 | my position as department chairman from 2016 to 2019

00:34:00.580 | was far more detrimental to my health

00:34:02.540 | than my drug use ever was.

00:34:04.340 | I mean, there is a standard where treating drugs,

00:34:07.460 | certain kinds of drugs that's completely different

00:34:10.180 | than the standard we're treating

00:34:11.020 | everything else in our lives.

00:34:12.460 | Yeah, I mean, it's almost difficult to snap out of it

00:34:17.100 | as I'm listening to you and reading your work.

00:34:19.860 | It's difficult because it's like,

00:34:27.100 | why is everybody living this idea that certain drugs

00:34:31.860 | are so horribly destructive and others are not?

00:34:35.620 | And we just kind of fix that idea.

00:34:37.780 | And then there's this narrative.

00:34:39.380 | I hate to be so cynical to think that there is just

00:34:43.660 | like a system that just propagates narratives.

00:34:46.380 | I always kind of think that truth wins out.

00:34:50.300 | Truth is the best narrative.

00:34:51.540 | - I believe that too, obviously, that's why I'm out here

00:34:54.340 | and putting, subjecting myself to this sort of criticism

00:34:57.700 | and so forth, but because I believe that truth

00:35:00.340 | ultimately wins out, but I might be wrong.

00:35:02.900 | But I have to live my life like it's true.

00:35:07.860 | Otherwise, then I have no hope.

00:35:09.820 | Then why be here?

00:35:11.260 | - Well, kind of, if you can steal man

00:35:12.900 | or at least show respect to a criticism,

00:35:15.580 | you've I'm sure received quite a bit of criticism

00:35:19.740 | for your work.

00:35:20.700 | I've heard quite a bit of BS criticism,

00:35:23.780 | sort of ignorance, stuff that don't actually pay attention

00:35:27.100 | to your work, but is there some serious,

00:35:30.260 | like is there some pushback that makes you think twice?

00:35:34.220 | - People say like I'm presenting a too rosy picture

00:35:38.660 | of drugs, like I don't wanna do that.

00:35:42.340 | I don't want people to think that I'm not aware

00:35:45.300 | of the potential negative effects of any activity,

00:35:49.340 | including drug use.

00:35:51.260 | And so I do acknowledge that there are potential harms

00:35:56.260 | associated with drugs.

00:35:57.620 | I acknowledge that in the book.

00:36:00.020 | But the fact remains the beneficial effects far outweigh

00:36:03.580 | the potential harmful effects.

00:36:05.420 | And we have technology information to help people

00:36:09.740 | to minimize the likelihood of those negative effects.

00:36:12.180 | But this sort of approach that we have,

00:36:15.340 | where we say we're only exclusively presenting

00:36:19.340 | the harmful effects and that should make people,

00:36:22.460 | keep people safe.

00:36:23.620 | I just have a problem with that.

00:36:25.460 | But I certainly, I take the point that people say

00:36:30.460 | there are negative effects.

00:36:32.220 | Absolutely, I absolutely agree.

00:36:35.140 | - What do you, if I can just talk about specific drugs,

00:36:39.220 | what's the difference between opioids and benzos,

00:36:42.900 | for example, specifically, I mean, these are drugs

00:36:47.900 | that you often read about being misused at scale.

00:36:53.140 | I mean, the misuse is the problem, right?

00:36:55.180 | - Yeah.

00:36:56.140 | - No matter what the drug is.

00:36:57.540 | - Yes.

00:36:58.380 | - And that's actually what you're pushing for is education.

00:37:00.820 | And it should be legal and should be good.

00:37:03.780 | So people should know what's the difference

00:37:05.460 | in proper use, positive use and misuse.

00:37:10.460 | I mean, one public figure who has been going through this

00:37:14.020 | is Jordan Peterson.

00:37:15.380 | He's been public about his struggle of getting off benzos,

00:37:18.700 | the withdrawal he's going through.

00:37:20.580 | I mean, what are your thoughts about

00:37:22.380 | the misuse of benzos or opioids and so on,

00:37:27.300 | the epidemic that people talk about?

00:37:30.060 | - Yeah, I don't know Jordan's specific case,

00:37:33.260 | but certainly with benzodiazepines in general,

00:37:36.140 | we talked about withdrawal earlier

00:37:37.740 | when I said that with alcohol withdrawal, you can die.

00:37:40.180 | So benzos and alcohol, they're closely related.

00:37:43.540 | So benzo withdrawal too can kill you, just like alcohol.

00:37:47.380 | So when we think about the effects

00:37:49.220 | that benzodiazepines produce,

00:37:51.340 | think about the effects that alcohol produce.

00:37:53.460 | They're comparable or similar.

00:37:55.740 | And so I know that it's a difficult one to wean yourself off

00:38:00.740 | if you develop the dependence,

00:38:03.440 | but we have protocols for that and I hope he's okay.

00:38:08.440 | - Since you say we have protocols for that,

00:38:11.300 | but from my understanding was that

00:38:13.620 | like the protocols aren't standardized.

00:38:16.140 | It feels like a lot of doctors aren't as helpful

00:38:19.060 | as they could be in this process.

00:38:20.820 | Like it's a bit of a mess.

00:38:22.300 | - Certainly with withdrawal,

00:38:23.940 | they're more standardized than anything.

00:38:27.060 | So like if someone is going through alcohol withdrawal,

00:38:30.620 | there is a standard protocol that most physicians

00:38:33.620 | in this business, they follow.

00:38:36.100 | The same is true with benzo withdrawal.

00:38:39.500 | But the thing where it gets murky

00:38:41.580 | is when they're treating addiction itself.

00:38:44.140 | So when you're thinking about the substance use disorder

00:38:47.860 | in the DSM, not just withdrawal, but the entire addiction,

00:38:51.340 | that's where you have this sort of divergence

00:38:54.340 | or diversity in terms of approaches.

00:39:00.700 | And many of those approaches are rubbish.

00:39:03.680 | - What, can you just elaborate like technically

00:39:06.880 | what the term addiction means that you're referring to?

00:39:09.800 | - When I use the term addiction,

00:39:11.220 | I'm referring to the Diagnostics Statistical Manual

00:39:16.220 | of the American Psychiatric Association, number five now,

00:39:20.100 | the DSM-5.

00:39:21.180 | - That's never been wrong, right?

00:39:22.820 | I'm just kidding.

00:39:25.300 | - You're absolutely, that point is well taken.

00:39:28.140 | And your point is that their definition

00:39:33.100 | of substance use disorder, that's addiction,

00:39:35.380 | that's what I'm talking about.

00:39:36.580 | But that definition continues to evolve.

00:39:39.700 | And so you're right, they still are working it out.

00:39:44.140 | We're getting new information

00:39:45.580 | from scientific studies and so forth.

00:39:47.900 | And so it's supposed to be incorporated into the DSM.

00:39:51.540 | But there are some problems with the DSM.

00:39:53.940 | Like for example, they also have this sort of

00:39:57.980 | once an addict, always an addict thing,

00:40:00.560 | and there's no evidence to support that.

00:40:02.780 | But it's evolving, and it's the definition

00:40:07.600 | that people in science and medicine use.

00:40:10.900 | And so we all know we're talking about the same language

00:40:13.860 | when we call someone a substance use disorder patient

00:40:17.620 | or someone who meets criteria for addiction.

00:40:19.700 | We all are speaking the same language.

00:40:22.200 | We're not saying that simply

00:40:23.900 | because this person use heroin, they are an addict.

00:40:26.580 | That's not what we're saying.

00:40:28.020 | You have to meet these criteria

00:40:29.940 | where you have disruptions

00:40:32.140 | in your psychosocial functioning, that's one.

00:40:35.300 | And two, you, the person, are distressed

00:40:39.440 | by these disruptions.

00:40:43.160 | So people have to meet those two basic criteria

00:40:46.520 | before we say they are addicted.

00:40:48.680 | - So once an addict, always an addict, this idea.

00:40:53.280 | I mean, some of it is always mapped to the person,

00:40:58.760 | but just the people I've interacted with

00:41:01.720 | who have struggled with alcohol addiction,

00:41:04.080 | I don't know what the proper term is.

00:41:06.380 | It seems like with Alcohol Anonymous,

00:41:09.060 | the process of putting that addiction behind you

00:41:14.060 | is a very, very long process.

00:41:16.980 | It's surprisingly long to me.

00:41:18.820 | That almost seems like a whole life.

00:41:20.660 | Like it's not always an addict, but it takes decades.

00:41:24.220 | It seems like.

00:41:25.060 | What is that?

00:41:27.460 | Can you maybe just, from your understanding as a scientist,

00:41:32.140 | from your understanding as a human

00:41:33.340 | who studies human nature,

00:41:34.880 | why does it take so long to treat,

00:41:36.800 | to deal with that addiction?

00:41:42.900 | - Well, you cited Alcohol Anonymous, right?

00:41:46.560 | And so I don't think of Alcohol Anonymous

00:41:49.600 | as like a treatment that I would send any relative to,

00:41:54.400 | like for a drug-related problem.

00:41:57.600 | I think Alcohol Anonymous AA is really good

00:42:01.760 | for social interactions,

00:42:05.240 | making sure people have a social group and they have peers.

00:42:10.240 | I mean, that's a good thing.

00:42:11.920 | We all need that social interaction,

00:42:14.720 | but I don't think they know much about drugs.

00:42:16.760 | That's not, it's like saying,

00:42:20.160 | well, you know, my uncle broke his knee

00:42:22.760 | and he has this support group and they said this,

00:42:27.380 | and then we follow that.

00:42:30.840 | That doesn't make any sense.

00:42:31.960 | But in our society, judges even sentence people to go to AA.

00:42:36.960 | Are you kidding me?

00:42:40.640 | But that's the kind of thing

00:42:42.800 | that has been allowed to happen in this society

00:42:45.780 | because we think of drugs as this moral failing,

00:42:50.560 | or drug addiction as this moral failing.

00:42:53.220 | And any idiot can provide treatment.

00:42:56.560 | And no disrespect to AA because I think what they do

00:43:00.740 | is a lot more than what some people do

00:43:02.880 | because at least they have these social interactions,

00:43:07.480 | you have a social group.

00:43:09.700 | That's better than what a lot of these other idiots

00:43:12.520 | out here do.

00:43:13.640 | - Well, and that social support group,

00:43:16.520 | unrelated to the drug,

00:43:18.420 | it helps cure some of the environment issues you might be in.

00:43:21.680 | That's the whole point.

00:43:22.960 | So we kind of coupled the drug to the environment,

00:43:25.120 | but the reality is, as you argue,

00:43:28.400 | most of the problems come from the environment.

00:43:30.980 | - Certainly with people who are experiencing

00:43:32.940 | drug-related problem with most of the people,

00:43:34.800 | not all, but most.

00:43:36.840 | - There are differences like that psychedelics

00:43:40.820 | and like psilocybin has versus alcohol.

00:43:43.940 | I personally think,

00:43:45.260 | I've enjoyed both experiences in different ways.

00:43:50.340 | Is it possible, or are we getting into the realm of poetry

00:43:54.980 | to describe the benefits,

00:43:57.540 | like how it alters the mind,

00:43:59.520 | how the different drugs alter the mind

00:44:02.040 | and the places it can take you

00:44:05.020 | that produce a positive experience?

00:44:06.840 | - Yeah.

00:44:07.700 | No, it's very real.

00:44:09.140 | You know, like some drugs take people in places

00:44:13.820 | that other drugs can't, and that's very real.

00:44:17.060 | I have friends, some of them you know,

00:44:23.460 | they, for example, say that they've never had an experience

00:44:27.580 | like the one they had with ayahuasca,

00:44:29.820 | and they've done a number of sort of things.

00:44:32.240 | But they did the ayahuasca in a setting

00:44:36.180 | with a shaman and this group,

00:44:40.420 | and they felt like they actually began to heal

00:44:45.420 | or solve some problems that they were trying to solve

00:44:49.540 | for some years, and that's great.

00:44:52.260 | That's great for them.

00:44:54.020 | And nothing else does it for them like that.

00:44:56.620 | And that's absolutely fantastic.

00:44:59.140 | All I argue is that if that kind of thing happens for you

00:45:05.820 | with ayahuasca, with psilocybin,

00:45:09.700 | with some other psychedelic,

00:45:12.500 | why isn't it possible that heroin does that for someone

00:45:17.060 | or cocaine does that for someone else,

00:45:19.780 | or MDMA does it for someone?

00:45:22.700 | That's it.

00:45:23.540 | - That's interesting to imagine like a shaman for heroin.

00:45:27.420 | Like why not?

00:45:28.940 | And or cocaine, you said creating an environment

00:45:31.180 | for yourself for use of these different substances,

00:45:34.100 | and that environment has a very strong impact

00:45:39.100 | on the actual experience that you have.

00:45:41.860 | But I mean, so cocaine is an upper, and then--

00:45:47.540 | - Yeah, the way we define drugs like uppers and downers,

00:45:50.980 | that's a really kind of inappropriate way,

00:45:55.980 | but it's a quick way.

00:45:57.500 | So we certainly say cocaine is an upper or stimulant.

00:46:01.140 | But it depends on the activity of the person

00:46:05.300 | before they take the drug.

00:46:06.380 | Say like if you're like really active

00:46:08.460 | before taking a drug like cocaine,

00:46:10.740 | it might actually calm you.

00:46:12.820 | So it all depends on the activity of the person

00:46:15.620 | before they take the drug.

00:46:16.900 | - I remember, I don't know if you know Matthew Johnson is--

00:46:19.820 | - Of course.

00:46:20.660 | - He did all these studies on,

00:46:23.060 | or I remember just reading a paper,

00:46:25.260 | I didn't get a chance to talk with him much about it,

00:46:27.260 | but it was about condom use and cocaine.

00:46:30.780 | And then, you know, what like the doses

00:46:33.300 | and whether people are more or less likely,

00:46:35.700 | like the unsafe thing there is the using or not using,

00:46:40.540 | or not using, I guess, condoms during sexual intercourse.

00:46:45.700 | I don't know, I just, I love that these drugs

00:46:48.220 | that have connotation probably because of Hollywood,

00:46:52.220 | negative connotations are actually being studied by science

00:46:54.740 | and then the actual impact they have

00:46:56.620 | and what are the negative effects.

00:46:58.180 | Again, in those studies often,

00:47:00.240 | the positive effects are difficult to quantify, I think.

00:47:05.340 | Maybe, I guess you can from self-report and so on.

00:47:08.300 | - The positive effects are not difficult to quantify.

00:47:11.340 | You ask people about their euphoria,

00:47:15.420 | you can see how well people are getting along.

00:47:18.260 | Like in our studies that we have people sometimes in groups

00:47:22.780 | and you see how well they get along

00:47:25.740 | on the various drug conditions or placebo conditions.

00:47:29.960 | It's really, it's not that difficult.

00:47:32.460 | - And then you can see these amazing studies

00:47:34.620 | with like Rick Doblin, like looking at MDMA

00:47:38.180 | and combined with therapy,

00:47:40.800 | like how you can overcome certain PTSD things

00:47:45.020 | or depression and so on.

00:47:47.140 | Yeah, it's really interesting.

00:47:48.500 | It's really interesting.

00:47:51.100 | I gotta ask you, 'cause you mentioned The Wire.

00:47:53.460 | Do you think The Wire, you think movies like "Trainspotting",

00:47:56.300 | do you think they're ultimately destructive?

00:47:58.140 | 'Cause okay, yes, they celebrate murder, right?

00:48:02.200 | The Godfather a little bit.

00:48:04.300 | - Yeah.

00:48:05.140 | - But another one, I mean,

00:48:07.280 | it's like these racist ass motherfuckers

00:48:10.120 | and they also are killing people,

00:48:12.660 | but yet they say, "We don't do drugs."

00:48:14.780 | What kind of shit is that?

00:48:16.060 | I mean, people who are doing drugs, psilocybin or whatever,

00:48:21.060 | the thing is we're trying to be better people

00:48:24.540 | and trying to make our society better

00:48:27.140 | and you're killing people

00:48:28.220 | and you are denigrating people for using drugs.

00:48:32.340 | Are you fucking kidding me?

00:48:33.500 | And we let them get away with that as a society.

00:48:35.980 | - Do you see those movies,

00:48:37.220 | I apologize if I'm not sufficiently informed,

00:48:39.740 | do you see them as denigrating drugs?

00:48:41.800 | - Of course.

00:48:42.640 | I mean, The Godfather.

00:48:44.760 | - Yes, that's right.

00:48:45.600 | That's a good example.

00:48:46.420 | - The Godfather, The Sopranos is all about that.

00:48:49.500 | I mean, Christopher is using heroin in The Sopranos

00:48:53.660 | and they have an intervention in one season

00:48:58.500 | and they are denigrating him.

00:49:02.940 | Are you kidding me?

00:49:03.780 | You just cut somebody's head off.

00:49:05.740 | - Yeah, but to be fair,

00:49:07.940 | they were denigrating, I think, all drugs.

00:49:10.580 | - And then they're drinking alcohol in the Butterbean.

00:49:13.180 | - Yeah, yeah.

00:49:14.020 | - Come on.

00:49:14.860 | I mean, first of all, they're killing people.

00:49:18.180 | They don't have any space, none,

00:49:21.340 | to denigrate somebody who's just trying

00:49:23.820 | to alter their consciousness.

00:49:26.540 | Are you kidding me?

00:49:27.540 | And not bothering anyone else.

00:49:29.620 | - But there's a lot of other mob movies

00:49:31.440 | that Scarface celebrates the murder and the drugs equally.

00:49:35.980 | So, I mean, it celebrates all of the,

00:49:42.820 | not just drugs or so on.

00:49:44.420 | It's extreme. - All of those movies.

00:49:46.820 | I loved all those movies.

00:49:48.020 | I'm from Miami.

00:49:48.860 | I loved Scarface.

00:49:50.100 | I even liked The Sopranos.

00:49:51.620 | Then I started looking at that shit with a critical eye

00:49:53.860 | and see what it's doing.

00:49:55.260 | But Scarface is dependent upon the American viewer

00:50:01.540 | having a certain view of people who deal in drugs.

00:50:06.300 | And that view is that these people are animals, basically.

00:50:10.620 | And in the end, the animal kills himself

00:50:14.060 | with too much cocaine and he was high.

00:50:16.780 | That's what they show.

00:50:17.940 | And so it's like, what the fuck?

00:50:20.740 | - So it's leveraging, it's playing into

00:50:23.580 | not the better angels of our nature.

00:50:26.080 | - The question--

00:50:31.900 | - Don't take away these great movies from me.

00:50:34.140 | But it's true.

00:50:34.980 | You have to think about them critically in this context.

00:50:36.940 | - Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

00:50:38.860 | I like these movies.

00:50:39.700 | It's not a matter of taking away.

00:50:41.180 | It's a matter of making the writers

00:50:44.980 | be more honest to the reality.

00:50:47.020 | That's it.

00:50:47.860 | - That's true.

00:50:48.700 | That's really true.

00:50:49.520 | And the writers, the people, the culture, all of it.

00:50:52.140 | - I mean, they write these things.

00:50:54.300 | I just think about some hip hop artists.

00:50:57.060 | They say, "This is real.

00:50:58.620 | "This is my experience," and so forth.

00:51:01.300 | And that's how these movie writers,

00:51:03.020 | they write this bullshit and then say, "Well, this is real."

00:51:07.500 | Anyway, I get so upset talking about it

00:51:10.500 | because I know the harm it's doing.

00:51:12.980 | And I know those kind of movies are the reason

00:51:16.260 | that we have this war on drugs.

00:51:18.860 | And all of these people are going to jail

00:51:21.420 | because of those kind of movies.

00:51:23.220 | - In the epilogue of your book, you quote James Baldwin.

00:51:28.420 | "You cannot know what you will discover on the journey,

00:51:31.120 | "what you will do with what you find,

00:51:33.540 | "or what you find will do to you."

00:51:36.660 | So let me ask, how has drug use

00:51:38.980 | or the study of drugs changed you as a human being?

00:51:42.940 | - It has helped me think about

00:51:44.860 | other people's experience, right?

00:51:46.580 | So how we're all connected.

00:51:49.420 | Like going to Northern Ireland,

00:51:51.100 | I don't know if you know much about the situation

00:51:53.540 | with the troubles and what those people went through.

00:51:57.060 | And so I see people there.

00:51:59.820 | Northern Ireland, by the way, is all white.

00:52:02.300 | And you see those people there suffering

00:52:04.900 | for the same reasons that people in Appalachia

00:52:08.260 | are suffering for.

00:52:09.940 | Neglected by politicians who told them lies about drugs

00:52:14.700 | and not dealing with the real problems,

00:52:16.620 | like West Virginia, for example.

00:52:19.060 | Their water's polluted, the factories have gone away,

00:52:22.500 | people are desperate, and they're blaming drugs?

00:52:25.980 | Are you kidding me?

00:52:27.600 | So the politicians don't have to bring back the jobs,

00:52:31.420 | so we don't have to really make sure

00:52:34.340 | they have clean drinking water, things of that nature.

00:52:37.380 | And so those people are connected

00:52:39.380 | to the people in Northern Ireland.

00:52:40.700 | They're connected to the people in Brownsville.

00:52:43.660 | They're connected to the people in other places

00:52:46.840 | in the United States for the same reason.

00:52:49.100 | They're connected to the people in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

00:52:54.100 | Same thing, people are catching hell for the same reason.

00:52:58.340 | In the Philippines, for the same reason.

00:53:02.100 | And that's why I feel so strongly about this thing,

00:53:04.980 | because I know there are people getting paid,

00:53:08.660 | and their paycheck is predicated on subjugating

00:53:13.260 | and the suffering of those other people.

00:53:15.260 | - So when we hear about the destructive effects of drugs,

00:53:21.980 | it's essentially a scapegoat for the failures of leaders

00:53:26.980 | and politicians to help alleviate the suffering

00:53:31.000 | of people in those communities.

00:53:32.060 | - Absolutely, it's so easy to say,

00:53:34.620 | I'm gonna rid your community of drugs,

00:53:36.860 | I'm gonna put more cops on the street.

00:53:38.760 | If you want a problem not to be solved,

00:53:45.060 | just give it to the military or the cops.

00:53:47.360 | - You had a tough childhood growing up in Miami,

00:53:50.420 | like you said.

00:53:51.820 | What memories, memory stands out in particular

00:53:55.180 | that was formative in helping make you the man you are?

00:54:00.620 | - That's so hard to say.

00:54:04.120 | My grandmother was really important.

00:54:07.720 | So maybe just her, trying to make sure

00:54:11.380 | that I think critically, I guess that's the biggest one.

00:54:14.700 | - So you moved in with her, your parents split?

00:54:18.300 | - Six, seven, yeah.

00:54:20.860 | - What have you learned about life from her?

00:54:23.620 | - Be self-sufficient, be critical, and keep your eyes open,

00:54:28.420 | and watch out for the okey-doke.

00:54:30.460 | You know, and that's what this whole drug thing is about.

00:54:33.540 | It's the okey-doke people.

00:54:35.260 | It really boils down to just simple thing.

00:54:40.220 | We're all similar in that we're all just trying

00:54:43.900 | to live our life, trying to take care of our kids.

00:54:46.340 | We want the best for our kids, all of us.

00:54:48.780 | But yet, somehow, we've been made to believe

00:54:53.780 | that we're different in that way.

00:54:56.760 | But fundamentally, we're all the same.

00:54:58.700 | So when people are seeking to feel pleasure,

00:55:02.980 | to feel better, why don't we celebrate that?

00:55:06.900 | Instead, we denigrate people for that.

00:55:10.580 | I mean, if I feel better, I'm more likely to treat you well.

00:55:15.460 | - I gotta say, still though, you're going against the grain,

00:55:21.620 | and you're at Columbia.

00:55:23.800 | It takes a lot of guts to sort of speak out

00:55:28.060 | about these ideas so boldly.

00:55:30.320 | I don't know how to ask this question.

00:55:33.860 | Where do you find the guts?

00:55:35.420 | 'Cause it's also perhaps inspirational to others

00:55:40.980 | in different disciplines that are sort of taking

00:55:43.260 | on the conventional wisdom of the day and challenging it.

00:55:47.420 | What does it take to do that?

00:55:48.580 | What advice would you give to others

00:55:50.420 | like you, kind of a little bit afraid to do so?

00:55:54.260 | - Once you know, you cannot not know, as they say.

00:55:57.900 | And so I have to look in the mirror.

00:55:59.620 | And then looking in the mirror, I have to face myself.

00:56:03.340 | Have I lived honestly?

00:56:05.500 | And if I can't face myself, then what am I doing here?

00:56:10.500 | That's how I see it.

00:56:16.100 | One of the things that people don't really talk about

00:56:19.060 | with drugs and people who die from drug-related death,

00:56:24.780 | and I've been thinking about this a whole lot

00:56:28.300 | over the past couple of years,

00:56:29.820 | it's like some of these drugs can take you to a place

00:56:34.220 | where you feel so optimistic and positive about humans,

00:56:38.620 | our fellow humans, and you want to do your best

00:56:42.860 | to contribute because you know the possibilities

00:56:46.980 | of what we can be as a society.

00:56:49.380 | And then you come up with resistance

00:56:53.820 | and like you say, there's a lot of resistance

00:56:56.740 | and people just have a hard time.

00:56:59.220 | And so if you know humans can be better

00:57:04.220 | and they refuse to be better,

00:57:06.220 | why be here as someone who knows

00:57:10.420 | that we can do this better?

00:57:12.700 | I certainly don't want to do it the way we're doing it.

00:57:16.140 | - So you kind of see drugs as mechanisms

00:57:20.260 | for potentially elevating the human spirit,

00:57:22.340 | sort of making people feel better

00:57:25.060 | so you want to communicate that message.

00:57:27.620 | So it's that plus the fact that drugs are used as scapegoat

00:57:32.620 | to not alleviate the suffering of certain communities.

00:57:37.180 | So those two things-

00:57:38.580 | - One of the sort of main points of the book too

00:57:42.100 | was to try and get people to understand

00:57:44.220 | possibilities that we could have

00:57:48.620 | if we embraced certain drug use,

00:57:53.100 | if we allowed adults to do this sort of thing.

00:57:57.340 | Relationships can be better,

00:58:00.260 | wide range of beneficial effects.

00:58:04.780 | People would be or can learn to be more magnanimous.

00:58:09.580 | All of these pro-social things that we say we value.

00:58:13.900 | - In your previous book, "High Price,"

00:58:17.100 | you talk about rap and DJing, chapter five.

00:58:20.420 | There's a nice picture of you DJing from 1983.

00:58:25.540 | So let me ask, who in your view,

00:58:28.580 | this is the toughest question of this interview,

00:58:30.980 | is the greatest hip hop artist of all time?

00:58:33.020 | Maybe give some candidates.

00:58:34.380 | - Oh, wow, who is the greatest hip hop artist?

00:58:36.900 | I don't know if I'm qualified to make that bet

00:58:40.300 | because you know,

00:58:45.140 | I have to go back to like Gil Scott Heron.

00:58:47.660 | You know, like people think of him

00:58:49.700 | as one of the fathers of hip hop.

00:58:51.660 | That's my all time favorite.

00:58:54.940 | And people like Chuck D from Public Enemy,

00:58:58.780 | some of the things that they were doing,

00:59:00.540 | I was really digging,

00:59:01.980 | but even though I was digging like Public Enemy,

00:59:06.420 | but even they got it wrong on drugs.

00:59:08.980 | Even Gil Scott Heron got it wrong on drugs,

00:59:12.260 | but they were doing so much other good stuff.

00:59:16.380 | It helped me to develop as a person.

00:59:19.860 | And so I think like my son is a hip hop artist now.

00:59:25.820 | I think those folks who are in the game now,

00:59:31.900 | they might be, they are a lot more qualified

00:59:34.540 | to talk about who's the greatest hip hop artist.

00:59:37.500 | I'm not qualified.

00:59:38.860 | - The evolution, I mean, have you tracked the evolution

00:59:41.300 | from sort of the nineties with Wu Tang and Tupac and Biggie

00:59:45.860 | and then to what we have today?

00:59:48.180 | So there's just been a crazy amount of progress.

00:59:50.820 | That's like almost difficult to track.

00:59:52.780 | - Yeah, I mean, I really love what they're doing.

00:59:55.500 | I like what they, except the part where they get over 40

00:59:59.300 | and they become fucking cops on TV.

01:00:01.580 | I mean, other than that, I dig what's that about.

01:00:04.420 | Yeah, I don't understand that, you know,

01:00:07.100 | but that's what they do.

01:00:08.020 | Again, this sort of glorification of cops,

01:00:13.020 | that's dangerous for a society.

01:00:16.380 | And those cats who do that kind of thing,

01:00:18.980 | you know, I have a problem with that.

01:00:21.100 | - Is it all sort of to push back a little bit

01:00:23.580 | because I come from the Soviet Union

01:00:25.140 | where there's a huge amount of corruption.

01:00:26.860 | And when I see what's going on with cops in this country,

01:00:30.620 | there's a lot of proper criticism you can apply,

01:00:32.860 | but like relative to other places,

01:00:36.500 | well, in so many ways, this country is incredible.

01:00:40.540 | Is your criticism towards cops

01:00:44.060 | or towards what cops are asked to do?

01:00:46.340 | - Yeah, towards what cops are asked to do.

01:00:49.580 | Cops provide the shield for politician and those in power.

01:00:54.580 | Absolutely, because I was in the military.

01:00:57.420 | I spent four years in the military

01:00:59.100 | and I did what I was told to do.

01:01:01.220 | And I was ignorant and thought I was doing the right thing

01:01:06.220 | and I did what I was told to do.

01:01:08.580 | And so just like these guys are doing

01:01:10.540 | what they're told to do.

01:01:12.020 | But no, my real beef is with the power structure,

01:01:15.500 | the folks who are telling them what to do.

01:01:17.980 | And also the folks who go play cops on television.

01:01:22.980 | That imagery, that sort of glorifying cops,

01:01:29.660 | that's a problem in a democracy.

01:01:32.220 | - Yeah, all sides of the glorification

01:01:34.380 | of the drug war is a problem.

01:01:36.740 | - Yeah.

01:01:37.560 | - If I can just linger on a little longer

01:01:41.860 | in terms of the effects of drugs

01:01:44.020 | on the positive mind expanding components of it,

01:01:48.220 | what have mind altering drugs teach you

01:01:53.780 | about the human mind?

01:01:55.220 | Sort of from a neuroscience, not even like a biochemical,

01:01:59.900 | but just like the human mind is amazing, right?

01:02:02.940 | The places it can go.

01:02:04.360 | Like, are there some insights you've learned

01:02:08.980 | from studying drugs about the mind?

01:02:11.180 | - Yeah, can I start from a neurochemical perspective first

01:02:14.940 | and then we'll go larger?

01:02:16.660 | Just from a neurochemical perspective.

01:02:19.240 | I mean, everything I know about the brain,

01:02:22.420 | I learned through drugs.

01:02:24.220 | Because of my interest in drugs.

01:02:25.700 | So I learned a lot about dopamine neurons

01:02:28.180 | in certain regions of the brain,

01:02:29.860 | about neuro endorphin neurons

01:02:31.420 | and a wide range of other sort of

01:02:34.300 | how our neural transmission happened because of drugs.

01:02:37.060 | And so that's a really valuable tool lessons for me.

01:02:41.700 | But then when we think that we move out a bit

01:02:45.060 | and we think more globally,

01:02:46.280 | what have I learned in terms of the mind from drugs?

01:02:52.620 | I have really learned how to be more forgiving of people

01:02:57.620 | and of myself and tolerant, more tolerant of people.

01:03:04.740 | And certainly learned a lot more about empathy

01:03:10.620 | as a result of drug use.

01:03:13.780 | And like I said earlier,

01:03:18.860 | I'm learning what we can be as a species

01:03:23.140 | and it's quite incredible.

01:03:24.920 | But because of drugs.

01:03:27.460 | - Yeah, there's a certain property of drugs

01:03:29.060 | in different ways.

01:03:29.900 | They take you out of your body.

01:03:31.340 | They help you evaluate yourself

01:03:34.500 | from a third person perspective.

01:03:36.580 | It's almost like you have a consciousness in here

01:03:38.500 | and you get to step outside of it a little bit.

01:03:40.980 | I mean, that's kind of what meditation does too.

01:03:42.940 | All of these processes,

01:03:44.500 | that's a hell of a good workout does too.

01:03:47.260 | It makes you evaluate yourself

01:03:49.180 | and then somehow that allows you to be forgiving to yourself

01:03:54.180 | and forgiving to others.

01:03:56.700 | So empathize, it trains that part of your brain.

01:03:59.660 | So stepping outside of yourself,

01:04:01.180 | not taking yourself too seriously, that process.

01:04:03.740 | And different drugs do that in different ways.

01:04:06.260 | Obviously, I don't know from personal experience

01:04:07.900 | on some of them, but I'm now curious.

01:04:14.660 | It's unfortunate that the Hollywood

01:04:17.860 | and different stories we have demonize certain drugs

01:04:22.260 | and sort of basically, I don't know,

01:04:24.180 | make it difficult for people like me to explore those ideas.

01:04:26.500 | But then I'm really thankful for people like you

01:04:29.180 | who are pushing the science forward

01:04:30.620 | and are unafraid to talk about this kind of stuff.

01:04:33.120 | 'Cause I'm really fascinated with consciousness

01:04:36.820 | on the engineering side.

01:04:38.140 | I really want to build robots

01:04:40.220 | that have elements of intelligence, emotion,

01:04:43.940 | even consciousness.

01:04:45.020 | And for that, we need to understand it in ourselves.

01:04:47.620 | And drugs is, all the different kinds of drugs,

01:04:51.080 | if used safely, seems like an incredible tool

01:04:53.900 | to understand ourselves.

01:04:55.580 | And if we're limiting ourselves from certain drugs

01:04:58.080 | because of certain political games that are being played,

01:05:01.580 | it's sad.

01:05:03.180 | - And people know this,

01:05:05.100 | a lot of middle to upper class people know this.

01:05:08.380 | The illicit drug trade business

01:05:10.660 | is a multimillion dollar industry,

01:05:12.900 | multi-billion dollar industry

01:05:15.180 | that could not be supported by people who are poor.

01:05:19.220 | And that has to be supported by a lot of customers.

01:05:23.940 | And a lot of people around the world know this.

01:05:27.780 | They're in the closet.

01:05:29.100 | And in the book, I call for them to get out of the closet

01:05:32.820 | so we can start being more honest

01:05:35.420 | and we can take the pressure off of those people

01:05:38.580 | who are not as privileged.

01:05:40.860 | Like I said, you're brave, you're bold.

01:05:43.860 | I gotta ask you for some advice.

01:05:45.700 | What advice would you give to a young person today?

01:05:48.220 | High school, maybe undergrad, college,

01:05:52.180 | thinking about their career,

01:05:54.460 | thinking about how to live a life they can be proud of.

01:05:57.740 | - Yeah, whatever career they choose,

01:06:00.340 | just make sure that they dedicate themselves to it

01:06:03.740 | and be the best at what they do first.

01:06:06.540 | That's what you have to do first.

01:06:08.860 | Like people see me advocating for this position.

01:06:13.380 | 30 years of science is in these opinion, this view.

01:06:18.380 | And trust me, I would be dismissed if I didn't know my shit,

01:06:22.940 | if I was not.

01:06:24.180 | - Yeah, you did the work, you proved yourself.

01:06:26.340 | You're legit by the people,

01:06:29.660 | in the eyes of the people who know.

01:06:31.220 | - Absolutely.

01:06:32.060 | So that's the main thing that I would encourage people to do.

01:06:35.020 | Really know your craft.

01:06:36.620 | If you know your craft,

01:06:38.780 | and then maybe you will be a service to your fellow citizens.

01:06:43.780 | There are so many people out here faking the funk

01:06:48.380 | and they don't know their craft.

01:06:50.500 | And they're not a service to the people

01:06:53.060 | that they claim to serve.

01:06:54.700 | And that's a problem.

01:06:55.940 | And when you have a fair number of people like that

01:07:00.020 | in positions of power, your society is going to crumble.

01:07:04.860 | - What about the scientific path?

01:07:06.940 | You recommend people get a PhD?

01:07:08.740 | - Not necessarily.

01:07:10.940 | You know, like my own children, I don't recommend that.

01:07:14.500 | So science can, certainly my science

01:07:19.300 | can be a bit very petty sort of space to be in.

01:07:22.460 | But it was the only sort of path that I had.

01:07:26.740 | And so I had to do it.

01:07:29.060 | But no, I would really encourage people

01:07:34.620 | to just do something that they enjoy

01:07:38.180 | and something that makes them happy.

01:07:40.540 | Because the greater number of happy people in our society,

01:07:45.540 | the better off we all are.

01:07:47.940 | - All right, since you mentioned happiness,

01:07:51.060 | got to ask you about the pursuit of happiness

01:07:53.420 | and the ridiculous question about meaning.

01:07:57.220 | Do you think this life has meaning?

01:07:59.300 | What do you think is the meaning of life?

01:08:01.300 | I'm sorry.

01:08:03.060 | - I certainly hope it has meaning.

01:08:04.620 | I mean, I'm certainly trying to live my life

01:08:07.420 | like it has meaning.

01:08:08.460 | You know, I really love my life now.

01:08:12.260 | I just got back from Geneva.

01:08:14.740 | I spent the summer abroad in Europe

01:08:17.860 | and trying to be in a more civilized place

01:08:20.620 | where you can enjoy yourself as a responsible adult.

01:08:25.340 | And then it allowed me to decompress

01:08:27.620 | and then come back here.

01:08:28.860 | The thing about coming back here

01:08:31.340 | is that you have to be ready to fight.

01:08:33.260 | And I don't want to fight anymore.

01:08:35.180 | You know, I just want to be able to help a society and people

01:08:40.180 | and so I'll have to keep a place in Europe

01:08:43.060 | to go and decompress and then come back

01:08:46.420 | to be able to tolerate the situation.

01:08:48.260 | So life for me has a lot of meaning.

01:08:51.500 | I'm enjoying life.

01:08:53.540 | This is like the greatest, the best part of my life ever

01:08:58.540 | right now at this moment.

01:09:00.220 | - So it's the joy,

01:09:02.020 | but you also enjoy the fight a little bit or?

01:09:04.020 | - No, I don't really, I'm tired of that.

01:09:06.140 | You know, it's like, why?

01:09:08.700 | You're trying to, I'm trying to help people

01:09:13.540 | to see how they can be happy.

01:09:17.020 | And then people are fighting me on that.

01:09:19.380 | I don't want to be happy.

01:09:20.220 | I want to be ignorant.

01:09:21.180 | Leave me alone.

01:09:22.060 | That's what people are saying.

01:09:24.180 | - Well, so what is the source of joy for you

01:09:25.860 | when you decompress?

01:09:27.460 | - MDMA is a source.

01:09:29.980 | You know, and a place where you don't have to worry

01:09:33.580 | about loss, that's like Europe.

01:09:35.900 | - You can feel really free.

01:09:37.580 | - Yeah.

01:09:38.460 | Heroin can even be a nice space if I'm in my own head,

01:09:43.460 | but with others, MDMA is great.

01:09:46.680 | So good friends, good food.

01:09:51.980 | - The usual.

01:09:53.700 | - Yeah, yeah.

01:09:55.180 | - Family, love.

01:09:56.220 | - Yeah, that's right.

01:09:57.820 | - Carl, you're an incredible human being.

01:09:59.620 | You really make me think everyone who listens to this,

01:10:02.320 | you're, I mean, I'm really glad you exist.

01:10:07.340 | I know you say you don't like the fight,

01:10:08.820 | but I'm really glad you're fighting the fight

01:10:10.420 | 'cause it's gonna help a lot of people.

01:10:11.940 | It's gonna help at the very least,

01:10:13.740 | help a lot of people think

01:10:16.920 | and challenge the conventions of the day

01:10:19.460 | and maybe challenge them to find joy.

01:10:22.060 | I really appreciate you spending your valuable time with me.

01:10:24.740 | This was an awesome conversation.

01:10:26.180 | Thank you so much for talking to me.

01:10:27.220 | - Thank you for having me, man.

01:10:29.540 | - Thanks for listening to this conversation with Carl Hart.

01:10:32.860 | To support this podcast,

01:10:34.100 | please check out our sponsors in the description.

01:10:36.860 | And now let me leave you with some words from Frank Zappa.

01:10:40.300 | A drug is not bad.

01:10:41.860 | A drug is a chemical compound.

01:10:44.220 | The problem comes in when people who take drugs

01:10:47.460 | treat them like a license to behave like an asshole.

01:10:50.240 | Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.

01:10:54.340 | (upbeat music)

01:10:56.920 | (upbeat music)

01:10:59.500 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Carl Hart: Heroin, Cocaine, MDMA, Alcohol & the Role of Drugs in Society | Lex Fridman Podcast #233

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