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Hi, I'm Ethan Adelman. And this is psychoactive a production of iHeartRadio and protozoa pictures. Psychoactive is the show where we talk about all things drugs. But any views expressed here do not represent those of iheartmedia protozoa pictures, or their Executives and employees indeed. As an inveterate contrarian. I can tell you they may not even represent my own.
And nothing contained in this show should be used as medical advice or encouragement to use any type of
drug.
Hello psycho active listeners. Today's guest is Hamilton Morris. He's a journalist documentary maker, a scientific researcher and explore. He's not even 35 years old as yet, but he's made quite a name for himself and had quite an impact most especially with his TV series.
Cold Hamilton's, pharmacopoeia which started off as a series of columns for vice magazine and then became something for Vice HBO TV. And I have to tell you, I've been binging on his episodes of lasers, a total of 20 of them and it I just can't recommend it highly enough. So I Hamilton. Thanks so much for for joining me today. Thank you for having me. So, I mean, I have to tell you on one level. I feel like something that you and I are in some respects, kindred spirits, and
In one respect, major respect different, and that you're really coming on in part from a love of chemistry. Whereas for me, that's always been the kind of part of the whole drug piece that never quite engaged me, but I say kindred spirit in the sense of being interested in the broad spectrum of psychoactive drugs and of their impact and impact of you sound culture and society and, and on prohibition, but I want to ask you right now virtually all of your
Life. Right? Has been devoted to studying this communicating about this teaching people about this. What was it? You think that grabbed you? Well, I would
actually say that, you know, I was always very interested in the power of psychoactive drugs, even dating back to being in kindergarten. I can remember watching the news and hearing reports of people overdosing on drugs and finding the idea of it. Just the very idea that drugs could kill somebody. Totally
Mating as a young child and I would tell other children on the playground about it. Saying your did you know that if you mix alcohol and sleeping pills, it can be fatal can kill you and this wasn't you know, something scary to me. It was something amazing. The idea that a combination of two substances could cause death, you know sort of in the same way that a child might find a karate move that's like the touch of death fascinating and there was a certain magic to it all that.
I always found really, really interesting. You know, I read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas as a young child and kind of like the storytelling and artistic elements of people describing their psychedelic experiences, but I would say, the real formative moment was reading an article in the New York Times magazine when I was in high school, about Alexander, shulgin and thinking. Well, this is just about the most
In human being. I've ever heard of this is, I couldn't think of a fictional character is interesting. Is this person? And I, as soon as I read about him, I was obsessed, and I read P call and T call. And that was my entry into, I think a deeper understanding of the chemistry and the richness of this world.
I mean, so Hamilton, you're a teenager. When you read that article about Sasha shulgin, where you already using psychedelic drugs at that point or anything else?
No,
No, my father had a psychiatrist named Doris Millman who had published a number of medical articles on the dangers of LSD specifically in the context of children using LSD. And he had this idea that psychedelics and LSD in particular were very dangerous. And he's a rational permissive person who doesn't ask me, not to do unreasonable things, and he said, don't take LSD. It's just not safe. Don't
Take it, you know, there's mental illness in our family. It's simply not a good idea. That's something you absolutely must avoid and I thought, all right, fair enough. So I had this idea that LSD and classical serotonergic psychedelics were, especially risky, but I was fascinated with Salvia when I was in high school. Probably. My first real work with chemistry was extracting and purifying Salvador and a from Salvia divinorum leaves. And so I had used that, but I'd never
Used a classical serotonergic psychedelic like psilocybin containing mushrooms or LSD at the time that I found out about Alexander shulgin.
I'm aware. There are other potential issues competing with drugs. Psychoactive drugs and chemistry for your attention, or excitement back then, or was it just a clear straight shot from there up to now?
No, not really. I mean, I think I had this sort of typical high school interest and alcohol and
That kind of thing, you know cannabis but it wasn't really a huge part of my life. I found it interesting. Very very interesting but I wasn't somebody that jumped in head. First as a high school student. I was neurotic and cautious and although I did, you know, smoke occasionally or drink occasionally. It wasn't a huge part of my life. It wasn't until I was in college and the grey market research chemical industry made it possible to
You order all of these chemicals that I was able to, really actually use a lot of the psychedelics at Alexander, shulgin described which, of course, creates an even deeper appreciation for his work. It's one thing to read the P column entry for to ct7. And another thing entirely to actually try to ct7 and realize. Wow. This is such a fascinating chemical that this man created in his backyard in, California.
And no, I mean it's interesting. You think I first met Sasha, it was 1990 and I was teaching at Princeton and I got in a significant Grant to create a Princeton working group on the future of drug use and alternatives to drug prohibition. And Andy wild suggested that I reach out to Sasha shulgin who I didn't know. And he said he'd basement, keeping a very low profile. But then in 1986 Congress had passed the federal Controlled Substances Act that effectively
A lot of the work that Sasha was doing in his back like backyard lab. And so he and I became friendly when I would go out to the Bay Area. I would go over to his home and visit him in his wife and where I was on shulgin road and Lafayette, California. I mean, he really was a truly extraordinary extraordinary figure, you know, you know, I watched, I guess one of the first documentaries you must have done, was your visit to, to see Sasha and an when you're just in your early 20s and sort of
A reverence for him just just came through you know in
that. Oh, yeah. No, I mean I'm a huge. I even would go so far. As to say, I became a journalist as a reason to talk to Alexander. Shulgin, you know, that was that was probably one of the motivators was, you know, why would he talk to me? Well, maybe talk to me. If I were writing an article about him or, you know, maybe then that would be some incentive and that was
Is one of the main things that interested me about journalism at the beginning was that it was a license to be curious about things that otherwise you would have no legitimate reason to ask questions about why would somebody talk to an annoying college student about their work? They have better things to do there busy, but if he's working for a magazine and he's writing an article or making a short documentary. Well, maybe they'll give them a couple hours. So that was
One of my, by early things that I wanted to do is just spend time with Alexander shulgin, and his family was very kind to me. They would invite me to their home on the fourth of July each year. And I did have the opportunity to spend a good amount of time with him at the end of his life and their memories, that I will always cherish.
Hmm, whether other key people you met at Sasha's Place who became important in your life
thereafter.
Well, certainly, I mean it, of course, attracted a very interesting group of people and it ranged from clandestine chemists to Scientific researchers, many of whom are still part of the world of psychedelic research. Today. Of course, there was Paul Daley who is sort of shogun's, protege and worked with him in the lab at the end of his life, after he had pretty much gone blind and Paul Daley.
Is still working in shogun's lab and now is the head of the shulgin research institute, which is a sort of pharmaceutical company aimed at continuing Alexander, shulgin, 's research. So I, you know, remained in touch with him and, and shulgin, and Tanya Manning and all these great wonderful people that were part of Team, shulgin. It was called and of course. And yeah, I mean and is, you know, in a very amazing and influential and
Inspiring person as well.
Yeah, I mean really exert of founder of MDMA, Psychotherapy. In many respects. I remember was an unusually create that working group at Princeton Sasha, was the only one I hadn't thought to invite Ann. And Sasha said, well, wherever I go, she goes over, she goes, I go. So she's going to be part of the group as well. So they really were this sort of dynamic duo, you know, putting in bringing their perspective to thinking about the future of drug use. Well, let me ask you to one of the things that comes through when I'm watching and binging your episodes is
Is your reverence for some of the, you know, the the underground chemists, you know, I had Leonard Picard on the show a while back and he talked about the the Brotherhood of underground chemists. And and what I could come through out of you as well, is really almost a reverence for for who these people were and what they were doing. And some of them are obviously people who are well knowing, you know, there's Dave Nichols who was at Purdue and leading person operating with a government license. Producing me these chemicals doing the research, but you also look at
People who were on the Underground and maybe and so I remember three of the names that popped up is, I was watching one was Ken Nelson. Another was Steve Gil. Another was Darryl Le maire. Can you just tell the audience a little bit about these three guys and maybe reflect on what they shared in common?
Yes. Yeah. I think that, you know, there are very, very small number of underground chemists who become public figures and those are people like owsley Stanley or Nick's and
And they represent a miniscule minority of the people that have actually built this world of psychedelics, because a sort of unspoken fact, of all of this, is that, when you go to, you know, a psychedelic conference, or you read an article about psychedelics, the chances, are every single person that is there and interested in psychedelics has used them. Illegally, and the Psychedelic said they have used have been produced by somebody who risked their freedom to make them.
But those people get no credit for the work that they've done and their names are typically completely unknown. So one of the things that I wanted to do in my work was find the people that made these substances, the people who weren't known and talk to them about what their motivations were. And I have had the pleasure of spending time with an enormous number of different types of underground.
Around the world. And I think that their stories are utterly fascinating and are really foundational to the world of psychoactive drugs. It's probably the biggest part of this history that has never been told. And so I tried to do my part to tell a few of these stories that really explain the origin of these substances because you talk about something like PCP. And, you know, if you look at a typical historical gloss of the history of PCP, they'll say oh was developed by upjohn.
Articles in Detroit, and it was used as an anesthetic, but then it escaped onto the street. Well, wait, a second. How did that happen? How did it Escape onto the street? Who is the person that made PCP? What was their motivation? Why were they doing it? Who did they sell it to? What did they think it was? What effect did they think it would have on society? And so, I wanted to answer a few of those sorts of questions. Everyone's talking about bufo, alvarius. Venom will wear it. Did this come from? I remember,
Gopalan, making a sort of offhand joke about it on Joe Rogan. Like, how the heck, did anyone think of that smoking toad Venom. What kind of crazy person would do that? And on one hand. It's a joke, but on the other hand, it's a serious question. What kind of person would do that? Who is that person? What was their name? Why did they do it? So I set out to find the first person who had smoked bufo, alvarius Venom and learn about their story and it was actually an immensely difficult investigative task.
Task that required years of work, but I was able to track down this person. His name was Ken Nelson. I interviewed him on his literal deathbed. He died just about two weeks.
After the interview and the story is totally fascinating. So the same is also true of somebody like Steve Gil. This is a name that is not widely known. He's a close friend of mine. I talked to him to this day and this is somebody who is responsible for what are likely hundreds of thousands of MDMA experiences. These are probably in many instances transformative experiences that people had yet the name and the origin of that chemical is
Is not known to those people,
you know, I'm with Steve, Gill portion of one of your shows. I mean, that's a guy who was producing MDMA illegally for decades and then gets busted. And, I mean, you have this very powerful moment in there, you know, about he's goes to prison, the tragedy of seeing somebody who's been creating, you know, so much good. I mean, benefit in the world just being sort of destroyed by that and not able to not only not destroy but really destroyed for a while and and struggling to come back.
And that on, whereas somebody like Ken Nelson, right? I mean his was not, I guess so much concern about the criminality of it. I mean, in this case, with fondant 5 m, EO, D Mt. The toad medicine, you know, of times people think about these things like peyote or or, you know, whether your goals we think about cocoa or opium, or it could be thinking about it on Ayahuasca with sometimes, with these things, go back to use goes back, hundreds or thousands of years. But with the toad medicine, can Elsa, sort of figured out that thing about the toes
Gland, it was not illegal. Right? I mean, just tell us a little bit of that story right there.
Yeah. I mean, it's a very convoluted story that has multiple threads, the history of 5. Mm. Yo, DMT has an indigenous thread where there is a history, dating back, thousands of years of people using various traditional snuff preparations from plants that contain small quantities, of 5, m, EO, D Mt. So you could start their thousands of years ago.
But the experience of using these plants that have complex, mixtures of tryptamines is not comparable to the experience of smoking bufo, alvarius Venom, which is for all intents and purposes just five Meo DMT. Yes, there are lots of other things in it chemically. But in terms of what is responsible for the psychopharmacological effect of the smoked Venom, it is a 5 m, EO, D Mt. Mediated effect, based on everything that is currently known and so Ken Nelson.
Ian had been reading a news report about an anthropologist named Jeanette run Quest, who had excavated a Cherokee midden pile, that contains thousands of toad bones, and the hypothetical purpose of these toad bones was that they were part of a drug ritual as it turned out, this Anthropologist had made a mistake. It was far more likely based on contemporary anthropological analysis. That these toes were a food source, not a drug and
There's even evidence that the same group would consume toads as a food source, and on top of that bufo, alvarius didn't exist, anywhere close to the location of these, thousands of toad bones and was a different species. So it doesn't really line up. But what's interesting is he was inspired by this idea, even though it was incorrectly thought. Okay, there's an ancient history of this ancient history that likely did not exist and I'm going to go and I'm going to try to do that thing that other people were doing in the past.
So he thought he was recapitulating a tradition. When in fact, he was creating something completely new and he read an article by Vittorio or spammer who's famous, for having discovered serotonin, who is obsessed with the chemistry of various frog, secretions, and Toad Venom's and things of that nature. And he had found that the Venom of bufo alvarius contained five Meo DMT and he thought. Alright. Well, that's that's a good candidate right there. Let me locate this toad. I'll do what the people were doing in the past.
And I will Express the Venom and smoke it. And have this Transcendent experience, but he was actually based on all known history. The first person to have done anything like
this.
Hmm. Why did he think he remained kept himself Anonymous? Still more or less? You figured out who he
was? Because there is a tremendous amount of fear. I mean, people are still afraid as they should be the consequences for ending up on the wrong side of the story can be nothing less than the complete destruction of your life. And for many people, that was a risk. They did not want to take, especially in the 1980s. I mean, like I said, it's still scary.
Right now, but in the 80s, all of this stuff that we take for granted all of this reform in this sense of progress. I don't think existed. I mean I wasn't alive at that time, but that is certainly my impression that it was a darker and more frightening time. And even though it was technically legal. It's the case that people will find out a way to get you in trouble for these things, if they really want to, which was another aspect of my more recent bufo alvarius.
Documentary from the third season of my show. The man Bob Sheppard who was merely keeping the Toads as pets and was arrested for it and lost everything, lost his job, lost all of his money in the legal battle. He ended up homeless as a result of Simply keeping these toads as pets at a time. When 5 m e0 DMT was not a controlled substance in the United States. They initially charged him with possession of bufotenin, but then when the forensic chemist who is tasked, with
Lysing the Venom to find bufotenin it to charge him. Did the analysis is name was ready. Shawn makura. He didn't find any bufotenin at all. He only found 5 m, EO D Mt. So they couldn't charge him and they was all dropped by then. It was too late. The reputational damage had been done and there was no coming back.
I'm just thinking, you know, one of the things you do in your episodes, his you sometimes interview the cops including the cops who are busting these people. But the one I most liked is you interviewed a DEA chemist and then you
To this beautiful scene where your juxtaposing the DEA chemist, talking about his research with, I think Steve Gil. The MDMA producer thing was him and you're basically showing the parallels between the two of them. I mean the same the same joy in the beauty of chemistry and the fascination with these psychedelics, but then, of course, you know, one of them has never tried any of them. The DEA guy, right? It's all about the chemistry and the science, but you didn't press him. Quite as hard about how, this was a guy who,
Looked up to Sasha's Shogun, but then when Sasha is gets raided by the DEA, you know, he just kind of expresses a mild regret. What was your own personal feeling when you're interacting with him on that?
My feeling is that they have a very black-and-white, non moralistic view of things. There is a law, you break the law, you suffer the consequences. That's the way it goes. And I think
He also still values, you know, he was in the military. He values, the work of the DEA. He doesn't like to criticize the DEA. He still speaks it forensic conferences. I happen to really like Terry Doyle Cass and he's a brilliant scientist. That's deac researcher. Yes, that's the DEA researcher. And it just happens to be the case that he is. So interested in exactly the same thing in.
Totally different way. I mean, I think that's one of the most puzzling things about forensic, chemists and narcotics officers is you have people who are obsessed with drugs, who have all of the passion for drugs of a drug user, but they think about them in an entirely different way than the drug user. And I think it's really important to talk to people like that to try to figure out the psychology of where they're coming from because of course, I agree with you. If you were friends with Alexander shulgin, if you admired Alexander shulgin, as a scientist, how could you think?
Think that there is anything okay about arresting that brilliant man for doing nothing wrong. But this is one of the complexities of this world. People have very different interpretations of the same phenomenon, and he happened to work for the government and work in law enforcement, and that was how he interpreted it and if he felt differently, maybe he suppress those emotions because it's not an emotion that he could
express and do you think, did Sasha she'll get ever have any qualms of his own?
About. I mean, he had a schedule and license I guess for quite a while. It did you think he ever had his own qualms about his interactions with the DEA
researchers? I think probably he did at the end, especially I mean, I think one of the things that made shall again so powerful. And so important was that he wasn't just a chemist. He was so much more than that and he was somebody that brought people together. He didn't take sides, he would talk to you. If you were a cop, he would
Talk to you, if you work for the DEA, he would talk to you. If you were a clandestine chemist, he would talk to you. If you were a student, he would talk to you. If you didn't know anything about chemistry. He loved to teach people and to include people in his world. And that was what made him powerful is that he wasn't judgmental. Ideologue who felt the need to wag his finger at everyone. That disagreed with him. He was curious about the world. He wanted to learn why people were the way they were and try to bring people together.
Through knowledge and understanding. I mean, you know, he wrote an entire book for law enforcement. It was actually his first book. So he wanted to share what he knew and I think maybe a lot of it came from the perhaps slightly naive hope that through the dissemination of information things would get better. If people understood what he understood things would improve. And I don't think long term that was naive at all short-term. It was complicated and I think toward the end of his career after the passage of the federal analog Act.
And the controlling of MDMA and of course, his own legal struggles after the publication of P call. I think that his opinion of these things probably change slightly as they would have to. I mean, given the sort of harassment that he endured. But I still think that his General message and his General effort to make information available to everyone and to be as inclusive as possible to people who had different perspectives on
The subject that he valued so much was the right way to do things.
Yeah, I remember, you know, Hamilton him thinking about Peak. Alright, which for our listeners stands for p calls, an acronym for finishing liens. I have known and loved half of which is a semi-autobiographical love story about him and his wife Anne and his friends and their use of these substances that he's creating. And the other half is the recipes for I think dozens or hundreds of these substances.
But I remember and I think it won't Point saying that he almost saw this as creating the recipe book for the sort of what might be the dark ages of the pharmacological Dark Ages. That might be lying ahead. I think when he got in a more sorrowful or depressed, mood about where things were heading. I mean, obviously things have turned around very differently and impact his influence has been enormous. But um, I also can see why he is for you, not just to Hero, but I guess a role model. I mean it seems to me in the way you present.
Within the documentaries you've done and in the way you present yourself. It says same basic idea of wanting to talk to anybody that right.
Yes. Absolutely. And I think that, you know, part of his motivation and Publishing that was he was very terrified by the destruction of Wilhelm reich's research by the FDA in the 1940s. Because in the case of Wilhelm Reich, of course, it turned out that what he was doing was by all standards.
Pseudoscience and the FDA said, okay. This is medically dangerous. We have to destroy this because it represents a threat to Public Health, but his feeling was well, couldn't somebody say exactly the same thing about the work that I'm doing, couldn't they say, you know, this is dangerous pseudoscience. These aren't therapeutic medicines. These aren't psychotherapeutic adjuncts. These are drugs and they're dangerous and they killed somebody. So we've got to, we've got to get rid of this stuff. It represents a threat to Public Health and he was afraid.
That like Wilhelm Reich, his research could be destroyed. If the government decided that it was dangerous and part of the motivation for the publication of P call was to ensure that that could never be done. That his work couldn't be destroyed. I think that also motivated the digitization of his research, which was freely available on Erowid and remains freely available in Arrow, at least in terms of the chemistry. Why did he do that? Because he wanted it to be available to as many people as possible. He wanted to ensure that there was no way that
Could be destroyed, just
explain for a moment, our audience about Wilhelm reich's research. What was that?
About? You know, I'm not an expert on Wilhelm Reich, but my understanding is that he was producing these things called or going accumulators which would treat a variety of different disorders, ranging, from cancer to frigidity, and you'd get into this box, and these things became quite popular with celebrities like William S Burroughs, you know, later William Steig as well. And you get into this box that I think
Just like a little Shack with coils on the top of it. And the idea is that it would accumulate this imaginary substance called the organ. That would cure all diseases. So, this was in fact, pseudoscience and one could make a legitimate argument that the dissemination of this information was dangerous because of course, the selling faulty, cancer, cures or selling faulty treatments to desperate people is a perennial way, not only to make money, but to hurt people. So if you're running the FDA,
Um, their perspective, it makes sense. This is dangerous. We've got to destroy this. But the whole problem with, you know, whether you're talking about the history of eugenics or genocide or psychosurgery. The problem is whenever we think we've figured out what the bad thing is and what we have to destroy. We often make a mistake and sometimes the bad thing that we're destroying, actually, isn't bad at all. And so I think shulgin was right to have that concern, you know, I think we can all imagine.
Given the Caprices of world governments, how things can potentially go. I mean, they went pretty badly in this country for a long time. And, you know, they're still not doing all that great, but they're getting better. And given the Reagan Administration given all of these very restrictive laws that have been passed in the federal analog act for those that aren't familiar with. It was a very frightening development in the history of drug policy because in the past, there was something closer to what
It exists in many other countries, where you have drugs that are legal that are uncontrolled and you have drugs that are illegal. They are controlled substances. What the federal analog act said was. Well, if you're selling a drug, that's substantially similar to a controlled substance that is in schedule 1 or schedule to. Then that's also a controlled substance, but the problem is substantially similar was never defined in a chemically meaningful met way. And so,
Functional outcome, is that it put an enormous number of compounds into a gray area is 5 m, e0 DMT and analog of DMT. Well, apparently not because they felt the need to schedule. 5 m EO D, Mt. Separately from DMT, but I don't think anyone could meaningfully answer that question because the word analog isn't meaningful in any precise chemical sense. And so shulgin correctly recognized that this
Is an enormous threat. This could render vast swathes of his research illegal without a single law being passed other than the federal analog act.
You know, there's another person you described early on is one of your Heroes and it's this sort of not a chemist. I don't think and sort of complimentary to Sasha and that was way Davis say why?
Oh, I mean, I think Wade Davis is, you know, he's a great Storyteller. First of all, you know, and I think that
That he was able to bring the magic of a lot of these different cultures into the lives of people, who would never have the opportunity to visit them, going to Haiti and seeing the work that is done in the voodoo religion, in the power of that belief system or San Pedro, Shamanism in Peru or so many different indigenous Traditions. He I think really was very good at appreciating traditional knowledge understanding
How it could be applied to Western medicine, but also I think that he had a deep respect for the cultures that he interacted with and was incredibly skilled at writing about them in a way that would allow people to recognize why they were important.
We'll be talking more after we hear this ad.
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so watching your episodes of Hamilton's pharmacopoeia, I see this kind of bouncing back and forth and not just bouncing sort of integrating and sometimes tension between the episodes in the parts that focus on the modern-day scientists weather underground or operating above ground, but then in other episodes going and looking at traditional uses, whether it's
Iboga in Gabon, whether it's something in Argentina, whether it's something in Mexico, or peyote, what have you. And I see, as I said before, some of the reverence I sometimes, see when you're talking to the kind of modern-day chemist, both, you know, illegal and legal. And then there's this kind of Rye. Look, you have when you're engaged in some of the more indigenous practices in particular, their great belief that the plant is somehow fundamentally.
Only different, then the drug that it contains, and that can be easily synthesized in a laboratory and my reading you, right? There.
Is there something in particular that you're referring to,
there's part of this whole debate or discussion between the natural versus synthetic you. And I were both at this Horizons conference in New York in late 2021. And, you know, that's part of what goes are, you know, is there something fundamentally different between peyote and mescaline between psilocybin produced synthetically?
Akley and mushrooms, the issue of 5 m e0 DMT and you're making the case, you know, like, let's save the toad, right? You. If all human beings descended on the to Sonoran Desert or Arizona, whatever, and, and destroy the total just people should shift to the synthetic and people are having very strong reactions against that. And then, I think maybe the other part of that is is some of your skepticism, sometimes about the role of the shaman. The Shaymin, what do you think?
Yeah. I mean, these are all very very
Complicated issues that have to be assessed on a case-by-case basis because there are definitely instances where a single alkaloid does not effectively replicate the effect of a plant and there are other instances where it does, so it really depends on what you're talking about. In the case of bufo alvarius Venom. It's clear to me based on all published chemical analyses, that the only tryptamine
Isn't in that Venom that could be responsible for the effect that people are describing is 5 m e0. DMT bufotenin is present, in Trace concentrations. And I say this as somebody who has actually used pure analytically confirmed bufotenin. It does not produce the sort of visionary experience that most people look for when they take a second out. Nobody talks about bufotenin. Nobody is saying, oh, I'll bufotenin. That's my favorite psychedelic. And the reason is that it's incredibly nauseating. It doesn't have the same Visionary characteristics of something like d.
T or silicon or five Meo DMT. And so what people are interested in is a 5, m, EO, D, Mt. Mediated effect. Then at the same time, you have this massive demand for toad Venom, that will easily have catastrophic ecological consequences. If everybody starts doing this. And it's going to look bad and it's going to be unnecessary. And then you have this easy to synthesize chemical 5 Mod Mt. And in this instance, the choice is clear in other instances. It's a bit more complicated.
Located, for example, in peyote. There are actually are other alkaloids that likely contribute to the psychopharmacology in a meaningful way. The same is true of iboga in the case of psilocybin containing mushrooms. It's actually closer to toad Venom again where people say, oh, but there's a study that found one, femto gram of some beta-carboline in a mushroom ones there for silicon or psilocybin. Could never replicate the mushroom experience. Well, I don't think that there's strong evidence that any of the other trip.
Ins present in psilocybin containing mushrooms are major contributors. So this is like I said, it's just you have to look at it at a on a case-by-case basis and then the same is true when it comes to the contributions of shamans. It depends on what the purpose is, how it's being done. What culture you're in why you're doing it. I would never, for a moment, suggest that the guidance of shamans is unimportant, especially in the cultures, where this is.
Their way of life and their way of medicine, but I think that there is an idea that became very popular, especially in New York around, maybe let's say two thousand, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven twelve. When Ayahuasca was really gaining popularity that in order for this experience to be valid and authentic. It had to be mediated by a scare quote traditional shaman, but why, why is it that?
Somebody couldn't make their own Ayahuasca or make a sort of Ayahuasca derivative with synthetic DMT and a pharmaceutical MAOI. And there's one really crucial component about this that doesn't get brought up very much and that is dosage. I think the two most important issues when anybody uses a drug are knowing, what the drug is, the chemical identity of what they are, consuming knowing that it actually is the drug in question and knowing
NG what dosage of that drug? They have consumed, sometimes people will, you know, approached me and they'll act like I'm some kind of, you know, super Advanced Psychonauts who has great powers of being able to withstand psychedelic experiences. And I assure you, that is not the case. The only Power I have is being a neurotic Jew who is too afraid to use unmeasured doses of things and that one, small protective.
Of not wanting to consume unmeasured doses of unknown. Substances has made all of my experiments infinitely, more safe and comfortable. And so when you're talking about plant Drive substances, you lose that ability to know exactly how much you're consuming and the exact chemical identity of what is contained. And that has, you know, in some circumstances that might be a good thing in many circumstances. That might be the only option, but if the hope is to help
As many people as possible in a way, that is repeatable. Then I think understanding the dose and identity of what is being consumed is of Paramount importance. Like just to give one more example, suppose I go to an Ayahuasca group at a yoga studio in Manhattan. And I drink some brew given to me by some guy and lo and behold, I have the most amazing experience of my life. I unwind all of my problems.
I suddenly feel energized and rejuvenated and motivated and filled with love and I'm ready to to do what I have to do. And not only that, I want the people that I love to have the same experience. I want my father to have this experience. I want my mother to have this experience, but I can't give them that experience because I have no idea what I took and that's a problem. I think. I think you know, if on the other hand I take let's say 60 milligrams of synthetic DMT Freebase.
One hour after taking 300 mg of 300, mg of mclubbe amide.
Then that's repeatable. That's reproducible. As far as these things can be and I can say, listen that dosage was really, really good. It was just right. It was the porridge. That's just right. I was for a moment in a threatening difficult place, but it didn't last too long and I came out of it feeling strengthened and I think those data points are really useful. I think that this is one of the great attributes of synthetic substances are working with isolated chemicals.
Is this ability to know the dose that you've consumed? It sounds boring, and pedantic. I even as I'm saying this to you, I think all this is kind of boring to say but it despite it being slightly boring. I think it's immensely important.
Well, you know, it's also, I mean you brought up a few points that I came across. Well, you talked about like the use of ibogaine in low doses, in France. Some decades ago. I mean, we think about, I began as one most powerful psychedelic substance there is or you meant talked about people using MDMA like substances is antidepressants in low doses.
So there's these, I mean, just say a little more about those sorts of things, which I even I had never heard about those
ones.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think it's really interesting that the pharmaceutical history of psychedelics. Pretty much his only existed in the realm of micro dosing. This is something you never hear people talk about. But the, to let's say psychedelic adjacent chemicals that have been approved for psychiatric, use namely lambertian, which was ibogaine that was used in France and Alpha methyl tryptamine, which was an antidepressant used in the United States were low dose.
Is of, in the case of alpha, Ethel trip to me in a sort of MDMA type, serotonin, release, ER and in the case of ibogaine, it's ibogaine and these were used at low doses precisely because it was believed that some benefit could be conferred without the disruptive effects of a
high-dose and now people talk about micro dosing LSD or psilocybin, right? And obviously there's you know with with micro dosing taking an amount. That's so low. You don't even are barely aware of it or taking a slightly higher dose with my people, a mini do.
Icing. But what about what ibogaine? I mean is micro dosing ibogaine something that might make some sense as far as you're concerned.
Yes, it does. And I say this with caution because it's hard to talk about these things from a place of personal experience, or my intuitive beliefs without sounding like, I'm saying, yeah, ibogaine, everyone, go out and micro dose it. That's the way. And that's not what I want to say. Because I think that, you know, there are dangers associated with the use of ibogaine. Most of them are limited to high-dose use
Low dose is probably do not pose the same risk of cardio toxicity. When I say low dose. I'm talking about 20 milligrams of ibogaine, hydrochloride or something of that nature, but I have used low dose ibogaine for long periods of time in the past. And I did feel that it was beneficial that I do a double-blind placebo-controlled study. No, this is just an intuitive feeling in the placebo effect is very strong. So I don't want to make any kind of grand claims about.
Micro dosing or ibogaine micro dosing in particular, but that is something that has been reported by a number of people, like Tim Ferriss as well. And I think that at low doses, I became is not psychedelic at all. You know, it really feels more like a stimulant at those doses. So this is not really the same as this sort of effect that people describe from low doses of psilocybin or LSD. We're at least in my experience. You often do get a low.
Psychedelic type effect but even that's debatable. That's one problem with micro dosing is. There isn't a precise definition for some people. Micro dosing is a sub perceptible dose where there is no psychedelic effect by definition. And for other people. The whole point is having a low psychedelic effect with maybe a little bit of supposed increase in creativity or empathy or something of that nature
makes me wonder, you know, I think you know, one of the issues involving because you don't get that much into the issue of opioids.
Heroin opium and all that sort of stuff. But, you know, one of the questions with Heroin was for people who had predicted to Street heroin and for whom methadone maintenance was not working group, an orphan was not making as the substitution that they thought about why not try pharmaceutical heroin. And then, you know, heroin is so demonized is a name and has all that kind of, you know, fear around it. So, people did controlled, double-blind studies where they tried injectable heroin versus injectable method on. Everybody can tell the
Injectable her own versus injectable morphine. Everybody could tell the difference, then they did ejectable heroin versus injectable Hydromorphone, which is commonly known as the loud it and experienced heroin users who have been using heroin off and on illegally for years. If not decades, who swore they could always tell, which was, which in a controlled double-blind study, cannot tell the difference. Now, I Wonder has that happened at all these sorts of controlled, double-blind studies, with experienced users comparing some of these psychedelic substances.
Has either in a synthetic form or in a specifically dosed natural form.
Yes. Actually, there is a brilliant study that was done. I think it was done at Johns Hopkins where they actually did exactly what you're describing. They took not normal, people experienced drug users. They didn't use the word psycho not but psychonaut types, people who in some instances had I think close to 100 experiences and they said, can you tell the difference?
Between DXM, the active ingredient in, Robitussin and psilocybin, and believe it or not. Even among experienced people. They sometimes could not tell the difference between the two of them sometimes sometimes. Yeah, I think it was maybe maybe like something, like, 30, or 40 percent of the time. People mistook DXM for a classical psychedelic and I think that that's a really and don't quote me on that. But I think that's a really interesting.
Interesting finding because you often hear people talking about these miniscule differences. Oh, I can tell the difference between psilocybe cubensis, grown on brown rice flour versus psilocybe cubensis grown on rye berries or something like that. And then I look at the study and think, wow, people in many instances, can't tell the difference between completely different chemicals in completely different pharmacological classes. So I think that people dramatically overestimate their ability to
These things, and that's normal. I mean, that's just the way it goes. Right? You take LSD one time and you have a great experience and you take LSD and other time. You have a bad experience. And maybe you think, oh, that was bad LSD because you're not recognizing your own contribution to the
experience. Hmm, you know, you also make some very powerful points that once again, going back to the dose issue and also the context, you know, good old drug set and setting you know, the phrase coined by think by Timothy Leary and developed by Andy while and then really research by Norman zinberg it.
Harvard. But I mean the in the issue of stimulants, you're not just looking at psychedelics, you're looking at things like amphetamine methamphetamine and I think you're making the point which I've made over the years as well. But you did it in a really nice way that amphetamine methamphetamine. I mean the truth is millions of teenagers, especially boys and it sounded like yourself. I won't bring you talk about your old friend Ritalin, you know, have been using have been given these drugs to deal with their add and all this sort of stuff.
Sometimes correctly, prescribed, sometimes not so much, but they basically if I have this right, if you were to take that ritalin or these other stimulants that they give, you know, teenage boys to help them behave better and focus better. And if you were to smoke them or inject them, they would be a lot like we perceive of methamphetamine. The big bad methamphetamine being used out in the world. Crank. What have you and conversely? If you were to take that, methamphetamine, that people are smoking and injecting and supposedly as
Instantly addicted all this sort of stuff but to use it orally as a dose level, that teenagers are using it in a prescribed way that it essentially would be no different than the Ritalin. They're taking. Did I get that right?
Oh, yes. Yeah, and and I think again people dramatically overestimate their ability to tell the difference between these things. When people talk about methamphetamine, they talk about the effects as if they are intrinsic pharmacological properties of the molecule as opposed to
Alex of the culture in which they're used. So if you take Adderall first of all, that means that your affluent and have your life organized enough, that you are going to a psychiatrist and receiving a prescription for something and feeling that prescription at the pharmacy and taking measured doses that have been dispensed to you. Well, that already says something about the sort of person that you are if you're taking methamphetamine, you're somebody who's comfortable finding a drug dealer? Who will
We'll use a substance that has not been analyzed at an unmeasured dose and you're going to smoke or snort. It that also says something about you. There is a study that showed that there was some brain damage associated with continuous, high-dose use of ketamine and I was looking at the study and the person I think had used ketamine continuously for something like two years and to begin. I mean, I wouldn't be all that surprised if using ketamine every
For two years did some kind of damage. I could also see it not doing damage. I think it would really depend on the dose in the circumstances. But the first question that has to be asked, is well, what kind of person uses ketamine every day for two years might there already be something neurologically different about that person before. The onset of the drug. Use. The same is also true for somebody that uses MDMA every day for years. Might that be a different type of person because a normal person wouldn't want to do that even if they had the opportunity. So there are
are so many variables that have to be considered when talking about the toxicity of these substances. And when it comes to methamphetamine and amphetamine, I think the primary variable is a cultural 11 is a substance. It's used by affluent people. The other is used by people who are probably in a little bit of a difficult place in their life, and they're potentially going to be using it in a slightly more self-destructive manner. If only because it's not done in the context of medical use, which also changes the way. The
We'll think about their drug use. I mean, this is a immense fractal of complexity, which is sometimes why when people talk about the subject of drugs as if it's some kind of like Niche issue, I think know this is this is like the interplay of society and culture and history and psychology and neurology and everything else, and it's like nothing less complicated than the entirety of human consciousness. It's a big deal. So there's no, you know, reductive answer like, oh well, it's the methyl group. It's the methyl group on the nitrogen that makes it slightly more.
Lipophilic, so, that it crosses the blood-brain barrier more quickly and it causes release of a little bit of Serotonin and that's why it's different. No, no. No, there are so many other factors at play. Even if the things that I just said are
true. Yeah, you know, I mean what you're saying about the interdisciplinary nature of drugs and Drug studies as well. I mean, if you think about it in a university, you could probably have an entire course on psychoactive drugs, in the large majority of the departments, in the humanities, The Sciences and the social sciences.
Right. I mean this subject just crosses so many boundaries in part of what comes through your show. And let me ask you a little more about this guy and I have to ask you this. I mean here you are making these 20 fantastic episodes of Hamilton's, pharmacopoeia for Vice HBO, which I strongly encourage our listeners to watch. And if I ask why you landed up becoming a documentary maker as opposed to say going for a PhD and researching and in that way or something like that. There is the fact that you're the only child.
Old of a, pretty famous documentary maker, Errol Morris. Yeah, I remember first seeing his thing fog of War about Robert McNamara, the Secretary of State under Kennedy and Johnson. And in the one about Rumsfeld, you know, the Secretary of State for the second George Bush. Do you think you would have embarked pursuing this issue the way you have? If you hadn't had a dad who's a documentary maker?
I think it's possible. Believe it or not, because this was never what I wanted to do. In the early documentaries. I was actually really thinking of myself as a writer, and I think it was partially because I was
Resistant to the idea of doing this because I didn't want to enter the same Arena of my father. So I was thinking, yeah, I'm interested in the science. I'm interested in writing about this. Documentaries are not really what I want to do. But the reality was that this was at a time when YouTube was just starting to take off, when the internet was going from a place that was primarily text-based to something that was very much a video based and there were huge amounts of resources being dedicated.
He different media organizations. But Vice in particular to pivoting to video. That was the, you know, the big thing. And what I quickly realized was that if I wanted to tell a story, there would be more resources to tell that story if I made a documentary. So at first it was a purely pragmatic decision, but as I continued doing it, I started to really appreciate the artistic elements of it. And yeah, I think it's, you know, a great way to tell stories. I think that it reaches a lot more people. It's sort of like podcasts for that.
Better, you know, it's people are more likely to listen to something than they are to read something these days. And so it was a way to reach tens of millions of people that probably would not have read an article about the same subject. It
got me wondering whether if the father didn't influence the Sun that much did the Sun influence the father, because two of your dad's recent Productions. One was the multi-part episode called wormwood right about the CIA scientist who was given unknowingly to himself.
A psychedelic and lands up either committing suicide or being killed. And then more recently, his piece psychedelic drug story about one of Timothy Leary's lovers and her story. Do you think that you had an impact or do you know if you had an impact on your dad getting a little more Curious?
Yes. I certainly had an I worked on both of those projects. So yes, I certainly did have an impact and I did play a big role in making my father interested in psychedelics. And he also played a big role in making me interested in psychoactive drugs because he's interested in that subject is
Also, I think I'm very close with my father and we talked every day and we talk about these things. So yeah, I think that there's been an interplay between both of us. The one reason that I'm sometimes hesitant to talk about him is that he's usually brought up in the context of diminishing the work that I've done. People will say something like, oh he's only doing this because his father made documentaries and that's all fine and good. If somebody wants to, you know, try to take me down a notch, that's fine. Whatever. But the reason that I don't like it is that I'm afraid. It's sort of discouraging to people they might
I think, oh I can't make a documentary about this. Unless my father has made documentaries and I assure you. That's not the case. If ice published hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of drug documentaries and continues to do. So to this day and the vast majority of them were not made by people whose fathers were documentary. Filmmakers. That is why I assure you that that is not a prerequisite to getting involved in this world and although I won't deny that it played a role in my own interest, in that I of course, learned an enormous amount growing up around him and watching him now.
So many of his documentaries, but I don't think it's, you know, necessary I learned a lot. But I think that I also primarily learned about these processes on my own because I was doing it in a way. That was so different from anything that he was doing. I mean, he had, you know, huge cruise and sound stages and all sorts of resources. My early work was done, you know, single camera on Mini DV tapes, with just me and two other people. So, it was a very different type of filmmaking in a very different style of production, as
as the son of a famous documentary maker, but obviously, there must have been other influences in the way you proceeded to become a documentary who were those and how.
So there is a filmmaker named, Jason Cohen who made a documentary called mon dibala that. I really admire because it tells this strange story about corruption in Brazil, tying it into a plastic surgeon and a Frog farm and a private security Force.
All these different superficially unrelated topics and it figures out, a way to tie them into a richer fabric of this strange phenomenon of corruption and frogs and kidnapping. And I was really inspired by that movie in many ways, because I think that you often find similar phenomena in the world of drugs, where they're all these superficially unrelated.
Topics that then merge in this Hub of a single psychoactive drug. One instance would be the episode about man Drax or Quaalude in South Africa where you have this substance, but it's also intimately connected to the chemical and biological weapons program of the apartheid government. It's also connected to the poaching of Abalone and to the Chinese trade in the Abalone as a luxury item.
And aphrodisiac which then connects back to the clandestine synthesis of methaqualone. So it's all these strange things. But when you weave it all together, it's all connected. And I really admire that film in particular, but there's so many different filmmakers that I admire. But in terms of documentary filmmaking, I think that's a really standout example, and of course, I am very influenced by my father's work. I'm a great admirer of his films, have watched all of them, many, many times. I was present while he was making a good number of them and I think that he's, you know,
A really brilliant filmmaker.
Well, I mean, I kind of say he'll I just thought you were incredibly gutsy. I mean, even courageous with a lot of stuff you do. I mean, you know, you're going, You're interviewing some guy in his meth lab and it looks like you're partly were he's going to blow you all up and then you're going to Mexico and interviewing some very illegal meth producer and places of the world where things can get quite violent. And you're doing drugs, you know, you say how important it is to know the dose of what you're doing, but you're doing these plant drugs and having people just put stuff into your mouth and just go
Along with it. I mean, were you ever scared when you were doing this stuff?
Yes, I was, but my primary fear was not for myself, but for the people that I was interviewing, that was always the concern because the reality was in most of these instances. I was okay. There were times that I took risks. For example, when I synthesized a large quantity of five Meo DMT in Mexico, you know, it 5. Mod MP is not explicitly a controlled substance in Mexico, and I did a lot of
legal review and consulted with many lawyers before embarking on that project. But the reality was as I was saying earlier, if people want to fuck with you, they'll figure out a way and you don't want to depend on precise interpretation of the law. If you're in a Mexican prison or an American prison for that matter because I've known people that were arrested and convicted for synthesizing drugs that they never synthesized. I mean this happens. I had a
And who is a chemist who was synthesizing, a psychedelic called to CC and his lab was raided, They seized everything and they said, well, you were synthesizing to see be, they didn't say you were synthesizing to CC and it is an analog of to see be under the federal analog act. They just said, this is to CB, this is a chemically different substance where the chlorine is a bromine in the case of to see be a totally different molecule.
But they just said it's the same and he went to prison for it. So trying to go by the rule of the law doesn't always work in your favor. And there are always risks associated with this work and I of course, am not a self-destructive person. I never wanted to get in trouble for any of this. In sometimes I did have to take risks, but I genuinely believe that the greatest risks were those taken by the people that spoke with me. And my greatest fear was not for myself, but for them that they might get in trouble as a result of sharing what they knew because
Or I might get in trouble, but I'll get a lawyer. I'll figure out a way to get out of it. Most likely because essentially everything I did was technically legal. I mean, that was one line that I drew, there's little things you can look at throughout the process. For example, I'm never helping anyone do anything. If I'm in a lab, I don't touch anything. Because if I so much as hand them, a glass of water, then that could be legally construed as me some
Um, how you know, aiding and abetting the manufacturing of Controlled Substances, but it's legal to be in the presence of somebody committing a crime as long as you are in no way, assisting that process. So I was protected but if something had gone wrong, things could have been very bad for the people that spoke with me. And I'm grateful that that did not occur
to this me spending a lot of time with vices or HBO's legal department so
that, you know, it was an enormous enormous amount of time arguing with law.
Is who had never taken a chemistry class where they would say? Well, 5, m e0 DMT is the same thing as DMT and I would say no. It isn't. It's five. Methoxy DMT and say, well, that's that contains DMT and it's a no, it doesn't, it doesn't contain DMT at all and they'd say well, yeah it does. It does DMT in the name and I'd say, okay. Well what if I call it? What if I call it? ONN Tri methyl serotonin then is it legal? Is it then, is it? Okay? And I realized that all that mattered was the
Name because 0 0, NN Tri methyl serotonin and 5m, E, OD M. TR, the same chemical. The only difference is that when you're naming them, one doesn't include DMT and that was what they were afraid of. So it was a massive, was very complicated. It required endless negotiation about what could and could not be done. And one of the reasons that I stopped making the show was because it was so complicated. And my fear, that something might go wrong.
You know, I feel that I was very lucky to have done all the things that I did and to have done it in such a way that not only were people not hurt that many people benefited from it. But I think that it was maybe only a matter of time before something bad
happened. When it came to picking the 20 different subjects, was that basically your decision or a team
effort. It was my decision and there was a brilliant team that I worked with who played a huge role in the construction.
Auction of these projects. And it was certainly not me alone at the end. You know, there were lots of brilliant editors and producers and cinematographers sound people. Lots of people played a big, big role in the creation of these projects, but often there were ideas things that I wanted to do, but for whatever reason, they were impossible and so it was a constant reshuffling and renegotiation of how to tell these stories. And sometimes the story is just
And behold, there were lots of stories that I wanted to tell or things that I wanted to film. For example, wanting to film The clandestine synthesis of LSD, simply wasn't possible. So I film David Nicholls, making an LSD derivative at UNC Chapel Hill. So? Yeah, there were things that couldn't be done and for what it's worth. I do plan to continue with this documentary work. At some point in the future. I've now, just decided to shift my emphasis to lab work and chemistry because also not
I mention the fact that making these projects during the pandemic was a nightmare. I will never forget and it would be nice for the world to stabilize a little bit before getting back into that sort of work. Maybe that's naive. Hope I don't
know. What are the one or two-year most itching to do when you get back into documentary Making or filmmaking.
Well, you know, there's so much there's so many I was very interested in doing something about 2cb and the use of to see be
South America because most of the clandestine chemists that I interviewed were in the United States or Europe and this culture of admiring, the work of clandestine chemist doesn't exist in a lot of the world yet. There are people in those places as well who are making the same sacrifices and I was curious. Well, what is it to CB chemist in South America? Think about what they're doing and also seeing different instances of people making
in the same drugs in different countries. What is it to find somebody in Russia? Who's making synthetic cannabinoids? What is it like to talk to somebody who's making methamphetamine in China?
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Let me ask you this. I mean, I know it's always a crazy question, ask you. What are your favorite drugs because so much is dependent upon drug set and setting and context. He won that you just you know exalted about was Xena. Tell me about Z naught.
Well Xenon is very interesting to me. I was friends with somebody named Matt Bowden. Who are you familiar with Matt Bowden?
I know that name. Yeah, but tell me more
you.
A very fascinating bigger, really a drug policy advocate in New Zealand who was responsible for what was it? An immensely Progressive change in the law where people could sell psychoactive drugs without any medical pretense whatsoever in New Zealand. So this wasn't synthetic cannabinoids to treat glaucoma or PTSD or treatment-resistant depression. This was synthetic cannabinoids to get high and
And he created a pharmaceutical company with the intention of creating better recreational, drugs with no medical pretence whatsoever. And I thought, wow, that is so Progressive. That is so amazing. I was ready to move to New Zealand to work in his lab because it was so revolutionary. I mean, to this day, nothing like that has ever been done. And when I was in New Zealand at his lab, he had this brilliant pharmacologist who work for him, who I really liked, who is sort of, you know, very much like
Alexander, shulgin type and he had bought a tank of xenon gas. This was in 2014 and he said, have you heard of this stuff? And I had read about it. I knew that it was an anesthetic. I knew that it was an nmda antagonist like nitrous oxide and I also knew that it was immensely expensive. You so expensive that a single inhalation of this gas could cost hundreds of dollars. So not the kind of thing that you typically have the opportunity to use and I was so excited. I you know it was
Right before I was leaving New Zealand. He said all right. Do you have a balloon or do you have anything that you can fill up? And we were looking around for anything, a balloon, a glove? We couldn't find anything. Eventually, our sound man had a condom because all sound people typically carry condoms with them to keep the lavalier protected from rain. When you're filming in the rain. This is like a sound person trick and so he said, all right. We'll use a condom and build this condom of xenon.
Ass and inhaled it. And it was, you know, on one hand, very similar to nitrous oxide. But also this amazing amazing experience is almost as if a switch of raw, unadulterated Euphoria were flipped and suddenly, you felt kind of maximal pleasure. And to think that this is coming from a gas, that is present in every breath that we take. This is a natural component of our atmosphere. It's point zero, zero, zero, zero zero, five percent of Earth's.
Atmosphere. And so it was this rare treat. I got to inhale xenon gas. I'll never get to do that again. And then one day I got a an email from somebody who said, hey, I was in the sauna at the gym and I was talking with some guy who runs a xenon gas Clinic. If you ever heard of that before and I said a xenon gas Clinic, what is that? And can you get me this man's contact information. I must talk to this person and and he said like well, I don't know.
Like what you want me to find him. I don't think I'll ever see him again. I was at, we'll just try. If you ever see him at the gym, please tell him that I want to talk to him. And then a few weeks later. He got back in touch and he said, okay. All right. The guy this is his phone number if you want to talk to him. So I called them up and as described this person had built and opened a xenon gas clinic in the Czech Republic, where people could inhale this gas both for essentially recreational purposes, but also for pseudo medical purposes and I
I went to the Czech Republic knowing very little I mean at that time and really to this day there was almost nothing written about this practice in the English language this existed in Russia and in the Czech Republic and in a few other places, but in terms of English language reporting there was nothing on it and everything that I observed in that clinic was something I knew nothing about. I mean that that was kind of one of the great pleasures of working on these projects was going somewhere.
Learn about something that I knew nothing about. And seeing this entire world unfold
before me. But, you know, when you go to the policy issue me, you haven't focused as much on policy. I'm your very critical of the drug war, but, is Xenon. One of those things where you say, thank God this isn't so cheap that it could be made available over-the-counter. Anybody wants
it. That's it. An interesting question. I think this kind of has reverberations. And, you know, whenever anybody talks about legalizing all drugs, then the next question is. So wait a second, you're saying that heroin should be available at the corner store.
Well, you know what's next and I think that the Assumption when people make that or when people ask that question is, if heroin were available at the corner store, wouldn't we all become heroine addicts, wouldn't we all run directly to the corner store and get heroin and injected into our veins and ruin our lives, right then? And there but I think the more measured response is that the answer is probably not right? As things currently stand, you can buy all sorts of drugs ranging from Robitussin.
Nitrous oxide and the majority of people feel no need to buy those things and develop substance abuse disorders as a result of their freedom to acquire them. But in the case of xenon with really interesting and I think this also has some broader implications and drug policy. We talk about the addictiveness of a drug as if it is an intrinsic pharmacological Factor, but back to the cultural dimensions of this. What if the most addictive drug in the world is also the most expensive drug in the world, then what?
Well, then, people just can't use it because nobody, unless they are a millionaire or a billionaire could afford to become addicted to Xenon. This is why you never hear about Zenon addiction. This is why there isn't a single case report in the medical literature of xenon addiction. It's not because, you know on isn't addictive. It most certainly is, but nobody has access to it. And I don't think there are circumstances where large numbers of people could have access to it, and I'm not suggesting.
It is Xenon. Clinics opened up then we'd have an epidemic of xenon inhalation. I really just don't think we would because it's prohibitively expensive and that alters the way the people interact with the substance.
Yeah. I mean look at the thing. I struggle with is somebody's oftentimes identified as an advocate of drug legalization, but you know my resistance a reluctance to embrace a more sort of free market approach is that you don't need everybody to run it at the store. You just need a lot of people to run out and to eventually get in trouble.
With that drug. When I look at something like fentanyl, obviously the great danger they are now is that it's highly unregulated and I think we should be looking at ways in which people who are you know going to buy drugs from the street, if they can't get it, illegally should be able to obtain what they want in a legal regulated way and that should include fentanyl in an appropriate dose. That's, that's relatively safe or heroin or what have you but I do still have. So my reluctance about making these things, you know, so easily available and that's why I asked you
Xenon were dramatically cheaper, where you could buy it for the same as the price of coffee or a joint or something like that and it is as delicious as you described, you know, what would happen?
Well, I mean, okay, I brief story about this. So I was at the clinic and, and one of my journalistic Tendencies is, I don't like to say mean, things about people, I've never gotten into this, with the intention of trying to attack people, or hurt people, or take them down a notch, simply because there's enough stuff out there.
There that I like that. I'd prefer to talk about that. So in the instances where I have said something mean or critical, it was typically because I felt I had no choice and Xenon was one of those instances. So like I said, I go to this clinic and I know nothing about any of this. I'm approaching it with a genuinely open mind and a charitable interpretation of everything that's going on. They have already said some pseudo scientific things to me, but that's okay. I don't need to police the scientific validity of everything that
One around me says, they say that the mechanism of xenon is that the atom is so dense that it warps space-time around the user. Okay. I don't think that that is the case. And if that were the case wouldn't the wouldn't the tank itself have some kind of powerful gravitational field that but that's fine. So we go to the clinic and they're giving Xenon. Two children. Okay, that's a bit of a red flag right there, but people also give nitrous oxide to children and nitrous oxide is
Are more toxic than Xenon, although it's not very toxic as well. When used under appropriate circumstances, given that you don't have certain genetic or dietary susceptibilities to be 12 depletion. So I think okay. This is, you know, probably actually safer and they give nitrous oxide as a dental anesthetic to children all the time. I can think of a charitable interpretation of what's Happening Here. It's done with the consent of the parents. It's a short duration low-dose, you know, wouldn't be something I would ever do, but maybe it's not necessarily bad, but that's the first
Flag. Then the second red flag, is that a group of breatharians? Come to the clinic. And despite the fact that this is a general anesthetic. Nobody is fasting before using this is a general anesthetic that can cause vomiting and one of the breatharians. These are people who claim to subsist on nothing. But the, the chi or Prana, or energy of the universe is a scientific, a pseudo-scientific belief that if you are sufficiently enlightened, you can sustain yourself with pure energetic.
It's either that surrounds you in some way. And one of them almost is fixates on his vomit and dies. So that's red flag. Number two, and that's when I start to think. Okay. Maybe there's something dangerous. Maybe it's irresponsible for me to report on this as if it's just a fun little weird thing that's happening in the Czech Republic, then in the clinic because, you know, it's so expensive. It has to be administered in a recirculating breathing apparatus that scrub CO2 out of the line.
With each exhalation, you introduce CO2. So they have special beads that absorb the CO2 that have a color changing indicator. So I want to film a time-lapse of the beads changing color just as a transitional shot to show the passage of time. So I asked my producer, Francis Lions. I say, would you mind breathing into this mask for 30 minutes while I film a time-lapse of the beads change in color? And one of the Proprietors of the clinic comes and
He says, you know, why doesn't he have some Xenon as well while he's doing it and I say, oh no, you know, I recognize how expensive this is. I recognize that, you know, this is a precious substance. You don't need to feel obligated to give it away to us. It's totally fine. Says no. No, I insist. I insist that he have some Xenon. So I asked the producer. Do you want seen on? He says, yes, so I say, okay, if everybody wants this, then that's fine. You can, you know, give him some Xenon and I'll film the time lapse. So I'm filming the time lapse in that room and then I go into a different room.
To film something else for the different camera. I come back, 20 minutes later and my producer is unconscious inhaling Xenon. And the person from the clinic who is supposed to be watching him. He's unconscious as well. Inhaling Xenon to both of them are in the room. Simultaneously, unconscious with nobody watching either of them and that's when I thought, okay. This is a problem. This is a serious problem and we were about to leave, we were maybe 20 minutes from
Leaving for good. And I thought if you can't wait 20 minutes to inhale Xenon, this is indicative of a problem and then two weeks after that that same person died. Inhaling Xenon. So I felt actually bad about the depiction of the clinic because the proprietor Susana with someone who's very generous to me. Someone who I think was a genuinely good intention person, not someone that I would want to publicly attack or hurt her business, but when you talk about these things,
You have a responsibility to tell people the truth of what you found, even if it's negative and I was in such a position at that
time. Yeah, I mean Halloween, you think about Kramer? You've also talked, I think about a friend of yours in college, a good friend who had a schizophrenic break under the influence of psychedelics. And that didn't even come back from it. How do you think about, you know, the casualties from some of this Innovative psychedelic
production? It's something that, you know, I'm sure you share this feeling. If you think about this enough, you
You've already integrated the - dimensions of it into your understanding of the subject. So when something bad happens, it's not necessarily like a total revision of everything that I thought because I already was aware that bad things happen. But you know, this year, I've lost for dear friends in either drug overdoses or drug adjacent circumstances, and it's been immensely painful for me and it gives me some empathy for the way.
Respond in the wake of these, these terrible tragedies. It's horrendously painful to lose someone, you love and I understand why that makes people anti-drug. I get it. I get it completely. It's horrifying and you want to do anything that you can to prevent it from happening. But the problem is I think that a lot of people use that grief in that energy in the wrong way and end up actually making things
worse. Yeah. Well, I'm curious, you know, I'm because there's the reality of what's going on and then there's the way it's being
Presented in the media, right? And we seem to be in this psychedelic Renaissance and it's a period, maybe like the late 50s were of almost all the media coverage being positive and you've actually been you know, you get going on this around what 2010 or something like that. So you've been doing it for ten or more years. There's been this major transition. I mean, how do you see what's happening or less 10 years? And what are your thoughts about where this may likely be headed is inevitable. The pendulum swings? Are there ways to keep it from swinging too harshly.
Back the other way,
it is inevitable. The the pendulum is going to swing. You can't stop that swinging or not easy, and I am concerned. I'm concerned because I am already seeing the backlash starting and I felt that there was a palpable sense of dread among many people that were speaking at the recent Horizons conference and it worries me, it worries me because I see a lot of infighting emerging in the
Community, I've heard from people that were activists in similar space, is not related to psychedelic drugs that at the cusp of some kind of major breakthrough in their activism. They've also reported similar things happening where there's a dramatic increase in, in fighting, as people get closer and closer to the finish line. And I think that maybe that's something that will happen out of necessity, but it worries me to see how people externalize their
Another example, I think would be the way people treated the Sackler family and the opioid epidemic, right? Everybody hates the Sackler as you go on Twitter. And you say, I think Arthur Sackler is an asshole and everyone will applaud you for it. And that's all fine. And good, we strip their names off of every institution they ever donated to. But one thing that concerned me about the activists emphasis on destroying the Sackler name, was that it didn't focus on things that would actually help people who are struggling with addiction.
No, it wasn't until one month ago, that New York opened a supervised injection site, the first in the country. So if you want to strip the Sackler, his name off the Guggenheim, that's all fine and good. And I'm sure it actually did hurt Arthur sack lers feelings. I'm sure that he felt really bad about that. But I don't care about Arthur cyclers feelings for good or bad. I don't care about how he feels what I care about is ensuring that people don't die and hurting, Arthur Sackler as reputation won't necessarily won't bring back the dead. And I don't think
Will prevent future overdoses. So that's one of the, the conflicts that I've felt is this emphasis on sort of vindictive, call out activism as opposed to constructive activism. So you have and I say this actually with genuine admiration for Nan. Goldin both as an artist and an activist, but there's something kind of off-putting to me about how much praise there is for attacking the philanthropic work of the sack lers. While for example, I have a friend named Mark cross, who lives in Brooklyn, who's dedicated himself to the
Tribution of naloxone inhalers and figuring out ways to get them to people for free and to teach people how to use them. But that doesn't get any press at all.
You know, tell you. I mean Hamilton cause it to the earlier episodes of psychoactive one. Well, I did with Patrick rat and Keith though, you know, brilliant New Yorker writer, who wrote the book about the Sackler family, Empire pain. And I gave him a bit of a hard time about placing so much of the blame on the Sackler is not that they are blameless by any means. I think they deserve a lot of the criticism in the lawsuits and
It's coming after them because they did drastically dramatically over promoted. Drug. That was a miracle drug for some but not appropriate in the ways that they were promoting it. But then I also had Kate Nicholson on who is created an organization specifically, to deal with the pendulum being swinging so far. Backward against opioid, prescribing that now, you have people who are using opioids responsibly and who needed for the proper functioning, but we're doctors, won't prescribe it where their family is coming down on them. So I think we're exactly on the same page.
Page about this. I'll say with respect to the activism my sense. Even at the rise in this conference is that we're still in that first generation period and typically in a first-generation, I've seen this in many different areas of drug policy reform. The first generation generally has a fairly High. What you might call Mensch kite quota. In other words, the substantial number of people are in it for the right reasons and doing it for the right things. And inevitably, of course, your biggest battles are with your allies because those are the ones that, you know, intimately the ones you fight with over.
Credit and girlfriends and funding and and all that sort of stuff. But I think as you move into the second generation, as it becomes more commercialized, as people start to go into it, for reasons that are not the kind of first generation impulse. That's where it becomes a little more challenging. Okay. So three last quick questions about particular drugs, one of the episodes focus on something called LSD Ultra to a lay audience. How could you explain what's? So potentially exciting about
Out that well, this
is yes. There's a an acronym, that the brilliant scientist. Brian Roth uses. He calls this project, Ultra LSD and LSD. In this instance does not stand for lysergic acid. Diethylamide. It stands for large-scale docking. And his idea is that if you can know, the exact structure of a drugs receptor using x-ray,
Crystallography or cry OEM or something of that nature. And you can build a computer model of that receptor. You can develop programs that will virtually doc non-existent drugs in silico to do all of the drug design on a computer. And then when you have a number of promising hits, you synthesize those things and validate the process using conventional pharmacological techniques, so it's a brilliant idea and he has already demonstrated its
Activeness in the design of Novel ligands for melatonin receptors at the time that I interviewed him. He was focusing on 5-ht to a Agonist. I don't believe that that research has been published yet, but I don't doubt that he's going to find something really amazing. Is technique is brilliant. Brian Roth is a brilliant person and I think this represents a futuristic direction that all this research can move toward in the future. The, the work that I do currently is effectively identical.
The work that Alexander shulgin was doing in the sense that it's not really hypothesis-driven. It's exploratory work where you simply make things and you look at their pharmacology and you make another thing. And you look at the pharmacology and you examine Trends and you try to understand chemical space, but it's a slow process, even a dedicated chemist, can only make so many molecules. You know, let's say, one a week, creating one new molecule a week. Maybe if you're really dedicated, it could.
Be 2 or 3. If it's the only thing that you do. But using these in silico, drug design techniques, millions of different. Hypothetical drugs can be screened. And I think that there's a lot of potential in these techniques. That said I think that there's a beauty to the old way and I, of course, have a romantic appreciation of the old techniques of chemistry of working in a lab and the colors and smells and the beauty of
Crystals and all of that. And the idea of losing that is slightly sad to me, but, you know, maybe it's part of progress.
Okay. Next question. I'm not having books on my shelf going back, 30 years ago called smart drugs. What does that mean? What's happened with them? Have you used them? Or is there a big future?
Yeah, I
mean.
When I was a freshman in college, I got a prescription for Adderall and I took it as prescribed every day. And by the end of my freshman year, I was completely emaciated. I weighed 20 pounds less than I weigh right now. And it was clear to me that there was no way, this was an abuse. This was as directed medical use of, you know, something like 20 milligrams of amphetamine is somewhat low dose daily and
I realized there is no way that this is sustainable. This is going to probably kill me if I keep doing it. So I had to stop and I became very interested in nootropics. I read a lot of literature. I tried an enormous number of nootropics myself and I did not find that any of them, you know solved the problems of ADHD or made me a hyper-intelligent or anything like that. I think that they offer some benefits for
Some people under some circumstances sort of like nicotine where, you know, it might help sometimes. But then you might become tolerant or it might have a side effect that limits. The applicability for long-term use but I think that as an idea, it's a very powerful one because who wouldn't want a drug that improves their memory or concentration or makes them more reasonable and smart. It's a wonderful idea that has been explored at Great length in science fiction. I
The issue is that we simply have not found such a drug yet.
Now, you just mentioned the third drug. I was going to ask you about nicotine. I mean we know on the one hand, It's associated with the massive millions and millions of deaths each year from people smoking. Because I mean nicotine and the smokeable form. We know that it has a rich history. There's a book, I think called tobacco and Shamanism, you know where you see descriptions of tobacco consumption in South America, that resemble some of the most powerful, you know, psychedelic consumption.
And now we have a new world of tobacco harm reduction where people are consuming nicotine and quitting smoking by consuming it either a vaping for more in oral forms or in a pouches Snus. This thing have you looked into nicotine at any depth is yet Hamilton, or can you imagine doing so in the future?
Yeah, I think nicotine is absolutely fascinating. And I think that nicotine is almost the prototypical nootropic, or cognitive enhancer inside. It doesn't meet the strict definition of a nootropic. But the problem of course is that it is immensely habit-forming. And so if you use nicotine for the first time and you have no tolerance to the effect, I mean I've had instances where I use nicotine and you know, Road.
An entire article in a single setting, that's kind of the best case scenario. But of course, that type of effect is not sustainable and you rapidly become tolerant and then after a little while, the effect of the nicotine is simply curing the withdrawal from not using nicotine, a very similar thing happens with caffeine anyone that has gone weeks or months without using caffeine and uses it. Again for the first time will have this kind of incredible, explosion of concentration and focus and energy.
But for most people, it's just the way you deal with caffeine withdrawal. First thing in the morning.
Yeah. I'm actually my I discuss this with Michael because it Michael Paul. And in his last book, caffeine was a whole chapter and he described it the way you do. Well, I wonder if 100% of the effect for a long time. Users is simply warding off withdrawal, or if there's not still some effective. Stimulant thing that happens, you know, that it's a combination of those two last thing. You don't get that much into people altering, their
Consciousness through non-drug means there is that fascinating episode. You have where you're you, go to visit Amanda Fielding the founder of the Beckley Foundation outside Oxford, and you get her to share her experience with trepanation, which was a way of altering Consciousness. And maybe enhancing longer-term Health that people, you know, where you put a little hole in your head, but I wonder, you know, you were very open to Amanda sharing her experience with trepanation. Do you think you could see her?
Of doing a lot more research into the alterations of Consciousness that don't involve taking these chemicals.
Yes, of course, the problem is that, I think that starts to rapidly include the entirety of human life. We're constantly trying to alter our Consciousness through non pharmacological means whether it's entertaining. Ourself by listening to podcasts, or reading a book or watching a movie or a YouTube video or falling in love or trying to fall in love or breaking up.
With somebody or eating a meal. I mean it's that the problem is that this rapidly expands into everything because and I think this also is one of the issues with the way that people talk about addiction. They talk about addiction as if it is heroin addiction and nothing else. But the reality is that these sorts of addictions exist throughout human life, whether its food or entertainment or avoidance of suffering, through various social, behavioral patterns, and so on, and so forth, so,
Of course I'm interested in it. The problem is that it just becomes an enormous subject very, very quickly. And the nice thing about drugs is they are single entities with histories that can be studied and understood and they allow you to narrow the focus on a infinitely. Expansive field of Consciousness alteration. Yeah, sometimes people would talk about these episodes is if they were about a drug, but the drug was typically just a single focal point.
It in a larger issue, where, you know, the LSD episode was it really about LSD? No, it was about Amanda Fielding in the history of her research and the future of drug discovery. That was guided in part by historical research on LSD and it rapidly expands into this very big topic. And so part of the reason that I've emphasized drugs is they've been a way to encapsulate this enormous enormous subject that can rapidly get out of control if you don't Focus
yourself here.
Enemy, though. The part of that episode, where you get into methamphetamine and then you go visit some people in recovery and you basically keep pushing them. Aren't you just substituting an addiction to methamphetamine with an addiction to Jesus. And their response is kind of interesting in a way. I mean on one hand, they're saying yes, but it also gets to the distinction between addiction and dependence, right? Where one something you become dependent on in your life, but that dependence is causing little or no harm as opposed to addiction which involves a dependence plus a lot.
Of harm,
right, right. And when people saw that, I think they sort of misinterpreted what I was doing and they thought it was like a snarky attack, but I'm genuinely very interested in how well religiosity seems to help certain people with substance abuse disorders. I mean, that what they were doing is not uncommon at, that's not something that you only see in, you know, Arkansas or Tennessee. This is something that you see in New York City. It's actually very common for people who
Are addicted to drugs to find solace in the concept of a higher power and use that to help their sobriety. It's, you know, a foundational Concept in AA and a lot of other addiction treatment programs. So I think it's a valid question. And I think some people were thought it was a snarky remark. When one of the, I said, what would you do if you didn't believe in God, but you wanted to experience this benefit that, you know,
Seems to be very real for these people, how would an atheist or somebody who is agnostic or resistant to the traditions of Christianity. Still experienced this in a materialist mindset and I don't think it's a good answer to that question. Unfortunately, I think that it may be the case that this alternate belief system, really does confer some benefit and it might be incompatible with atheist materialism. So I don't know that there's an easy solution for that problem.
Hey, how about, I think we could just go on and on forever.
Of our filling for our listeners. I strongly encourage you to take a look at, you know, Hamilton's 20 part series of documentaries about drugs, Hamilton's. Pharmacopoeia. He has a podcast is well. In fact, he had me on as a guest not long ago, even as he's working at the University and doing research in the following in the Footsteps, in the traditions of Sasha shulgin. So Hamilton, thank you ever so much for taking the time to be on this, and I look forward to our crossing paths for many years to come. Yes. Thank you.
We love to hear from our listeners. If you'd like to share your own stories, comments and ideas. Then leave us a message at 183, 3779, 2460. That's 833, psycho 0, or you can email us at psychoactive at protozoa.com or find me on Twitter at Ethan Adelman. You can also find contact information in our show notes. Next week. I'll be talking with Daniel Wolff, who's played.
Pivotal role in global harm reduction, in his role, as head of the harm reduction program at George. Soros's open Society foundations,
when Public Health agencies, talk about harm reduction, or even when some public health programs discuss harm reduction. They're really thinking
about it as a set
of approved, interventions to reduce the risk of HIV or other blood-borne infections, and they're really not thinking about it. The way I think about it now because I see harm reduction, including needle exchange as a sense of
Of personal restoration. And enfranchisement not just as a way to stop disease.
Subscribe to psychoactive now. See, you do miss it.
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