Welcome to how to sell drugs, presented by Lucy, a podcast about drug culture, policy and business. With an emphasis on harm reduction. We believe that prohibition and abstinence-only policies result in poor results. For society, will be discussing how drugs are sold. And perhaps more importantly, how they should be sold. This is not intended to Advocate drug use and meant to for educational purposes. Only a primary sponsor.
For this podcast is always is us if you or someone, you know, uses nicotine, we encourage you to visit Lucy dot CO2. Try our range of delicious and satisfying products that we hope you'll find to be much better than cigarettes. Vapes smokeless. Tobacco, and other traditional tobacco products today. You have me. David Brent Allen, my co-founder Sammy. Hi Sammy. Hey David. Hey. And with us today, we have Hamilton Morris, a man who needs no introduction for those who are fascinated about
Drugs and drug culture, but for those of you who don't know, he is probably most well-known for his show on Vice Hamilton's. Pharmacopoeia. Thanks for joining us, Hamilton. Thanks for having me. Yeah, really appreciate it. So before before we get going it sounded like maybe you had a story about how something stressful happened to you
recently. Oh, not stressful. Just I tried your product. Oh, yeah. Yeah, and I hadn't used nicotine in how it was.
Five months and seven days. I believe. That's right. You've been a long, been a long break, and then the package came, and it was also struggling with this article that I was trying to finish an on Deadline. And then I thought, well, you know, what's really self-destructive to not finish this
article.
That's far more dangerous than to not choose nicotine gum, even though it's been so many months, so I tried it and did enjoy it, but it was amazing to me how rapidly I fully realize.
Into using nicotine gum continuously every waking moment of the day. Wow. Yeah.
So I mean, I think that's good and bad exactly.
It's good and bad because I think with nicotine and with a lot of drugs whose that first time you use it, and it truly can be miraculous, especially with nicotine, especially for intellectual activities. I find that nicotine if you don't have any tolerance for writing and for reading
is almost unparalleled in its ability to focus you and give you sort of intellectual cognitive stamina, but
But the trick is to not use it all the time.
Yeah. Yeah. Easier said than done. I mean, there is a difference in the pharmacokinetic between an orally observed, nicotine product, and maybe an inhaled one, right? The rapidity of onset from inhaling. Nicotine has so much faster results in a higher Spike
and sure. Sure. And even culturally, you can't sit in a library, smoking a cigarette anymore. You can redraw it. I have not tried. Never really smoke cigarettes. I smoke maybe, you know, three or four cigarettes.
My entire life. I was always too neurotic to smoke because I just thought it was bad for you and didn't want to do anything that was overtly self-destructive. Sort of thought. You know, if you're going to do the sort of thing you might as well do whatever you can to do it in the least damaging way possible. So and I had both of my grandmother's died from lung cancer and it just seemed like one of these things. Like why is it worth it to do it? Yeah, so I was never especially attracted to smoked tobacco.
I did for a period become sort of dependent on snorted tobacco. Yeah, because I was I was going through it a period where I was really really admire the science fiction writer Philip K dick and during I was almost obsessed with him for a little while. And so I was like, I should do more things to be. Like Philip K dick as many as possible. George is probably not a good way to live your life. But one of the things that that Philip K dick love was snuff. So I thought, all right. I'll start getting into stuff as well. And that was when I started to realize that
Did it almost seems like smoking is the worst way to ingest nicotine level every other way that I've experimented with has been Superior Superior in what way both in terms of health. And in terms of, I think you do want this sustained. A fact, if at all possible, and with snorted tobacco, it's almost the perfect route of administration because you have the fast onset, but then you have the sustained effect that lasts.
Sometimes hours. Why do you think it is that you don't really hear much about people using snuff anymore these days? I think because it's extremely disgusting. I think that's more disgusting than smoking.
It's good
question. Yes, potentially even more disgusting than smoking because the tobacco has to exit your head. You can, you know in, there's no way to get rid of it. It's not absorbed into your bloodstream. They're small. It's powdered tobacco, but it's not going to just be fully absorbed. So you have to blow black. Tobacco snot out of your nose repeatedly and it starts to do crazy things to your nose. After, of course, I'm
Should be obvious that if you're snorting plant material all day, every day that it's going to start doing strange things to your sinuses. And and so I never got quite this deep into it. The chemist that I work with for a period was using it even more than I ever did and it had actually stained his nostrils. Look, you had a sort of black ring around his nostrils and you have to carry a special snuff handkerchief. All these like, weird Antiquated objects to deal with the disgusting side effects.
Of using it that way. So even though it is very nice. And especially if it's mentholated. It's very nice and there's a lot of different flavors and it's kind, it's got an interesting history, you know, people were snoring tobacco in Europe at least long before they were, you know, after was brought over before they were smoking it. So it's a good way, but it also very disgusting
way.
So that makes a lot of sense in it. It also translates nicely to an interesting story about some other ways that you've consumed nicotine because Sammy and John. And I were joking a long time ago. What's the most extreme way that we can think of to consume the nicotine? And we're like, What? If somebody was just doing lines of nicotine? Just snorting, like, just the nicotine salt. And I remember when I first talked to you about this project. You told me that you
Had an interesting unusual way of consuming nicotine. Can you describe, which was
snorting, it? Yes. So I say what nicotine pure nicotine, though, pure nicotine, nicotine salt. In this case. It was nicotine citrate. And, and again, this was out of a desire to take advantage of the things that I loved about snuff. But to do it in such a way that it didn't involve snorting enormous amounts of tobacco, which also has its own problems as, of course, you know, there's, you know, potentially additional car.
Energetic properties in these other components from the fermentation and tobacco as well as whatever additives that are probably undesirable, but maybe not. So,
I was looking for a way to do this in a slightly safer and less disgusting Manner, and the obvious solution was to take pure nicotine free base, create a water soluble salt. Nicotine citrate is one, that's used medicinally and snore that and it
works. How how long were you consuming this?
I was consuming it as the pure nicotine solution, that I was snorting for not too long, maybe a couple weeks or something like that before. I started to think, you know, again, these are maybe not the best paths to travel. It was okay. I think maybe I had and like, a slightly ominous nosebleed or something like that. The made me think. All
right. Irritated possibly.
Yeah.
Makes sense. Yeah, and in what context would you use this? Like, you know in public or know, I would use it primarily while writing and reading because I think that there's something very unnatural about a lot of these intellectual tasks that are set before us every day. Like we almost we definitely did not evolve to write emails for six hours a day, but that's more or less a necessity of Modern Life for most people and stimulants. Really.
With sustained periods of writing and reading, I think that they I think a lot of what is typically diagnosed is ADHD. May just be a sort of a version to this very unnatural need to sit in front of a computer writing and reading non-stop for multi-hour
stretches. The essentially make that activity less
boring. Yes, they make it less boring. And I think they allow it to not only be less boring but more interesting as
well. Sure.
Sure. Yeah.
Well, it's interesting because it seems like people have been using tobacco for a long time. And, you know, if you think about like the indigenous cultures that started using tobacco like in the Americas, do you think they were using it for the same reasons? Like, they were getting bored while they were hunting or just like, sitting around waiting for stuff to happen. I mean, I can't imagine that yeah tribal life. Is that stimulating all the time, right? Yeah. Yeah. I'm not an expert on the
Any of tobacco, but my impression typically has been that indigenous groups that use tobacco.
Revere it as a sacred plant and do not use it in that pattern that in any way resembles Contemporary American use or, you know, there's there isn't daily smoking of tobacco or it's not sanctioned as a advisable way to use it. It's used ceremonially during specific events, and that's pretty much it. And I don't know if that was because of an awareness of its addictiveness or because of scarcity, which is something that doesn't exist in the same way.
Modern users, you know, you can have as much tobacco as you want, but a lot of these sacred plants and fungi were scarce in the past. And so they had to be conserved and used by certain people at certain times. I don't know exactly what what rules govern, the use of tobacco products, but my impression even today, and some, you know, and like, Mazda Tech culture. A lot of people will grow tobacco on their property, but they don't use it everyday, it sometimes even use symbolically during ceremonies, as a
Like a powerful plant, but not necessarily something that they're consuming.
Yeah, you hear stories about that, you know, doing large amounts of of tobacco in the form of smoke or something. Can it do induce visuals? And I think you remember, I remember you saying, it's some point that you've had an experience like that. Sure. Yeah, and then there's yes, there's of course, different species of tobacco and there's nicotiana tobacco, um, which is what is typically used in cigarettes, and then there's nicotiana Rustica, which has higher levels of
Of nicotine, as well as some of these beta-carboline alkaloids, that may add some additional potentially psychedelic flavor to the effect of the tobacco. And so, yes, it seems that high-dose use of nicotiana. Rustica does have a potentially, like Visionary psychedelic effects, but also I have an annual. I did try one of these preparations, but I didn't analyze it. And I've always wondered whether it contains something else.
Else in addition to the tobacco, if there might have been some, you know, DMT containing plant, for example or something of that nature, but I did have this kind of pulse of, of interesting closed eye visuals. That was not something I'd ever experienced previously. So it may be that, that's a result of, you know, a very high dose. Sudden, fact sudden onset. There's a lot of things that are, you know, of course, different based on the dose. It's consumed and the rapidity of onset.
Or it may have been because of some other components in these repay. Snuffs that were becoming increasingly popular a couple years ago to know if they're still kind of, in the United States, Shamanism circuit the way they once
were, I never get invited to those parties, so you're going to have to let me know. But while we're on the topic of kind of nicotine generally, before we kind of dive into other kinds of drugs at Large,
I wonder if you have seen or followed any of the recent work by dr. Paul Newhouse about using nicotine as a way to combat some of the onset of symptoms in an Alzheimer's patients. And whether you think it's possible, maybe more generally to use nicotine as, as a medicine, not just for smoking cessation. Yes, absolutely. And it
seems pretty clear that the
Incidence of Parkinson's disease is reduced among smokers and they don't know exactly why. But that's a pretty exciting little piece of information
and it's not because they died earlier for anybody who's wondering because they have controlled for
that. Yeah. So stuff like that's very promising. It seems improved memory. It seems to be something that under certain circumstances, could be very beneficial. Maybe, if not nicotine, various derivatives. I mean, there's a lot a lot to work within that space.
Pace. And and so when you so you obviously believe it, nicotine has benefits whether for cognitive performance or medicinal or otherwise, so, why take a drug Holiday from
nicotine?
It's a good question. One is diminishing returns. I find that with most things. There is it's good to take a break. You want to use it for a period and then you want to stop for a little while as well to reduce any tolerance that you might have. And it restores the interesting properties of the drug that first made you want to use it. The other thing is, I think, drugs are amazing, scapegoats for almost everyone even people that
Like, drugs, I find myself falling into this trap all the time of thinking. Oh, well, you know, this, this nicotine that used to help, but it's not good anymore, and I need to cut that out or maybe cannabis. Maybe it helps me sleep, and maybe it's interfering with the architecture of my sleep and maybe I'm actually less rested, and maybe I would be happier if I never used cannabis, and I think it's important to experiment. Ali stop taking drugs just so you can learn that they're probably not actually the cause of your problems, which is to rule it out. Because what I find when I am
Sober for long periods of time. Is that most of the problems that I was previously blaming on this or that drug still exist, but at least I understand now that whatever the problem was goes deeper than the nicotine gum or smoking a little bit of cannabis before bed.
Wherever you go. There you are. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense to me. I think. And I remember last time we met up, you were taking a drug Holiday from both nicotine and cannabis. Yes, simultaneously, so you
Like to take a complete drug holiday, it seems from everything all at once. Not eliminating things piece by piece or it kind of just depends on how you're
feeling. Yeah. I think it's good to eliminate everything. You can unless it's medically necessary. Of course, it wouldn't suggest someone not take, you know, and so on. Yes, exactly. But yeah, I think it's good. If only because it allows you to stop blaming the drugs and you can see. Oh, was it really the Cannabis? That was the problem or was it really alcohol, or was it really this or that? I think it's, you know, you need to
Get a sort of Baseline reading on who you are periodically and then you can add these things back into the equation and see how things
change that makes sense to me. Yeah, I mean the word drug holiday or the phrase drug
holiday has kind of interesting connotations, but I think the like where it comes from is the idea that like sometimes when you're taking a you know, a medicinal like a pharmaceutical drug that you kind of accumulate some potential for chronic toxicity.
Is and by taking some time off, you can sort of, you know, eliminate those while still retaining, whatever the benefits that you're deriving from those drugs are and it sounds like that that could be the case with this as well. As you know, by taking time off from the drug. You're, you know, you maybe you know, even if it's like, you know a mental block that you're having about is this drug causing some some side effects.
And you know you get back on and and you know, it's even the benefits or even greater than they were when you just before you went on the drug holiday, right? Yeah, I think there's something really magical about nicotine when you first use it and you do lose that with daily use. So the question is, how do you have as much of that magic as possible? And I think you have it from periodic considered, use almost closer to this shamanic idea where you recognize it. It's a very powerful medicine that
Be used at certain times very been officially and you use it. Maybe once a week or something like that when you're writing or when you're trying to start a new project and then you fully take advantage of the therapeutic properties of it that might, otherwise be sort of diminished by daily use or at least, you have that impression the same. I think is true of a lot of stimulants, like amphetamine as well. Like, if you use amphetamine everyday, you don't feel. You're just using it to reduce the withdrawal of not using amphetamine after a pretty short period of time, but if
You use amphetamine once a month or less. Then you can have a kind of really amazing effect from
it.
Or you might end up whiteboarding out three new businesses. None of which makes sense upon further reflection. I could also happen, you know, not not speaking from experience, but maybe we can shift into a few questions about you. Sure. So, how did you get into doing what it is that you do? I remember reading that you started contributing to Vice when you are in college, right?
Yeah. I mean, I've always been very interested in drugs.
I think it's a pretty fascinating area. And now everyone is it seems like the world is sort of catching up but even just a few years ago, a decade ago. A lot of these areas were more, stigmatized psychedelics were not talked about as medicines in the same way that they are now and it was an exciting time to start talking about things like that because it was all kind of starting to become more available due to the Internet. So I wrote a lot about the grey market and also started
making these documentaries and started working in a lab. That was another thing that kind of really broadened my understanding of this subject matter. And it's been fun because I've had this sort of anthropological element of getting to travel to these different countries and spend time with indigenous groups and observe the way that they interact with various medicinal plants or fungi. And I also get to work in a lab and synthesize chemicals and see that side of it. And
And also, you know, interview people that work and clandestine drug Labs or law enforcement and it's giving me the sort of holistic, understanding of the drug world. That's been really beneficial. Like, I'm very grateful even though it's been a sort of scattered way of learning about the subject. I think it's been a really good
way. So what would you say is the goal of the
show?
I think to show as many sides as possible because you know, if there's been any problem with the way drugs have been covered historically, it's been such a polarizing issue that you either have people that are just violently attacking the substances because they're so terrified of them. They feel that it's their moral responsibility to scare everyone away from using them. And in some instances, it may have even worked but that's not the way that you
To prevent people from using drugs by lying to them and making them. So afraid they don't use them. It doesn't help Society in the end and it also interferes with drug policy because if everybody thinks that the reason not to do lsds because it's going to damage your chromosomes, then, maybe it seems like a good idea to make it illegal because it's dangerous and it could cause birth defects in the children of LSD users. So, that's the right thing to do. But so I can see why journalists were eager to promote those sorts of narratives in the
80s. But the end result is that people had all these horrible misconceptions about these drugs that have really powerful therapeutic effects. So I want to show as many sides as possible to show the benefits. But also to show the way these things actually exist because you can go too far in the other direction as well, which is almost where we are right now, where everybody is so excited about the clinical use of psychedelics and everyone's talking about the work that's being done at Johns Hopkins or they're talking about, you know, this trial at NYU and this and that and it
They're really medicines that. You forget that, the whole reason that people care about psychedelics in the first place is,
Typically Black Market illegal use that the majority of profound psychedelic experiences that people have had have been crimes and you want to acknowledge that that is the reality that is the state of fair of Affairs in 2019. So I yeah, I want to show every side of it possible because I think they're all really interesting. The chemistry the pharmacology, the clinical aspect. Maybe this is the least interesting part. And then, of course, you know, the cultural aspect of seeing how these drugs actually
Interact with the real world. Yeah, I mean it's interesting that you mentioned sort of the the the pendulum swing in the other direction because it's like, you know, basically the only way that we can accept at least here in the US the use of some of these substances is for for medicinal use and you know, why do you think it's the case that we don't accept recreational use of of substances other than you know, tobacco.
Alcohol, which sort of on the spectrum of risk seem to be pretty harmful, you know, compared to some of these other substances.
Yeah. I
don't know, but I find it very troubling. I find it extremely troubling because it creates a unfair interpretation of use. Even, you know, very recently the FDA approved. This intranasal ketamine preparation for treatment of depression. And how do people typically use ketamine on the black market? They snort it.
This is like a medical affirmation of something that a lot of non-medical users have known for decades. And so what about all those people that we're doing? What is essentially the exact same thing that the FDA just approved but they were doing it decades ago or doing it. The day before it was approved, was that not medicinal just because the FDA hadn't yet said that, that was something that could treat depression. It's a it's a really bad way to think about things because it allows people to look down on non-medical use when
the only barrier between medical and non-medical. Use in many of these instances is one of politics and policy. It's not truly a medical barrier.
So it sounds like a lot of times. It's just a matter of creating a diagnosis that the drug can treat, you know, like not to say that these aren't gentleman medical issues which you know, they certainly are but you know in some cases it's like we don't accept that. These drugs have a medicinal purpose until we have a diagnosis that, you know, the drug can actually help with, right? And I think the medicalization can be damaging.
Because what if somebody says, you know, I'm nervous before a date and I want to take a benzodiazepine before that date because I'm really nervous about it and you're not medicalizing at all. You're just saying this is an isolated incident, that is going to cause anxiety. I would like to take some kind of anti anxiety medication beforehand, but there's no room for that. In our current culture. You have to be diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, and then you're told that there's something different about you. And in fact, you have to
these anxiolytics drugs, maybe every day for the rest of your life and you'll become miserably addicted. How is that? A superior medical interpretation of it? What may be an isolated incident of anxiety? Yeah, which people are essentially self-medicating anyway, when they like have a drink or something before they go out, of course. Yeah.
So this kind of ties back into a theme that we've discussed before when we were out which was it sounds like what? You're
Is that all of these drugs or most or many of these drugs have different places in life and maybe, maybe the ideal form of use is to use many, have a larger tool box and use each thing with great respect and more occasionally, and that ties in. Because you said that often, when you get recognized in public, it's often a kind of drunk person who comes up to you and will say, dude.
Dude, how are you? Still alive? And you said that that irritates you because you would say, well, what you would say, why are you surprised that I'm alive? Is that what you say?
Well, yes. There's this absurd idea that drug use is somehow extremely dangerous. And again, this is like a, some Vestige of the scare reporting of the 80s and 90s and it really still today where someone would think that it's amazing that you've consumed a drug. First of all, I don't know what these people have seen me do. That was so,
Dangerous. It mean sometimes the traveling is dangerous, but I don't think I've ever done anything on camera that they would know of that is.
Now we just we always laugh about the episode where you were forced to eat like 50 fish, heads, fish
heads, thought you might get food poisoning from that one. We
yes. Yeah, that. Okay. So yeah, I ate it, not because of the drop is lovingly prepared fish dinner among friends and I was just fine. So I'm, I'm not surprised that I survived that there was. Of course. I was a little bit afraid of ciguatera, which is this
Type of poisoning that occurs when eating certain, typically, large tropical fish. And it's pretty horrifying if you want to see some really frightening YouTube videos, you can see people crying talking about how ciguatera has destroyed their life.
How would it be causes its Planeteers? It's well,
it's does. It does very bizarre things to it? Actually modulate strip Channel functioning in such a way that your sense of hot and cold are reversed. So people
Report being unable to eat ice cream because it burns their lips. So horribly and it's such a potent neurotoxin that there are two case reports. I mean, I borderline don't believe this, but it is in the medical literature that showed that it is the only instance that I'm aware of a sexually, transmissible poison.
Other two cases, the people that had sex with each other
and poisoned someone else through sacks. This has been reported twice in separate articles anyway, so it's very
powerful scary neurotoxin, that seems Ultra capable of Crossing between organisms and
And is also apparently an aphrodisiac. I don't know if you watch these YouTube videos. I don't think you'll think it's an aphrodisiac, but maybe for some people, it seems to cause a lot of vomiting and diarrhea and reversal of hot and
cold. And it just has a doesn't seem to be reversible. It seems to be a long-term,
like multi-year poisoning. It's really terrifying. So, that was what I was concerned about, and but it didn't happen. You can do now to scream. I was completely screwed. Yeah, and but there's this attitude of fear of
Tation which I think is damaging as well, where you go to a psychiatrist, and you say I'm depressed and they say, okay. Here's this SSRI at this dose. Come back in a couple months if you don't like it. Not like, I think it is sort of old-fashioned model where you maybe go to a pharmacist and they give you a glass bottle full of the powder and then you could, you know, titrate, the dose and figure out what dosing frequency works best for you. Because we're all so different. And if that doesn't work, maybe try something else.
Else, but that's all discouraged. It's even would be potentially considered abuse. But I think that's the only way you can figure out what
works well with some of those ssris and things. They, they reportedly take a while to take
that. Sorry. Let's do it. Well, yeah, that oh, so it might not work without keeping that in mind.
Sure. What do you, what is your opinion on these class of drugs? Because there is some criticism, especially in recent years, from some members of the psychiatric community, that ssris actually, don't really even work. Is that right?
Sure. Yeah, it's certainly become really is always been a very controversial way of treating depression. I don't know that literature well enough to be able to make a really informed assessment. I know that.
They work for some people. They clearly don't work for a substantial number of people as well. You have to be careful about which ones you're talking about because there's probably at least four that are approved in the United States. May be more at this point and, but yeah, it seems like it's not ideal. If only because the onset of the therapeutic effect of two weeks is too long for most people, you do want something that has an immediate effect and that's something again that you typically will.
See a non-medical use is people will gravitate towards substances that cause an immediate therapeutic effect. Nobody is taking something that takes two weeks before it just hurts any kind of, which is kind of why that this approval of ketamine was kind of such a breakthrough. Because it's something that does, you know, act pretty rapidly at least compared to any other marketed SSRI or antidepressant. Yes. It's a huge
selling point. I don't know. I gotta
See for myself. Can I can I get some somewhere on
the? Well, I was actually just reading the drug label for it and it was and it was actually pretty disappointing because it was like, you have to actually be in a doctor's office, and you have to be there for like two or three hours before, you know, before and after treatment so that they can like, you know, make sure that you're not having any kind of weird, you know, dissociative effects.
And it's not even like MDMA where the doctor used to do it with you, right?
So at least you guys were both kind of be on the same page. Doesn't sound like it. Yeah, I mean, maybe if you have a cool doctor, they would, you know, you're shocked. You're also had treatment resistant
depression and
its timing their doses to be in sync with you. Yeah. I
mean the whole thing is kind of bizarre. I like they're these nasal inhalers. Each produces two squirts of ketamine that are 14 milligrams, and then you're supposed to use several of these inhalers over the course of
The session Each of which cost like several hundred dollars. So you like a year of treatment with this product? I think it could cost like 60 or 70 thousand dollars. It's pretty wild this whole
model. Well, I saw your tweet from earlier today or yesterday, where are you were saying? The people were not referring to it as ketamine. Right?
Right. And that bothers me, and then people, of course, misinterpreted what I was saying and said,
you think that there can't be pharmacological differences, between two enantiomers of a drug. Of course, there can
be
Glenn routinely are pharmacological differences between two enantiomers of a drug. But what I found remarkable about the way this is being reported on is that they're in some instances saying that it isn't ketamine or that it's a chemical cousin of ketamine or that it's ketamine. Like when not only has ass enantiomer ketamine been used medicinally in the past just as an anesthetic. So this isn't new. It's a old method of administration people have been snorting ketamine for a long time.
So this idea that they can somehow pretend that, this is totally different from the ketamine that you've heard of, in the past where people are using it as a club drug. This is something totally new. It just seems really irresponsible from the perspective of the reporting and it denies. The fact that people have been doing this. Exactly like that for
decades. Have you yourself used ketamine? Absolutely. Yeah. What was, what was the experience like for someone like myself who has not used ketamine before?
It's a bit hard to describe because it is, you know, it's classified as a dissociative anesthetic and dissociative is a decent word for the experience. You are not typically, it's just a pendant but at higher doses, let's say a hundred milligrams intramuscular. You're not interacting with your environment anymore. It doesn't really matter where you are. You have gone inside yourself. You might not know whether or not your eyes are open and
The experiences tend to be for me, very abstract. They don't. Sometimes they have a dreamlike quality, but they're even more abstract than a dream. They don't necessarily have a narrative component. It can sometimes be almost more like a screensaver or something like that, where you're, you know, traveling down a tube or there's this sense of turning Pages. Again. These are very abstract things that can't even be verbally articulated in any meaningful way. But yeah, maybe the sense that your Consciousness is a book and pages are being turned or that your
Being I often have like a somewhat paranoid sense that I have been given access to privileged knowledge that underlies, the construction of the universe or like that. This is like, oh this is, this is like the creation Network. This is the root channel from which Consciousness emerges, and I'm seeing this core kernel of Consciousness or something like that. But again, very
abstract. And how long does that last?
Pretty short acting. I mean that was one of the main incentives. When they were developing ketamine is it's a chemical relative of PCP PCP had a longer duration. And so it caused these emergent phenomena, where people would come out of the anesthetized state, but they were still under the influence of the drug and they would create problems in the hospital that have to be subdued, have to be reinvested sized. So the idea was to create something that was metabolized more rapidly than PCP and that's what
One of the things that although ketamine, I think was actually discovered serendipitously. That was one of the things that went behind its approval, was the short duration. So you're in and out of it. And about, let's say between one and two hours.
Okay, let's still fairly long time to believe that you're on a page. That's
turning consistent with who you are. Yeah. It's like it's and it's also what I think is really interesting about it, is that it is a drug that is addictive for people under
Certain circumstances, but it's not like amphetamine or like other classically. Addictive drugs. I would not even go. So far as to say that it is a euphoric drug. It is almost a lateral shift into a different type of Consciousness. That is
Very strange, very interesting, but not necessarily reinforcing or euphoric in any conventional sense of the
word. So you don't jump out of that state and then look at your friend and say, let's do that again. No, yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Then. Yeah.
So that sounds like a very strange experience. What's the strangest experience? You've had under the influence of a mind-altering drug, the strangest? I don't know these superlatives. It can be a little bit
difficult. So the same one in your top, 30,
my top 30. Okay, that's easier. One. Very strange experience that I had was with a hypnotic drug. That was almost.
Merc and lundvik pharmaceuticals, called gearbox at all and made it to phase 3, clinical trials and then supposedly failed some efficacy measure and also is causing hallucinations in some people. So they pulled it from the market because this was right at the height of the Ambien, although things actually got much worse for ambient with Roseanne later. But this was during the First with the first wave of Ambien scare where there was Tiger. Woods is like me.
Mistress has spoken to these tabloids and said that they had crazy Ambien sex and and what there was some other and some congressmen or something had driven into a building in the middle of the
night. And yeah, it seemed like it was a scapegoat for a lot of aberrant
Behavior, right? And also, probably, although, of course, people use drugs as scapegoats in this instance. It's such a powerful deliriant that I do think it most likely caused some of the behavior as well,
because you can make some money as an expert.
Yeah, well, you know, I want to be fair to these people because I thought not that. I'm not like Pro Rose and necessarily. I don't agree with her what Roseanne did by any means, but I didn't like that everyone were there. Everyone is saying these things like, you know, it was inside her all along because you wouldn't have done that unless it was inside you it's like what about these reports of people buttering their cigarettes? What about these reports of people painting their houses in the middle of the night? Was that inside?
Side them. Yeah. Yes.
Today's the day I'm painting the house.
So I don't know. But anyway, I think that it was something having to do with all of those fears about approving. A new deliriant hypnotic that caused Merkin Lund back to Pulga box at all from the market, but I managed to get my hands on a supply of gearbox at all, from Denmark, around the time of the clinical trials were going on and I analyzed it and it was bona fide.
Ariel and so I would periodically use that chemical. Which happens to be a conformational, you constrained, derivative of muscimol, the chemical and Amanita muscaria mushrooms, and I would periodically use that to sleep and it would just send me to sleep. So there's nothing to report. That was all that interesting. But then I was in Tokyo once and did take it at, what would have been the equivalent of 2 p.m. New York time. And it just really was a very unexpected delirium and it I think again what?
What is so interesting about a lot of these different classes, is people think that everything is about, you know, how good was it? How hedonistic was it? Well, it's almost like I think of these things more, like, trying different foods, it maybe it's not necessarily about whether or not it's good in some hierarchy of goodness. It's about seeing what's out there and deciding what you do or don't like. And so this is like a new psychological territory to explore. So, ketamine is whether it's good or bad. It's different. And it's something that after you've experienced it, you can add that to your
Logical vocabulary and say, that's a type of experience that exists and it's interesting. And now I know about it and maybe it will give me some additional empathy for people with schizophrenia or something, or maybe it says something about Psychopathology in some way. Or maybe not. Maybe it's just a weird experience and that's
enough or let's not whatever it is. That's inside you
or that. Yes, that is well. So that's how I felt about this, this experience. Where was it was like, oh, here's a new type of Consciousness. I've never experienced before. It's not necessarily good but it's completely different. I feel that I am now a
Passive observer in my own Consciousness. And that all my thoughts are being driven by something outside of myself at a speed that seems incomprehensibly fast, and it was very
unexpected. So, here's a question that I've often wondered about you and other Psychonauts in general. If you agree with that term or not. I don't know. I don't know about that term. Okay. Well, if you'll indulge me, okay, sure, you have now.
had such a
storied history ingesting. All of these substances that most people have no frame of reference for at least don't have the large catalog. Catalog of experiences that you do. Do you feel like,
You can be objective in your measurement because now Hamilton at whatever age you are, vs. Hamilton ten seven years ago. I've, you know, I've, you see this in people who have done LSD, many times versus someone who's only done it once or twice that there's an ability to kind of Center yourself and remind yourself that. Oh, I'm actually experiencing the effects of a drug. You know, this might not be
Might not be caught up in like, you know, a wizard spell or whatever. Some people can convince themselves that they're in. So do you worry about that? And then that affecting your ability to be objective in your
experience? I would not say that I worry about it too much, because it's really impossible to say, either way without a control Hamilton that hasn't done any other several control Hamilton, sort of, you know, maybe only done that one thing, one time before and this is true of all experience in life. Not necessarily just the use of drugs. It's really hard to say was this class to this class.
Us change me or did traveling to this country change made without a control. You just don't know what the causal relationships are between really any events in your life. And so it's very hard to say, but I do know that. Yeah, you know, a history of not only trying, many of these things myself. And also, interviewing, countless people who have often had substance abuse disorders, or even just people who had really positive experiences has changed my interpretation of certain things, and has definitely given
Your bias. So, you know, I'm biased against opioids. Simply because I have seen so many people that have problems with them. That if I try and opioid, even if I like it, there's part of me, that would think now. It's probably what if even if it's good. It's not worth it. It's not good. It's not it's not it's potentially not worth the risk, not good enough. I'm not interested and of story. So that I think that there is this kind of like
Medical overlay that exist where I'm never unconscious of the potential toxicity. And that also happens with new new substances. If you're investigating something that's never been tried before. That is part of your experience. It's going to be totally different than the way that somebody interacts with the pharmaceutical product. And I think that's one of the weirdest things about pharmaceuticals is you most people approach them with this assumption that they're completely safe because they've gone through clinical trials, and other people of use them for a few years. So, why not take Strattera everyday forever, or why not? Take
Prozac for the rest of your life. So that also changes it. So there's no, it's not, yes. It is different for me, but I think it's different for everyone because everyone is experiencing these substances and really everything in their life with it. An overlay of all the knowledge that will necessarily bias them toward the experience in one way or
another. Do you think there's an inverse correlation between how you Fork a drug is and how dangerous it is? Or
Because it seems like you're in kind of a safe space, to some extent by focusing, a lot of your time and and research and efforts on psychedelics because those aren't frequently as abused. Right.
Right, right. Well, I think cannabis is absurdly euphoric. I think cannabis is I think cannabis is one of the then again you have to wonder do I like cannabis or do I think that it's so euphoric and fantastic? Because I'm coming to it. Also, with this knowledge that.
Two other you foreign substances. This one is relatively innocuous and is potentially even beneficial under certain circumstances depending on how you want to think about it. And that allows me to remove some of my neurotic objections and fears that would otherwise taint the experience.
Yeah, I mean it's it's interesting because you know, a lot of people will, you know, scientists will argue that. That's sort of one of the reasons why nicotine, for example, has such a strong, you know, behavioral addiction component to it is because you know, the the sort of the properties of nicotine that make it, you know, beneficial for cognitive enhancement that anyway, you know, improve working memory and learning.
Actually improve the sort of ability to have a conditioned response to positive, stimuli and life. So, when you have a cigarette, usually it's at a specific time, right? When you're stressed out or when you're, you know, enjoying something or when you just need a break and you tend to you tend to associate the, the sensation of nicotine, you know, even though it could be in a vacuum, you know, pretty sort of neutral expression.
Perience, I'll be different from, you know, how you normally experience reality because you're associating with all these moments that creates sort of the positive, you know, the positive experience of using it. Is that something that you feel to be true with, you know, other psychoactive drugs, not necessarily because nicotine, again, it's Unique in that its culturally integrated into this continuous, use throughout the day, maybe caffeine would be another example.
Ball and cannabis for some people but it occupies an interesting Niche that you don't necessarily see with like LSD or something like that. Where the use pattern tends to be intermittent. Maybe even just less than once a year. So,
I'm not sure. Yeah, I mean, I guess that makes sense because you're using it so often that you can create this kind of like this learned response is like pavlovian response pretty quickly. Whereas, like probably very few people, use LSD frequently enough, or even just enough for that to happen. And I think people like these experiences that sort of serve as punctuation throughout the day actually, right. When I first started drinking Soylent, I remember one of
First things that I thought was interesting about it was that I lost a certain punctuation in the day where typically you have meals in the meals, are the brakes. And then, if you are sipping on a liquid meal throughout the day, there's no reason to ever stop working and I think nicotine also serves as almost like a pharmacological meal for some people where it's their excuse, they can go out after dinner. They don't need to sit at the table. They want to get up, they can go and have their nicotine breaking its
Thoroughly and socially permitted and there's very few other drugs that are quite like that. In fact, none. It's Unique.
There's coffee breaks to some
extent. But even those you don't go outside. You have to remain in this social sphere. Nicotine is one of the only things where you can say, like, goodbye everyone. I need to be alone for a minute.
Now. What do you think about micro dosing? Because you used LSD is an example of something that would be more episodic. But now it's I don't know it. Maybe it doesn't seem to be as popular as it was a couple of years ago. Is least in terms of people writing about it. Yeah. Do you think that that has value or is interesting?
There was recently a study on DMT micro dosing and came up. Pretty, I think maybe just a couple weeks ago in rodents, that I thought was really cool. I need to look at it more carefully, before commenting on its validity, but it seemed to show a lot of like, antidepressant effects. If I remember correctly. And, you know, I think micro dosing is one of these things. It's a giant nebulous entity. Where, first of all anyone that's used for virtually, any one that's using LSD micro doses. They don't know what dose they're using, because LSD,
Is a black market commodity that's laid on blotter paper, and the people are making a totally false assumption that each hit of that blotter paper contains exactly 100 micrograms of LSD based on what. If anything, I see nothing but evidence at a typically contains far less than that.
Well, they're financially motivated to have less.
Right? Right. Yeah. And a hundred micrograms is a lot and then also what salt. There's different salts. If it's, you know, if it's a few Marisol, is that the stoichiometric salt is the Hemi salt. Anyway, you can go on and on about these different variables.
Aren't measured. So nobody knows what the dose is that they're taking. So it makes it hard to know. If the micro dosing that one person describes is the same as the micro dosing that another person describes. And that are they, what purposes are they doing? And how frequently some? People may actually be tripping slightly, some people to find a micro doses as sub psychedelic experience. And then are you going to compare LSD to psilocybin? And are those even the appropriate substances through? They just happen to be the most available psychedelics, but I think that there's almost certainly other psychedelics that may not even necessarily have to use.
And it on microdose, they may simply be less potent, psychedelics that are just as well. If not better suited an example would be a drug that shulgin created called ariadne and Nauticus Boga AR IAD any
Also called Alpha, Ethel, to CD, and not a controlled substance. And it was one of a few substances that this kind of Alexander, shulgin created that actually were of interest to pharmaceutical companies. So it was taken through some preclinical research and even given to humans as a potential treatment for dementia and never made it to the market, but it was well before this micro dosing craze began, it was kind of
Idea, what if we were to harness some of the mood enhancing properties of psychedelics at low Doses and just make that the therapeutic effect. It may have the pharmacology hasn't been looked at very carefully. So it may actually not be 5H T28 Agonist. It may have some other type of activity, but assuming that it's a low potency 5-ht to a Agonist. That's an example of a drug that isn't being microdose, that produces a microdose type experience, or ibogaine is another one that has really interesting for.
Mokou Dynamics, low doses have actually been used as a pharmaceutical and France. It has an energizing effect and you could go on and on there's a lot of these things that are potentially beneficial. So I think that like my major objections to this whole micro dosing thing are the lack of specificity and Precision in the definitions that are used by people. The lack of analytical verification and dosing understanding. And that people are assuming that LSD and psilocybin containing mushrooms are the only two ways to do it. When that's probably just the
Of the iceberg. Sure, but by definition, like these drugs are very difficult to study in that way because they're Elite. They're Controlled Substances. So in an ideal world, you would want to study these in a controlled clinical setting. But, you know, there there there are very few people in this country or even in the world that have the ability to do that, right? Yeah, you know, it's such a, it's an interesting time because if you look at older Medical
Literature, it was once routine for people to do self experiments. When you look at you know, the first research that was done with barbiturates self experiments done by psychiatrists. Insomnia, and they wanted to see does it work? And you see that again and again and again throughout medical history that that Janssen Pharmaceuticals who is routine for chemists to, to try the compounds that they had recently synthesized to see if it had a therapeutic effect. And in the the sort of
In scientific literature was to incorporate a bit of a narrative component. To any of these reports. You might say, you know, this is the synthesis is the melting point. This is you know, whatever behavioral measure and animals and this is what a patient said and it's not just a stick like a sterile statistical analysis of how they did on this or that rating scale. It's a little story and I find those little narrative reports so helpful and you don't really see those in the scientific literature anymore. But what you do see is them everywhere else, you see them all over.
Over the Internet, so maybe you can find that in a nature article, but maybe you will see it on Reddit and you could say, well.
There isn't any analytical verification. You can make all the objections that I just made to micro dosing and say, you don't know. And that's true. But I think that within this enormous body of
bioassays of self-reported drug experiences that you can, you know, kind of average things out and make some really interesting assessments of new drugs that would otherwise be million-dollar data points. It would require immense amounts of regulatory approval before one person could say this new psychedelic is psychedelic or this new dissociative is dissociative. So I think we have to Baby alter the way that this information is sampled, which is again, why I
Encourage people to be as precise as possible in dosing and do whatever they can in their power to know the identity of the materials that they're using. So that when they do report this material, it can be used by other people and can contribute to the body of psychopharmacological
knowledge.
That's kind of reminiscent of Sammys gripe against that company that makes that anti-aging pill right that their their argument is that they're running essentially a study by on unwilling participants who are purchasing the supplement from them and they're going to see in 20 30 years. If it has an
effect. Is that the idea? Yeah, and where is there a reason? They're not saying the name of it?
I don't know. Okay. I just don't want to be
advertising it to inflammatory. Also, don't want to throw dirt on.
Okay, sure, sure. Fair enough, that company. But yeah, I mean, obviously, people will work within the constraints that, you know, Society imposes on them and some of those constraints are there for good reason, you know, it's not okay to make anti-aging claims on a substance that you know, you're relying on data from like yeast to, you know, to to basically me market this product. But at the same time,
Time, you know, the F there is no FDA-approved, you know, or fda-regulated indication for aging, right? Because the FDA doesn't doesn't recognize aging as a disease, which I think it
should.
You disagree? I don't disagree, but I think that it would be a complete mess to try to get that recognized as a disease. I understand why they don't and it's not so much aging isn't my more flyable. Oh, it is. I mean, yeah, it's definitely quantifiable via, you know, certain markers, but
Like h.m.s.,
I mean, people either live longer on average or they don't because it would
It would entail like a really profound paradigm shift in the way medicine, is practiced in the United States, where it is fundamentally about treatment of disease, and not the betterment of well people. And so, where do you stop? Then, if that once you open that door? I think a lot of interesting things that actually ultimately would treat disease would be discovered, but it would change everything about the way that we understand medicine.
Well, it's interesting, you say that because I think that
The opposite is occurring to some extent right now, which is there are some anti-aging clinics where aging people can go and get hormones like testosterone or estrogen and have their hormones balanced. And from what I hear these people tend to feel healthier look healthier, but they often will maybe drop dead of a heart attack. For instance, maybe earlier than they otherwise would have but their well-being is increased. And so I think you know, there's some individual
Is there some calculus on the part of the individual that needs to be done?
Sure, absolutely. Do you feel comfortable with
death?
I would say that yes, I feel pretty comfortable with my own death. I wouldn't say that I'm especially comfortable with the death of people. I love I don't know exactly how you psychologically work through something like that. But yeah, I would say that I'm probably relative to most people not especially afraid of death, but it, you know, it.
It changes with time. And that's, I think one of the most amazing and weird and reliable therapeutic, effects of psychedelics is like, I don't wake up in the morning and think geez, like my fear of death is really weighing down on me today. It's not. I sometimes do really. Oh, yeah, like he probably doesn't do enough psychedelics,
not as as much as molten, but
but it's not something that I think of as a problem. I don't think I've ever had that thought. Like, I really need to do something about my fear of death right now.
Really messing me up. But once it's gone, you realize it was there and that you feel better and lighter, as a result of it being gone and psychedelics. I think by making you feel sometimes only for a moment sometimes not at all. But sometimes only for a moment they might make you feel like you're going to die. So they'll give you they'll give you a feeling. Yeah, I mean for a moment we cannabis or you get a little bit afraid and you think
All right. I'm a little bit afraid and I may have done something stupid and this may have been a mistake and now I'm in the bar was trying to tell me and now I'm going to die. And yeah, with, with anything else. Like, you know, it's it takes practice to get over your fears. So maybe just have to practice dying, a bunch of times and you won't be scared of it anymore. Right? And then and then you don't die. Typically, in my experience. I had not died for some people, they died, but it's rare. So you don't die. And then, yes, you have a little bit of practice.
And you feel better in the wake of it. And with some of these psychedelics DPT is one in particular that was used clinically in the treatment of a lot of people with, with terminal cancer in the 1970s. It really seems to have an absolutely remarkable effect. It helps people come to terms with their death and then you might think well, is that clinically necessary? Is that important? I would say absolutely because then it's not just you, it's your family as well. So these people
That might have children have wives have parents that are worried about them to see that they're at. Peace can be tremendously therapeutic for everyone involved. So I think that's one of the most amazing things about
psychedelics. So is that why? I mean, you mentioned DPT. I am only assuming based on its similarity in letters to DMT that there might be related. Yes. Okay, great. So already Pro Bowl starts out of. Dimethyl, okay.
Is that so?
In my more lemons.
Understanding of psychedelics. It seems like DMT. As always held up as the. Oh sure. Bro. You've done DMT or you've done or sorry, you've done LSD or you've done psilocybin via mushrooms or you've done whatever, but have you done DMT? Why why is DMT a held to as this sort of Holy Grail? A right of passage among people that consume psychedelics. I
think there's a number of reasons. One is the raw intensity.
The profundity of the visual hallucinations are arguably unparalleled among any other psychedelics, but I think within the umbrella of classical psychedelics, which are serotonergic, you have to kind of archetypal experiences. One is very personal environmental, ego-oriented associative Visual and I think that DMT typifies that type of experience, and then you have another type, the
Has to be more dissociative, less impersonal, non ego oriented, and things like five, Meo DMT or even DPT 10. It where the experience is, not about you. It's Universal and it could even be interchangeable with other people. It's not about your family or your experiences or the people that you love it's about life. And so DMT, I think is really a great example of this kind of personal environmental ego-oriented psychedelic experience that.
Is so dazzling that its reputation is sort of deserved. It's a truly remarkable substance and it's so simple and the fact that it's you know, at least found in Rat brains and may have some role though. Probably not. But who knows? I guess there's always emerging work being done by Gmail, Borg Egan and Steve Barker on the subject where they're finding new potential biological roles for DMT. So, you know, if there's just something about it, that's very special.
Here, it's released in the brain. When you die, is that just an urban legend?
It's it is, it is an urban legend, but apparently there's some stuff on the horizon coming out of that same Lab at University of Michigan, Michigan. That's going to potentially lend some support. Although, even if it is, it almost seems like an odd side issue. If that, I because it whether it is or is not the experience is remarkable, whether it is endogenous or not. The experience is remarkable.
Kind of a side issue, but it adds to the Mystique of
DMT. It seems like if you die and your brain is just leaking, all sorts of things, all over the place, that there might be some sort of combinatorial chemistry, where a lot of different things could be
found over. Definitely, definitely, they have a whole proposed mechanism that the idea is that it's bias some activity at Sigma receptors might
Increase cell survival under hypoxic
conditions and that, that could be the explanation for why people in their lives in, you know, when they have near-death experiences or
something that and why it might be selected for evolutionarily. Because maybe between two organisms, one that has a near-death DMT, releasing one, dozen the near-death DMT release also promotes survival. And so those people are more likely to reproduce and thus it has become part of our physiology. Although
it's romantic, but theoretically,
The
possible. Yeah. Yeah. We'll see but I almost feel like that's just a side issue because even if none of that turns out to be the case DMT is such a interesting substance. And of course, it's also found in so many different plants. Such as simple powerful
substance.
You probably are and you
smoke it.
You can smoke it or, of course, Ayahuasca is when DMT is combined with a monoamine, oxidase inhibitor and consumed orally. And then we
snorted you people on the planet. That's probably smoked DMT more times than they smoked a cigarette.
It's a wonder. I don't know. It's true. Yeah,
and okay, so we'll let you go soon. But have a few more questions. I don't mind one is. Do you feel like people have a fundamental right to control their own brain chemistry?
Absolutely. Yeah. I think it's very disturbing to imagine. Otherwise, I think all these attempts by the government to try to interfere with people's cognitive Liberty.
Just a horrible, horrible exercise and it just gets worse and worse. You know, there's always some state that is proposing a bill where they say. Oh, actually we're going to go a step further and we're not just going to control drugs. We're going to control receptors. We're going to control entire pharmacology. So any exoticness Agonist at the CB1 receptor is by that fact illegal. What? A horrible way. What a short-sighted way to deal.
With these problems related to abuse, instead of educating people to try to make entire pharmacology is illegal, and it is a slippery slope, and we've been playing this game for such a long time, every year, if you look at how many drugs are controlled, it's dozens every year people. It's so easy to lose track people barely even talk about it anymore. And because it's often drugs, in stigmatized classes, like opioids and cannabinoids people are less inclined to speak out to defend these substances. Because who wants to be the
I that's out there like picketing to prevent the prohibition of cyclopropyl fentanyl or drugs or whatever. But who knows what kind of unique pharmacology cyclopropyl fentanyl might have? It might have some kind of interesting biased signaling at the mule opioid receptor that could actually make it really valuable medically. Now, that's just off the table as a scientific
tool. So you Hamilton, if you ruled the world with an iron fist, you would
make all drugs legal.
Yes, of course would want some regulation in terms of the ones that are being sold for human consumption. But yes, I don't think that.
The Controlled Substances Act has done anything at
all. So can David at 10 years old? Go up to the pharmacy, counter and buy her was
the sort of control that I think would probably be beneficial is, especially things to protect children.
So age gate it and have a certain amount of Purity. But, I mean, to some extent, you know, what's the difference between a 17 and a half year old and an 18 year old in terms of their brain, chemistry, right? I mean, the problem that I would foresee and I largely
Re with you that, I think we need less prohibition, and less government involvement. But it seems like, I mean, if you use cigarettes as an example, people who smoke tend to be statistically from backgrounds that are more disadvantaged, and it seems like a lot of these drugs might affect, you know, I mean, you can see this with the opioid crisis, a lot of these. These drugs affect people who maybe their day-to-day lives isn't so great.
Great, and then they use a chemical to escape and then it kind of gets ahead of them. How do you control for for that? I mean, what if it just become the opiate of the masses becomes the opiate of the
masses. But then you further disadvantage the same people through prohibition because now, not only are they disadvantage. Now, they can go to prison and have any future job opportunities ruined by their criminal record. So that's not the way education is the only way forward and I agree. It's hard to say. What is the difference between a 17 and a half year old and an 18 year old?
Really? I think, even these sorts of hard limits create these illusions that drinking after 21. I don't think anyone actually thinks this, but you might, if you were from Mars or something think that drinking after 21 is good for you and drinking before, 21 is not good for you. And you know, what you really want is a society where people have a nuanced understanding of these subjects for their own benefit, you know, it's a really unfortunate the way that drug education has been conducted in the United.
States because it doesn't even end it illegal drugs. It also applies to pharmaceutical. So everyone is so mixed up and confused about everything that it it almost certainly contributes to most of the drug problems that we
encounter. Sure. Yeah. I mean, I think that the gateway drug hypothesis, which has been, you know, debunked in many ways, is interesting from what you said, at the beginning of the podcast because you said that some of these, you know, just say no, be very prohibitive.
All drugs, I think might contribute largely to people trying more new dangerous drugs because if you here, cannabis is going to make you go insane and then you have a moment with some friends in your teenage years and you smoke cannabis and then you realize well that didn't make us go insane. So maybe everything else that they said was BS to
write right in this sort of Nadia image that it's not your parents. Your parents won't like if you do drugs because it's bad.
It's bad, and it's like well, who you. There's no glory in acting like a fuckup. There's no benefit to hurting yourself. You should recognize that. These things are better. If you use them responsibly you can actually drive tremendous benefit. And I think that's one of the tragedies of a lot of people that kind of go off the rails a little bit, is then they get into a program with a a, we're suddenly there. They think that if they smoke a little bit of DMT, which would probably enrich their life, although I don't make any categorical.
About what DMT will do for people, but let's say it's hypothetically possible, might enrich their life, but they're afraid. They're going to relapse and be in a gutter drinking again. And this came from this very extreme, abuse oriented relationship that people tend to have with drugs or as I think if people understood like, there's no, yeah, there's no benefit to using these things stupidly. It'll just hurt yourself. There's in the same way that no one wants to eat food or few people want to eat Foods.
Self-destructively because you understand that there's an immediate or not necessarily media, but there's a consequence down the line.
Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. What about? If you have a question you can go for it. No, so I was curious, you largely try most of the substances that you depict on your show. Is there a kind of a no-go a line that you in your experiment self-experimentation? Do not cross. And what is that?
Fine, I would say the one line is simply. I don't want to use substance. This is ridiculous, misconception that people have, which is that I somehow am using the substances because this is like my chance to use the substances. Whereas I can assure anyone that the most expensive, most difficult imaginable way to use a drug, is to make a documentary about using that drug. If you if you want to use a drug definitely use it without making a documentary film.
Yeah, it's just not a good. It's not a loophole. It doesn't make anything easier for anyone, so, but people will somehow have this idea of like, how do I get that job? And some, which are we referring to making documentaries? I don't know, just make a documentary with your friends and then see if you can find a distributor. But, but if the question is, how do I use a drug then? That's really easy. But the rule is that I do want to communicate something through the use. It's not about the actual use. It's not about getting high. So, in the case of salvia, the reason that I
It seems it was just to show that what people had previously seen in terms of salvia use with people smoking in from a bong and going crazy and jumping out a window, is not necessarily the way it has to be. That that's a product of our society in a certain usage pattern. But done in a traditional context. It can actually be a beautiful and I hesitate to use the word spiritual, but beautiful experience, that is part of a really rich tradition, or with mushrooms to, again, show that these people aren't necessarily flipping out.
And having a wacky psychedelic experience, but it's actually a very calm low-dose experience. It's based on Christian tradition and it's completely different from what you might expect, same thing with San Pedro. That's all low dose. So one reason that I'm doing it is to just educate people. But if there's nothing to show, if there's no educational value in my own use, then I won't do it.
Or you might do some of these things on your own, not in front of the cash.
You understand. Yeah, because you know, if if I had never used
PCP for example, then I might think the PCP is as dangerous as everybody else thinks it is. But it's only because I have a personal understanding of having used, you know, a specific dose 5 milligrams of PCP hydrochloride under carefully, controlled conditions that I can say. No, this is not so different from ketamine. And a lot of these supposed problems associated with PCP are really problems associated with poverty, and with unmeasured doses.
That makes sense. That makes sense. What about crocodile? Is it as bad as
everybody says, oh, come on.
Well, I mean, you probably wouldn't take that drug. So
what's different not? Well, okay. What is different about that? Is that, that is a totally imp, your reaction mixture. So I'm not going to do again. Anything self-destructive. I don't have any need to just like hurt myself by taking some phosphorus-containing garbage, that some guy mixed up and inject that into my veins for. There's no. But if it were purified,
Does a Morphine at a known dose. And there were a reason to use it, which I don't think there is because all signs point to it, being more or less similar to Morphine should be more. Yeah, maybe or not necessarily even shitty morphine, maybe just like morphine. So, so I don't know what would be learned. I mean, maybe out of personal curiosity, but I don't think from like a filmmaking perspective, there would be anything all that great about me using pure desomorphine. And then yeah, I don't have any urge to do things that are self-destructive.
Is there anything?
Left on your bucket list, substance wise, which you have yet to
check off.
Well, there's, you know, the infinite Realm of the unknown. That's like a big bucket. Sure contains many millions of things. So, I'm hoping you know about currently.
I would I'm very interested in going to Gabon and observing a traditional ibogaine or rather. I Boga ceremony. And you know, I'm always interested in observing different types of experiences, but when it comes to the well-known psychoactive, substances of got things pretty well. I've also never used purified muscimol. So that would be something worth doing at some point. Okay? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I kind of want to ask about, you know, we've been talking about drugs at
People know about or familiar with, in some way for the most part or that have existed within Society for a while. I'm curious about the drugs that you've tried that, no one is ever tried before you or at doses that no one's ever done and what that experience is like.
That's an interesting question and one that I want to answer carefully because they don't want to Advocate but, you know, use of some totally unknown substance, but you know, one example might be there is there's all these different subtypes, you know, these Gaba a receptor. It's a pentamer and there's all these different Alpha subunits. And there's these sort of this sort of pharmacological shorthand that's used where like Alpha 1 is associated with hypnotic effects and Alpha.
Who is associated with my relaxation? And and see Allah says and Alpha 3 is the same and also for is possibly amnesic effects and Alpha V is what mythical and binds to and on and on, and on. So, this, there's always been this idea of like we could create. And it's gonna be like, a really long winded answer that we could create a Gaba, a receptor, positive, allosteric, modulator, that would have
Certain therapeutic properties that are seen in benzodiazepines, but not have some of the disadvantages like Amnesia. And so, there was a drug that was created by an Italian group called TCS 1205. That was subtype, selective positive, allosteric, modulator. And that was supposed to not induce any form of Amnesia in rodents. And I did have the opportunity to try that and the rodents tend to forget their names. Yeah. Yeah. Free over. Their groceries are. Yeah. Yeah.
And you know with again, it's a problem without objective tests of memory. It's actually impossible to say so I it's inconclusive but it did have a benzodiazepine like a fact and that in and of itself is kind of interesting and you know, if well, yeah you can go on and on about these things. Yeah. I mean we're do you even start like, you know, I for some of these drugs I'm sure there's like some literature around. What doses were used in animals and you kind of do some allometric scaling or something like that? Even. Yeah, I think it's good to do the allometric scaling as a
A rough guideline, but you certainly don't want to just start there with the human to rodent conversion and say that's the dose. You know, I think that the the method that was developed by Alexander, shulgin is the method to follow which is simply start low start as low as conceivably possible started. Tens of micrograms or 1 microgram and doesn't use much more material. So why not just work up slowly from there. You can you know, knock out the early micrograms in the course of a day and then just
Very very slowly over the course of weeks. And if you were using that method then it wouldn't matter if you discovered strychnine or cyanide. You wouldn't be poisoned if you're doing a carefully enough. So that's the basic idea. Start really low and gradually and carefully and thoughtfully and do as much research as possible and don't mix things with other substances. Another reason not to take several substances simultaneously if you
If you don't have to is that, of course, they all potentially might interact with each other in one way or another and you want to have a clean palette if you're doing some kind of evaluation of something new and yeah, and if you know, if you modify this gum in some way and start introducing, you know, various other alkaloids have been found in tobacco. That's the way that you should do it, start low and and then do double-blind experiments comparing the different alkaloids and that's like a really good way to answer these questions. It seems like
Way to do any sort of new batch of substances that you, whether it's known or unknown.
So, so kids. If you're watching, it's okay to do one, one-millionth of the effective, dose of whatever drug were talking about, but no more
I think we have exhausted most of our plan questions and want to be respectful of your time. So, I mean, we could go on for a long time, but we really appreciate you joining us today. Thank you. It was fun. Thank you. Yeah, well, thanks everybody. We really appreciate it. If you guys have any questions, please feel free to reach out to us and if we can convince Hamilton to come back again, we will answer those questions at that time. Thanks very much.
