The Joe Rogan Experience - #1379 - Ben Westhoff

Episode Date: November 7, 2019

Ben Westhoff is an award-winning investigative journalist who writes about culture, drugs, and poverty. His new book "Fentanyl, Inc.: How Rogue Chemists Are Creating the Deadliest Wave of the Opioid Epidemic " is available now on Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/Fentanyl-Inc-Chemists-Creating-Deadliest/dp/0802127436

hello Ben thank you for having me my pleasure this is a subject that scares the shit out of me you and how did you stumble upon the story of fentanyl because weren't you at one point in time didn't you write about like rap music yeah I have a book about NWA and tupac and i interviewed like ice cube dr dre snoop dogg all those people yeah but i was the la weekly music editor and i started looking into this story about why people were always dying at raves so like i don't know if you remember a few years back every time there was a rave they're like one person died two people people died, or more. And they always said it was from ecstasy. But I knew that ecstasy was really not that dangerous of a drug. You know, MDMA, pure MDMA, very few people die from that. So I was like, what is going on here? And I looked into it and

turned out it was all adulterated. It wasn't real ecstasy. It wasn't real molly. It was adulterated with all these new drugs and i kind of went down the rabbit hole and i found out that all these new drugs were made in china they're all synthetic and there were like hundreds of them and then it turns out that the most you know the worst of them was fentanyl and that's how i got onto the topic and fentanyl most people think of fentanyl they think of it as being a new thing but it's not really a new thing right was wasn't it it was invented in the 50s yeah yeah it was invented by a belgian chemist um he was trying to find something that worked better than morphine in hospitals but doesn't morphine work really good

well it does but for things like, yeah, traditionally, people have gotten a lot of mileage out of morphine. But for things like open-heart surgery, he wanted something that came on really fast, and it lasted a long time. And so he manipulated the chemical structure of morphine, came up with fentanyl. It was a blockbuster drug, you know, and still is

used in hospitals all the time. It's used, you know, there's the fentanyl patch for people with cancer, chronic pain. And then when you get a, like a colonoscopy, they give you fentanyl before that. And then women who have epidurals during childbirth. That, I believe, is usually fentanyl. So it's still an important hospital drug. And so how did it come to be that this drug from the 1950s sort of reemerges? And it reemerged during the rave scene? Is that what it was? It was actually before that.

It first started killing people a little bit at the beginning of the 80s. And nobody knew what it was. And it was from china then as well no the back then um it was these kind of mystery chemists these guys who there was this one guy in particular called george marquardt and he was like a a genius maniac who read all the chemical literature he learned about fentanyl he's like i should try to make this i bet it would be a hit with recreational users and so he started making it and it stumped authorities because these people would die they would have track marks in their arms like it was heroin they would have

syringes but they tested them afterwards and there's no heroin in their system and so they're like what is this and the only way they finally found out was that there was this uh scientist testing racing horses and apparently fentanyl was being used to dope horses what to like um so they would withstand more pain and would go longer and faster and could train harder. And so this guy made the connection. He's like, oh, this is fentanyl. This is this new thing. And he actually predicted what was going to happen.

He's like, we are in trouble now because not only is there fentanyl, you can make a new – if you ban fentanyl, you can adjust the molecule, make another type of fentanyl. When they ban that, you can make another one, add infinitum, basically. Wow. So the thing with horses would be that they would be in pain, so they wouldn't run as hard? So they would force them to run harder by dulling the pain? I guess so, yeah. I don't know all the details of it, but, you know, it's performance enhancing, basically. Doesn't it seem kind of counterintuitive?

You would think that, like, an opiate would, like, make them sleepy, right? Well, I don't know all the details. Maybe it just has a different effect on horses. That's fair. So then the Internet comes along, and through the Internet, people started scouring the medical literature and scientific literature and chemical literature, and then they find fentanyl. Exactly. Yeah, because back in the old days, you know, scientists would publish a paper, they're trying to find a new drug that they can patent, say the drug isn't a hit, no one wants to buy it. It goes on some dusty university shelf, never is heard from again. But in the internet age,

all these papers start going online. And so these rogue chemists that I reference in the title of my book, they start finding particular scientists who work on the type of drugs they're interested in. And then they start going through all their papers and they pick out drugs that they think would work recreationally. And so when fentanyl first came out, it was totally legal. People, you could walk around with a giant bag of it. They couldn't do anything. And so it set in motion this sort of cat and mouse game between law enforcement and drug chemists, which really still persists to this day, although mostly in China now. Have you ever experienced any opiates personally? I've taken, yeah, like tramadol and like Tylenol-3 and stuff like that.

Tylenol-3 is opiates? I think it's codeine, which is a low-level opioid. And I don't know, to me, it always gets me stoned, but it never seems to like deal with the problem. I don't really like opioids. You know what I mean? Like I can't sleep and it me, it always gets me stoned, but it never seems to deal with the problem. I don't really like opioids. You know what I mean? I can't sleep, and it's just not my thing. It's not your thing. Yeah. The old NyQuil had codeine, didn't it?

Did it? Didn't it? We've been over this, haven't we? Didn't we try to figure this out? I remember I took NyQuil in the 90s, in the late 90s. I was sick. It was like the last time I ever took it. And it was wonderful. I was lying in bed going, this is amazing. I don't even give in the 90s. In the late 90s, I was sick. It was like the last time I ever took it. And it was wonderful.

I was lying in bed going, this is amazing. I don't even give a shit if I'm tired or I'm sick. A lot of people say that. I just sank into the bed. I was like, ah. And another time, I had a morphine drip. I had knee surgery. And they gave me a little morphine drip.

And every time I wanted, I could just hit this button and get a little bit more. I was just hammering that that button just lying in bed well that's like the irony of uh the opioids it can produce the greatest pleasure yeah and the greatest pain you know i think sam quinones said that like um how can one molecule give you the greatest pleasure imaginable and the worst pain imaginable. Yeah. Lenny Bruce had some crazy quote about it. Something about that it was like getting hugged by God. I forget what the quote was. But I've never had experience with heroin. But I've known people that were addicts, quite a few, and a couple of them that died. And one of them that I knew, there was this guy who was a pool hustler back in my pool playing days in New York.

And his nickname was Water Dog. I forget his real name. I think it was Bill. But no, that was Buffalo Bill was his other nickname. I don't remember his real name. But anyway, this guy was an elite pool player, big time gambler. But the thing was, he had to do heroin first. So they would play

games for like ten thousand dollars these huge games and all these guys would come from the tri-state area they would come around to watch these matches in bed on the side and uh water dog would go to the bathroom and everybody knew what was going on. He would go and shoot up and then he would come and he would sit on a chair like this. Just sit there for like half an hour. Just sit there. Wow. And then when it was over, when the half hour was over, he would just like, okay.

And then he would go and play. He was in the zone. And he couldn't miss. And he was playing this guy, this dude that I knew named George, who was also a big-time gambler, and he was playing this guy um this this dude that i knew named george who was also a big time gambler and he was just screaming and yelling that this motherfucker when he's on this stuff he can't miss he had no nerves like nothing bothered him you could scream in his face he would look at you like an alien like it didn't didn't bother him at all like like an insect would look at you. And he had this incredible ability to play at the very best while he was fucked up on heroin. And I remember thinking, what a bizarre drug.

I mean, think about all the amazing artists that it's claimed. Yeah, I think about jazz and all the great improv. John Coltrane. Yes. Lenny Bruce. So many people. I mean, you go down the line. All these different folks. I mean, that mugshot that I have out there of Hendrix. Yeah. Lenny Bruce. So many people. I mean, you go down the line. All these different folks.

I mean, that mugshot that I have out there of Hendrix. Yeah. That was heroin. Oh, it was? It was heroin in Toronto. Yeah. I mean, people prefer heroin to fentanyl. I've heard it described as more soulful, people say.

But the thing is, you can't even get heroin in most parts of america like pure heroin anymore it's all cut with fentanyl well you got to go straight to afghanistan right um that's probably yeah probably mexico yeah yeah jesus christ now it can you grow poppies like can that be grown in the yeah i've heard that like if you just walk around on this, like, nice neighborhood, you'll see poppies all the time. You just don't even know you're looking at them. And that's actually heroin. Like, you could get heroin from those poppies. Yeah, it's like if they grow, you know, organically and you're not doing it on purpose, it's no big deal.

But if you start cultivating it, that's when it becomes a law. It's just got to play stupid. I don't know. They're beautiful. Look how pretty yeah do you also have san pedro cactus on your lawn sir oh those are pretty too right yeah you um yeah i mean those cactuses i can't imagine there are a lot of trained police who know what to look for i feel like if you're going to grow some mescal you know mescaline cacti or whatever

that's the move you're probably going to be some mescal, you know, mescaline cacti or whatever. That's the move. You're probably going to be all right. Just mix it up with regular cactus. Pretend you're a cactus enthusiast. Yeah. Just have it all over your lawn. Some succulents. Yeah, I'm just really into cactus, man.

They're pretty. Yeah. And that's a water arm. I go out of town a lot. Yeah, exactly. So when, you know, what scares me is, you know, I mean, I just just know people that party i know people that take pills and it seems like fentanyl is things are getting cut with fentanyl a lot it's not it's not a an uncommon thing for all sorts of different drugs like how many different drugs

are cut with fentanyl street drugs oh man it is like an awful time to be a young person on the party scene um you know like when i was coming up and probably when you were coming up they said the dare program and all that say no just say no they made it sound like every drug could kill you right right now unfortunately that's like almost reality that basically any pill or any powder, if you didn't get your pill from CVS, your pain pill or from a pharmacy that's legit, it could be cut with fentanyl. And that's how Prince died.

That's how Tom Petty and the rapper Mac Miller all died, is that they thought they were taking legitimate pain pills. Is that really what happened? That is really what happened, yeah. So Prince got his from the black market? Yeah, well, the guy who supplied Prince has been, he refuses to really say exactly where he got it. He's still alive?

The guy who got him for Prince, yeah. Where is he? I don't know. I think in Minneapolis or something. They should find that fucking guy. Well, the doctor is also settled or something. They should find that fucking guy. Well, the doctor is also, um, like settled or something. I think the doctor might've been involved somehow. It's a mystery where he got these pills, but you know, Prince was like doing the splits on stage at age,

you know, 58 or whatever. And he was definitely a guy who walked around with a lot of pain. He was a Jehovah's witness. He was not a recreational drug user as we think about it. He wanted pain. And I'm sure for years, his handler or whatever was buying him off the dark net or whatever, and they were fine for years. But then a drug dealer trying to save some money, increase profits, cut it with fentanyl, and that's how he died. And I heard Tom Petty actually suffered an injury or hurt himself at one of his concerts, and he just literally walked outside and asked the first sketchy guy he saw if he had any pain pills, and that's what killed him. Jesus Christ.

Oh, God. And Prince needed hip replacement surgery, didn't he? I think that's right. Yeah. Yeah. It's so common for some reason with people who perform on stage who do a lot of, like, jumping around and going crazy. My friend Maynard, lead singer of Tool, he was he does jujitsu he's really into jujitsu and he's like man I just have no movement in my hip my hip is like so locked up and the

doctor went to look at it and they're like hey bro you've you got no hip left like it's just shot and it was from stomping on stage oh really he sings he fucking stomps all the time and that one hip he just wore that hip out yeah my mom has these issues with her neck. It's like degenerative disc disease. And you've got this like cushy, spongy. Well, they can do something about that now. Can they? Yeah, before your mom goes and gets her neck cut open.

There's several options. First of all, as it's been explained to me the concept of degenerative disc disease it gives you this it implies that there's a disease yeah like you caught a flu that's what i thought it's not what it is is bad posture wearing down compression uh you carrying weight if people carry a lot of things their disc gets smushed over time. There's a lot of different factors. A lot of athletes get it. A lot of fighters get it. A lot of wrestlers, jujitsu guys, they all get it. I got it. Oh, you did? Where did you get it? And it was from getting my neck yanked on, getting it cranked on and using it to move

people around when you're doing jujitsu and grappling but I found a thing called Regenikine and what Regenikine is what Peyton Manning used he actually went to Germany to go do it but now you can do it here in America Kobe Bryant went and got it done as well it's great for people with back issues disc issues and with bulging discs in particular it helps relax the area around the disc it's it's your own blood and there's all there's a some sort of a strange procedure they do but they take your own blood it's like a very advanced form of platelet-rich plasma and there's a place called lifespan medicine in uh santa monica that did it for me but i had like you got like full everything back everything back yeah i mean

depending upon how far gone it is you know some people it's already bone on bone there's no disc left you know and you got to catch it before that happens yeah um and then another thing they're doing is they're shooting stem cells directly into the discs and they're having some really good results with that where the stem cells but a lot of that they'll be doing that in other countries because it's the they're they're a lot looser with their regulations if they have any regulations at all yeah just fucking fill you up with stem cells you're like yeah and everything starts regenerating yeah but um but yeah and it's not just these pills either it's like um and like you have daughters i know who are you know maybe getting towards their teenage years

right yeah and like that's the thing i worry the most about is I have kids too. And just, yeah, because I used to, you know, I wasn't discriminated. I didn't care. Right, especially if you're drinking. If you're a young kid and you're drinking, you're not going to make wise decisions. You don't even know what you're doing. If you're a young kid, you're 18, 19 years old, and you have three, four drinks in you, you don't even know what that experience is like.

You don't have the wisdom and the knowledge and the history to go, okay, I've got three drinks. I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. I should get out of here. I definitely shouldn't be taking any pills. Yeah. And so I'm already like trying to think about how I'm going to talk to my kids who are younger. But like, you know, I hate to say it.

It seems like marijuana, if you can smell the buds, if you can see them, you know, there have been kind of some scaremongering on the internet and certain police departments saying that there's been marijuana cut with fentanyl. But if you go on Snopes.com, they sort of debunk all that. So I think marijuana is, if you can smell it, it smells like weed. You're probably pretty safe. Well, there are a lot of people that are growing marijuana that are using pesticides and chemicals that are dangerous. And there was one, what was the company that got caught recently, Jamie? They tested their stuff. Cushy Punch, I believe. Yeah. Say that again.

Cushy Punch. The microphone got fucked up. Cushy Punch. I believe, yeah. Say that again? Cushy punch. The microphone got fucked up. A cushy punch.

We had a guy named John Norris on the podcast, and he wrote a book called Hidden War. And he started off his career as a game warden, you know, investigating people that caught too much fish, things along those lines. And he thought, hey, what a great job this would be. I'm going to get a job in the great outdoors. I love the outdoors. And, you know, I'll get to get a job in the great outdoors. I love the outdoors. And, you know, I'll get to do some good for the wildlife. Well, turns out, along the way, they started stumbling upon these public land Mexican cartel grow operations. Where they would grow these marijuana plants, just giant plots of them.

And they would use these extremely toxic pesticides. Oh, yeah. And also they would use poison to keep animals out. And they had vats of this shit laying around, and some of the marijuana was actually infested with this shit or infected. Yeah. My friend Amanda Chicago-Lewis is this great journalist focused on marijuana. And yeah, she put the fear of god in me about those pesticides and carcinogens and um the other thing is just like these you know these different oils

that people are smoking some of them are marketed as like all natural but they find synthetic cannabinoids in them and um basically you know synthetic cannabinoids like k2 and spice are what they're known as sometimes and those are people call it synthetic marijuana but the big difference is that thc is known as like a partial agonist so it will like these receptors it will it will activate them to an extent you're chilled it's relaxed but the cannabinoids, they also interact with the cannabinoid receptors, same as THC, but they're full agonists. And so they make you basically like go crazy and your heart starts beating fast. You start, people overdose and die on these cannabinoids.

And they, these are all made in China, too. I went into a lab in China where they made these, and they made fentanyl analogs. They let you in? Yeah. I mean, it was a whole thing. I wrote them on the internet. I made a fake email address, and I said, I'm a drug dealer. I'd like to visit your lab.

May I do that when I come to China? And they said, yeah. What? Yeah, that's like— Did you have a fake drug dealer. I'd like to visit your lab. May I do that when I come to China? And they said, yeah. What? Yeah, that's like. Did you have a fake drug dealer name? I called myself, what did I call myself? I tried, I had this like Skype avatar picture where I looked like a bro, like a 23-year-old dude with like big hair, like kind of a stoner look.

And they just, they said yeah come by and so so i went to shanghai and i met this guy at the train station and he owned his own lab and he asked me if i was a journalist actually like pretty straight away he was like are you a journalist though and i was like no it's like no crazy question do i look like journalist no and He's like, no, crazy question. Do I look like journalist? No. And so he didn't know whether to trust me. So we went to his apartment. It was like the top floor of this fancy high rise.

He's a total family man. He had like lived there with his wife and kid. Brings a stranger to his home. Yep. Yep. Meets a guy who says he's a drug dealer, picks him up at the train station, says, hey, come to where my kids sleep. Yeah, exactly. Wow.

And so then he showed me, because they have the website. A lot of these companies in China, they make legitimate chemicals and recreational chemicals. And they specialize in drugs that are legal in China but banned in the West, so banned in the U.S. What is illegal in China, but banned in the West. So banned in the U.S. What is illegal in China? Well, in the U.S. we have this thing called the Federal Analog Act. And so that bans all these drugs even before they're invented. So anything that's similar to marijuana structurally or in effect, anything that's similar to opioids is just automatically banned,

automatically scheduled. But in China, they have to do it one by automatically banned, automatically scheduled. But in China, they have to do it one by one by one by one. And so fentanyl itself was scheduled in China, was banned in China decades ago. But these chemists, like this one I met, specialize in this window when something is banned in the US, but it's still legal in China, but it's become popularized on the internet. So there's all these websites, these web forums where these like drug nerds basically are like, you can't get fentanyl, but you can get this thing that's kind of like fentanyl. And that's what this guy said. That's a hilarious term, by the way, drug nerds.

Yeah. Yeah. That's what they are. And like psychonauts, I'm sure you've heard of psychonauts, Yeah, that's what they are. And like psychonauts, I'm sure you've heard of psychonauts, right? They specialize in these new, usually psychedelics they tend to prefer, that have never been tested on human subjects. But this guy was entirely specialized in fentanyl analogs and synthetic cannabinoids. And so he took out, you know, he had his like fake list on his website of all the legitimate, you know, like Cialis and, you know, legitimate pharmaceuticals, things like that. But at his apartment, he showed me the real list. And that had all these, you know, it was cannabinoids, fentanyl.

It was like fake Valium, like different types of Xanax. And he showed me the prices. And I was like, all right, looks good. Can I go see your lab? And so finally, he decided he trusted me. He called up his driver on the phone. And the driver showed up. And he was kind of this big, like muscular dude who didn't speak any English. And I was a little worried. I was like, oh, this is the dude who's gonna break my kneecaps if when he finds out I'm a journalist, you know, but I just got in the car and we drove like 30 minutes to the outskirts of Shanghai. And we got to the lab and it just

looked like a regular office park, like a suburban office park. There was a fountain in front of the building. There was like, you you know you use the key card to to get in the parking lot and then it looked like kind of a new construction building it smelled like cement we went inside um we went up to to the labs all the windows were open it was the middle of the winter and it was kind of a strong chemical smell um but it looked kind of just like Breaking Bad, like, you know, like, industrial size glassware, you know, beakers, Bunsen burners, all that stuff from high school chemistry. And he would point, he points out, like, basically, I had my recorder, you know, on my phone, and I had it in my jacket pocket just on record. And so he told me I couldn't

take pictures. And so to take notes, I would just say stuff aloud. I'd be like, oh, that's a light orange mixture that's being mixed up by a mechanical arm. And you say it's benzophenzenil, very interesting. And so but but the language berry was such that he you know didn't think i was being too much of a weirdo but uh i clearly was but so but the cannabinoids would were crazy there was like a table like this like almost exactly this size that was piled up with the cannabinoids that were there for drying and it was a they were mounds like this high just sitting right out in the open what they look like does it look like pot no because it's not a plant you know it's just basically it's a chemical that's sprayed

onto plant matter like dried sage and stuff like that really so they try to make it look like pot and you know you can smoke that stuff out of a pipe or even roll it into a joint but it if you look closely though it's very clearly not pot wow and so they're drying this stuff that's what i think that i'm you know they also had like um drying machines it looked like uh my editor didn't like it when i use this term but you know when go into Subway and there's the bread baking machines right there? Yeah. It looked exactly like that. Why did he not like that term?

I don't know. I think he thought Subway would sue us or something. Jesus Christ. But they had those. And then they had like big buckets of one-pound bags of these cannabinoids and these fentanyl analogs, just ready for shipping. He said they were sending them to Russia, to Belgium, to the Netherlands. And then I think a lot of times it's repackaged there. And so I don't know if you knew that the cannabinoids like used to be sold legally in head shops like 10 years ago. Yeah. And they would

always be in these colorful packets they almost look like a pop rocks package they say like spice and laugh out loud and stuff and so i think in europe that's where they do that they put it in this colorful packaging they um and then they ship it to the u.s and um but yeah he was saying that like he kept like really close track of the law in all these countries especially china like they're scheduling this next week so we're gonna take all this and throw it away and i thought at first he was like probably just putting me on but i think they actually do that like these guys are businessmen first they They want to make money. And going to follow the law, it just doesn't, you know, it's not conducive. This is where bath salts came from, right?

Exactly, yeah. Bath salts tend to be cathinones. So synthetic cathinones. Have you ever heard of the cat plant, K-H-A-T? Yes. That's the hijackers, pirates in Somalia. They take that, yeah. It's really popular in the Middle East.

It's a stimulant. It gets you really – Have you tried it? No, I never have, yeah. But I grew up in Minnesota, though, and there's a big Somali population. And so there was a big controversy in Minnesota whether or not to ban cat leaves from being sold in regular stores. Is it legal? I think it is. I think it's not legal in the U.S. now, if I'm not, but I don't know for sure.

But so- It's K-H-A-T, is that- Yeah, exactly. And so the synthetic cathinones are the synthetic version of that, like made in a lab, but there's tons of different kinds. You don't know how strong it is. And the bath salts, they, of course, it has nothing to do with like salts for your bath. You know, this was a misnomer.

And they also wrote, called them like incense, sometimes plant food. And on the back of all of them, it would say not intended for human consumption. So that was like the way they got around. They thought they could get around the Federal Analog Act because part of the law says that something is automatically illegal if it's intended for human consumption. So these guys are like not intended for human consumption.

Just put in your bath. Yeah. Your bath smells like fucking toxic chemicals. Yeah. Do you remember when the homeless guy ate someone's face? Remember that? And they said he was on bath salts? Yeah, but that was actually disproven.

There was none found in his system. He was just crazy? Yeah, the causeway cannibal, I think they called him. Yeah. And he was just crazy, right? I think he may have smoked some weed, but yeah, I don't think he had anything else in his system. That was just high on life. oh man florida you know the original florida man yeah it is it's funny that one state is so synonymous with fuckery yeah and they also had this thing called flocka have you ever heard

of that yes i have but i don't remember what it is it's more cathinones and like if you uh look it up on youtube there's all these people going crazy that killed like, I think maybe 100 people in Florida during a time. And the problem is, you know, like the prohibition on drugs causes people to do really stupid things, right? So you have this cathinone, like Flocka. And as bad as that was, have this cathinone like flaca and as bad as that was once they banned flaca the chemists started manipulating the chemical structure so they change one little thing they add like a chlorine group for example so like a chlorine like molecule you know it has nothing to do with the drug but they just add it on there to make it so it becomes legal but then it becomes more difficult for your body to like digest it so it becomes worse for you

and the high becomes worse and then they ban that and then they make something new that's even worse for you and it's just like down the line and um and these chinese, so that's what all these new drugs have in common. My book is about, they're called NPS, novel psychoactive substances. So fentanyl is the most famous and the most dangerous, but these include basically like synthetic new versions of every drug. So there's marijuana, the NPS version is the synthetic cannabinoids. Heroin, the NPS version is fentanyl. There's LSD. So you take LSD, it's like a wonder drug, right? No one has ever died of an LSD overdose. You know, people may have thought they were a bird or whatever and jumped off a roof, but no one has ever overdosed on the drug itself. But once they started banningning once they started really cracking

down on lsd these chinese chemists started manufacturing this new type of psychedelic that was sold as acid and so if you went on the dark web this was like in the like 10 years ago or so five ten years ago you would search for acid, and you would think you were buying LSD, but you were buying this new psychedelic that could kill you and did kill you. These drugs are called N-bombs. It's like the worst name of all time, these N-bomb drugs. And they started killing people in, like, the suburbs in Dallas. Your phone's ringing.

Ooh, fail. And, yeah. You, fail. And yeah. You really were a music editor. Yeah. So these kids all thought they just wanted – they did their research. These were like smart kids who said, oh, LSD has never killed anyone. Let's get that, this new thing, and it killed them. And so it wasn't really lsd it was

just no it totally no no nothing in common at all yeah now the crazy thing is that this probably could be fixed with legalizing all drugs but nobody wants to legalize all drugs it's such a catch-22 because like if you had heroin available at the corner store um you would have no need to buy fentanyl and if it was like at a reasonable price where they couldn't undercut you like hey heroin's five bucks i'll send you a felon for a dollar yeah i mean it's it's a terrible thing to even say i don't want people to be able to just go buy meth yeah well the way to think about it i think is like um decriminalization a lot of times is like a better alternative, in my opinion, in my, you know,

my research than legalization, right? So like the presidential candidate Andrew Yang talks about decriminalizing opioids. And so when I first heard about that, I was like, what? I was like, that is a bridge too far. But the more you think about it, it's like people get arrested for using fentanyl, they go to jail, and then the recidivism rate is like through the roof. People like get out and they start using again. They don't get the treatment they need, you know. And so the opioid, you know, like people don't realize that fentanyl is killing more people than any drug in American history ever on an annual basis. More than heroin, more than pills, more than meth, more than crack. And so things just get worse and worse every year.

People aren't talking about it that much. But how is decriminalization going to stop that? Because decriminalization will just make fentanyl more available the point of legalizing all drugs and again this is a very very messy subject and i'm not a proponent of legalizing all drugs i'm i'm sort of agnostic on and i'm like hmm i don't know i don't know what the fuck is it what what is the answer but if you legalize them and you can buy them from reputable sources you would know that you're actually buying cocaine you're not you're not buying some fake chinese spice jam thing whatever the fuck they call it you're buying actual cocaine and you look we know

if you buy whiskey right you get a thing on the label it tells you what proof it is. You know that if you have three drinks, you're going to be fucked up. And we can regulate that. We could sort of adjust. Like, I had two already. I'm good. But if you don't know what's in it, you don't know what the dose is. So you don't know what you're okay with and what you're not okay with. One of the good things about alcohol, like you get a beer, that's a beer. You know what that is. You know how much alcohol is in there. Yeah. Well, like you get a beer, that's a beer. You know what that is. You know how much alcohol is in there. Yeah.

Well, in some countries in Europe, they actually give free heroin to addicted users. And so that, you know, it's often not the heroin that kills people at all. It's the dirty needles. It's the criminal lifestyle used to like pay for the money to buy prostitution, things like that. And so I went and visited these places called supervised injection facilities. Have you heard about these? Yes. Yeah. Where were these? Where do they have them? Well, they don't have any in this country. They're trying to do it in Philadelphia. Yeah. And there was a court case in its favor recently the former governor ed rendell is like spearheading that but i went to one in barcelona and so these are places

where drug use is totally legal inside the facility they have clean needles they have doctors and nurses supervise it and um and they even like so they have, like, the smoking room where you can go and do anything you want. They have crack pipes, like, that the government provides. They're, like, government-funded and created crack pipes that they'll hand out to people. And they've never had an overdose death in one of these places. They're connected to treatment centers. They give out methadone, suboxone, all these treatment drugs. It brings people into the system so that they're accounted for. And these have been like super successful. But in the US, there's like federal crackdowns

on them. Yeah. Again, I think there's an issue politically right because nobody wants to be the one that says hey we're going to open up a place where people can come and shoot up yeah and people like well fuck this guy my my son's hooked on heroin this piece of shit wants to help him you know we what we need is detox centers what we need is treatment we don't need a place where you can go and shoot heroin. But like many things in life, this whole heroin thing, fentanyl thing, all these different – it's very messy. Yeah, well, so even if you're not going to go that far, there are simple steps we can take to help stop the opioid crisis.

And one thing I'm a big advocate for is called fentanyl testing strips. And so the weird thing about fentanyl is it's not a demand driven drug like every other drug it's out there because people want it people want cocaine people want heroin people don't want fentanyl they're sneaking it into other things exactly and so studies have shown that if users know fentanyl is in their cocaine or their meth or their heroin or their pills, they will be much less likely to use it and overdose from it. And so fentanyl testing strips, they look kind of like pregnancy tests. They're really cheap, just these paper strips. You mix up your solution of whatever

you think you have, heroin, and you dip the strip in there. And if there's two stripes, that means that you have fentanyl. And if there's one, it means you don't or else the other way around. And so it's simple. It's immediate. But again, U.S. laws are so insane that these are actually banned in certain states like Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania. So that could be done to help people understand that there's fentanyl in the drugs that they're looking for. They're looking for cocaine, they're looking for heroin, turns out there's fentanyl in there. What other steps do you think can be taken to sort of alleviate or at least somewhat mitigate this awful crisis? Well, of course, there's Narcan. And you know what that is.

It's like the miracle opioid overdose reversal drug. It's a nasal spray usually. And so if someone has overdosed on opioids, fentanyl, heroin, pills, whatever, you know, get these sprays, it will bring them back to life literally. Right. And so, you know, that it's available in some places oh man i am not smart enough to know that um i do not know how the chemical battery works narcan see if we can find out how narcan works how does narcan work um that's amazing though

they figured out something that can stop people from like where else in the middle of an overdose what else is do we have that in? Pulp fiction. Remember with the needle to the heart? Remember that? Woo, what a scene. You know what? I was asking someone about that recently, and that is total bullshit.

That is like Quentin Tarantino just making something up. That's not a real thing. I'm glad he did. It's a dramatic scene. It was fucking awesome. Yeah, it was pretty crazy. I mean, if you could shove a fucking needle in the middle of your heart and pump that stuff in,

and she pops up to life with a needle out of her chest. Yeah. In real life, it would have been a nasal spray to the nose. But this is 1994. They didn't have that. Yeah. And so nowadays, it's like firefighters, librarians. These are the people who are encountering opioid overdose victims.

They're encountering them in the library. In the library. They come to the library to do drugs or firefighters or EMTs react to people that are overdosing, right? Yeah. And isn't it the case that some fentanyl overdoses, the people actually have it on their skin. So these people that are helping them, whether they're police officers or first responders. That's actually another thing that's kind of a Snopes.com thing they started that yeah no that's you can't get it from you can't get an overdose by touching fentanyl it won't go into your skin if someone

like there was a you know a mound of fentanyl someone sneezed and it was in the air you could get it by breathing in but by just touching it no oh well that's good to know this is the best narcon reversing an overdose it says narcon has a strong affinity to the opiate receptors uh a stronger affinity to the opiate receptors than opiates opioids like heroin or percocet so it knocks the opioids off the receptors for a short time this allows the person to breathe again and reverses the overdose. Holy shit. That's amazing. That person needs a Nobel Prize.

Yeah. Ever came up with that? They need the exact opposite as the guy who sold the drugs to Prince. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. You know, they need love and respect. Yeah, that's an amazing discovery. So that's good to know because we've actually, I think we probably repeated that.

Someone told me that. Did I ever repeat that on the show? That people have to wear drugs or gloves when they're handling people with drug overdoses? I don't know. No, probably not. I probably saved that joke. Have you ever heard of car fentanyl? What is that?

It's a hundred times stronger than fentanyl. It's an analog. It's used as like an elephant tranquilizer. In one of the Jurassic Park movies, that's what they use to uh tranquilize the dinosaurs oh yeah um that's right and so i i interviewed a bunch of dark web dealers for the book i even actually like met one in person what do you look like um well he asked me not to say but i he came with his daughter he came but he looked he was like a buff dude he was like uh he um was like in his 30s you're saying too much we're gonna find him now like when you were

recording like oh what is that orange vat of you know did you do that kind of same shit when you're talking to him no no because he knew i was a journalist i told him i was and he wanted to say yeah he just he's like people think of us as scum, but I want to tell my story. And that's what journalists live on. What is his story? Well, he was a – he's probably listening to this, man. Hey, bro. That's crazy.

What's up, dark web drug dealer? Total family man with his daughter. He was feeding her French fries and stuff but uh he had he was addicted to meth at one point he had a lot of sort of uh depression self-esteem issues but then he tried the opioids and he said it was like an antidepressant it you know so he became hooked and so he started selling fentanyl on the dark web because he didn't want his kids to have to live in poverty. He didn't want his drug addiction to interfere. And so not only that, but he claims that he's helping addicted users more affordably maintain their habits.

So he has this big, like, fuck, you know,due pharma anti-government anti-big pharma mentality so he blames like purdue pharma made uh oxycontin pills and got that's how the whole opioid epidemic began so it was first it was the pills then people switched to heroin and now it's fentanyl is in all the heroin and so this guy says that because he makes a nasal spray too, and he says that people can buy his fentanyl nasal spray on the dark web for like $60, take one spray, it's equivalent to one OxyContin pill, and that's enough to maintain their addiction. And so he says you know instead

of paying money to the big pharmaceutical companies people buy this it's much cheaper and so he had a whole moral justification of of how he did it so he's an ethical drug pusher that's that was his case the problem is that um this stuff fentel, is so potent, and to make it into a nasal spray, you have to use this whole thing. It's called volumetric dosing with the water, and you've got to get the exact right proportions. And he's not a trained pharmacist. So he's buying it. He's a middleman.

No, no, no. He does it. He has a whole process how he does it. Oh, Christ. But he's not a trained pharmacist. doesn't you know he's doing it right that it wasn't so i told him that i said that to him and he's like well basically i tested on myself so if i'm doing it wrong i would die so my customers therefore know i've tried it so that guy sounds like he's got a great pitch but i'm not sure yeah i mean I mean, you've got to justify.

Yeah, I get it. But so many people who sell drugs and so many people who are involved in drugs, they're always – people who have fucked up lives like to paint the best version of what they're doing. Yeah. That's what that sounds like. Yeah. I mean, I feel like if you're selling fentanyl, someone's probably died

because of what that sounds like. Yeah. I mean, I feel like if you're selling fentanyl, someone's probably died because of what you sold them. I mean, it's one of those things where it's so deadly. I mean, what are the numbers in terms of annual deaths from fentanyl in the United States? Well, it's up over 30,000 a year, and that's more than the peak of the AIDS crisis. more than think about that folks that's more than the peak of the aids crisis think about that while people are trying to ban flavored vapes which is fucking preposterous you know it's it's terrifying 30 000 people god damn that is so many that's a lot of people. And there's many, many, many, many people listening to this that know someone who's been affected by this. That's the horrific thing. And it sort of snuck up on us where it's, this is not a big thing in the news.

You don't hear about fentanyl deaths in the news. You would think that if there was like Kool-Aid, Kool-Aid was killing 30,000 people a year. It'd be like, holy shit. If Kool-Aid was killing 000 people a year holy shit if kool-aid was killing two people a year yeah yeah but the fact that this fentanyl stuff and it's all happening because it's illegal it's all happening in this sort of weird gray area it's you know a lot of people in the margins um it's uh i want to hear the presidential candidates talking about it you know like there's so little at the democrat debate they were asked

like what would you do about the fentanyl crisis the opioid crisis and they all said basically we gotta sue the pharmaceutical companies like purdue pharma now i have sympathy for that argument i mean purdue pharma and places like malincroft pharmaceuticals no one's heard of that they're from st louis where i'm from they actually made a ton more pills they made like 29 billion pills a year opioid pills at the height of the opioid crisis so these companies and they made jokes about it there were these emails that were found that people were like it's almost like people are addicted to these pills you know like it's just like doritos addicted to these pills, you know? Like, it's just like Doritos. If you keep eating them, we'll make more.

They were joking around about this? They were making jokes about that. While people were dying. While people were dying. So I have total sympathy that we should sue these companies, just like the big tobacco lawsuits in the 90s. The money will go towards care, all that but that does nothing to stop the fentanyl crisis the pill deaths are already starting to drop which is great heroin deaths are starting to drop which is great but fentanyl deaths are still rising and besides you know

this guy andrew yang who i said the candidate with he he talks he has a lot of good solutions you know elizabeth warren has some some good some good ideas in her proposal wants to put more money but for the most part like these should be the democrats people you know what i mean yeah people on the margins but they're like barely talking about it at all i think it's one of those things where just being president, right? Being president is an impossible job. There's no way one person can really control every single aspect of our civilization. It's just not possible.

And I think that's the same thing about running for president. No person running for president really can address every single issue that this nation is dealing with. address every single issue that this nation is dealing with so they stick with the big ones like jobs and you know inequality and all the things that are just going to get people to push the button yeah they get into the booth i mean that's all they're doing this is just uh i hope you like me sort of pitch you know yeah and i mean you know it's killing more people than car accidents more than guns even do you know that it kills more people than car accidents, more than guns even. Did you know that? I did not know that. Fentanyl kills more people than guns. Makes sense. But what kills me is I just don't see a logical first step where someone can do something about,

other than legalization of drugs. And this is also the step. I'm sure you probably heard what happened in northern Mexico yesterday. Yesterday? No. It was a family. Not with El Chapo's el chapo's son was it no no it's a new one a family a woman and uh her children were gunned down a mormon woman they you know they have these mormon compounds in northern mexico oh no i didn't know that and uh 10 people were murdered which women and children by cartels oh really geez and just gunned them down then more people were injured 10 people a murdered, just women and children, by cartels. Oh, really? Jeez. And just gunned them down.

Then more people were injured. 10 people, a little kid, a little girl was shot in the back, and she's in a hospital. It's like they just gun these people down. And this is all just this inhuman violence from the cartels. And the cartels that have rose to power and prominence because of the fact that there's an illegal drug trade. So there's money to be made. So instead of that money being made by pharmaceutical companies, that money is being made by these ruthless, murderous cartels. And this is exactly what happened during prohibition in the United States. When they made alcohol illegal in the 1920s, was it 30s?

What was it? 20s? I think it was the 30s what was it 20s i think it was the 20s yeah when they made alcohol illegal it didn't stop people from drinking it just made people sell it illegally yeah and so organized crime rose and then al capone and all these different organized crime members they they made insane amounts of money and developed insane amounts of power and we're seeing the exact same thing happening in Mexico. And again, alcohol is simple, right? Yeah, make it legal. We're adults.

It's not – the pills are not simple, right? It's a scary one. It's scary. You know, the war on drugs stuff, it's increasingly going to be turned towards China. war on drugs stuff it it's it's increasingly going to be turned towards china you know and in fact trump um has been meeting with the chinese president and all the trade war stuff the increasing the tariffs this is now tied into fentanyl and so supposedly in a couple days this might be out by then but there's this announcement of a new partnership. China says they're finally going to crack down on these drug labs. And we'll see if it happens. But the point is, like, we can do everything we want to try to, you know, we can go to war with China over this issue. But, you know, what is our

past record in this realm? Like the DEA helped kill Pablo Escobar, right? But since then, there's more cocaine coming out of Colombia than there ever was before, you know, nowadays. El Chapo was arrested, tried. That's doing nothing to stop the drugs, the cartels, the drugs coming into the U.S. the cartels, drugs coming into the U.S. And there's every indication that if we do get China to stop this insane, like 90% or more of the illicit fentanyl comes from China, that if we do get them to crack down on it, the industry is going to go to India. And India is already starting to see these huge busts.

Like there's these Mexican cartel members getting busted in India for buying fentanyl. In India. Yeah. The thing is like China and India have the two biggest chemical industries when it comes to generics, kind of lower level chemicals and pharmaceuticals. The U.S. has the most profitable pharmaceutical industry because we make like the brand name drugs, things like that. But when you're talking about generics and stuff like vitamin C, acetaminophen, which is the drug in Tylenol, these are all made in China, a place like India. And so they have this huge kind of brain trust of chemists you know people go to

university they they learn how to be chemists and then a certain amount of them get into the illicit industry right so mexico doesn't have that mexico doesn't have its own chemical industry and a bunch of scientists who can make fentanyl, who can make these new drugs. So that makes India so susceptible to it. And the biggest problem is actually not even the fentanyl itself. It's the fentanyl precursors. And do you know what those are? Yes, the chemicals that are used to make fentanyl.

Exactly. And so that was sort of the main investigation in my book. Almost like 80 pages of the book are dedicated to this one company. They're called Yuan Chong, this Chinese company that makes more fentanyl precursors than any company in the world. than any company in the world. And not only that, they sell them to the Mexican cartels. And they're totally sanctioned, not only sanctioned by the Chinese government, but they get tax breaks from the Chinese government. They get subsidies, they get their land subsidized, their staff training, things like that. And that was sort of the most jaw-dropping revelation that i had was that the chinese government is not only failing to crack down

but they're encouraging this industry they're encouraging the industry that's insane so it's just the the the idea is look it's making a lot of money let's just keep making money yeah it's making a lot of money. Let's just keep making money. Yeah, it's a lot of people ask me if they think this is a blatant conspiracy to try to like, inflict harm upon the US, a subversive form of warfare. And so I think it didn't start out that way. I think that these these benefits were given so that China could increase its exports, could grow its economy, particularly when it comes to chemical exports. So that's why these tax credits started. They're called value-added tax rebates. And so what that means is any chemical that you use to, any ingredients you use to make a chemical for exports, you can write off the cost of those of those ingredients when you export it. So basically, it's like a 16%

tax rebate. And so they originally did that just to try to like, improve their economy, improve their exports. But what's crazy to me now is that last year in the middle of the trade war, this was at the height of when you heard about the trade war every day. Trump was raising tariffs and doing this and that. Right at the height of that, China increased the tax rebate for fentanyl from 9% to 10%. So it was almost like a seems like a thumb in the eye right and like for fentanyl yeah it's i don't know yeah it definitely seems like a

big fuck you yeah yeah wow um this is what's crazy about this is that what you said before no one running for president is talking about it. The president has talked about it briefly, but it's not – I don't see any movement. I don't see any big steps being taken. I mean, I don't know what big movements could be taken. I mean, how do you eradicate this stuff? Well, have you heard of medication-assisted treatment? This is like what I was talking about, suboxone, methadone,

and there are these opioid blockers too. So there are all these drugs for low-level opioids. So you take your daily suboxone shot and you don't crave fentanyl. You don't crave heroin anymore. But it can't just be the drugs. You know, you see in TV shows or whatever just this line of people and, you know, they go back out on the street and then they're, you know, get back to whatever they were doing.

But medication-assisted treatment combines that with traditional counseling and therapy because a lot of times it's not just um it's not just chemical hooks you know what i mean it's people's lives they have problems they're like out of work they got terrible family problems they have trauma in their past and if you can unwrap you know unravel those problems really get to the heart of things people can quit and they do it all the time there's another method that is not widely discussed but it's incredibly effective and that's ibogaine i've heard about that yeah well i know many people that have kicked pills

because of ibogaine kicked booze kicked uh destructive self-destructive habits because of it and is it a root or something? It's a plant from Africa, I believe. It's from the aboga plant. And I believe it's, see if that's from Africa. I don't want to be wrong about this. It's legal in Mexico. And a friend of mine, my friend Ed Clay, went down to Mexico because he had an issue with pills.

He hurt himself. Oh, really? Got on pills it's really really fucking up his life went down there got treatment was so stunned by it that he started he opened up his own place down there to try to help oh really wow what part of mexico so uh i don't know it's substance derived from the plant yeah african shrub called tabernate is that right tabernate iboga which is known for its psychedelic qualities and used in african spiritual ceremonies some claim it's something of a miracle cure for opiate addiction

with minimal withdrawal symptoms um there's something that happens with ibogaine when you take it that it does something to rewire the areas of the brain that respond to opiates and that sort of are hardwired for addiction. It rewires them in a way that they have a very low recidivism rate, a very low repeat addiction rate. Yeah, like psychedelics seems to be so much potential. There's this professor that I write about. His name is David Nichols. And he basically spent his whole career studying psychedelics as a way to help people beat cocaine addictions, alcohol addictions, even fight things like PTSD.

And it was actually found that MDMA, ecstasy, is like this amazing drug for PTSD. And it was actually found that MDMA, ecstasy, is like this amazing drug for PTSD. Yeah, I've heard this. The MAPS is in the middle of... Yeah, exactly. Yeah, they're doing these, they finally have gotten clearance to do these studies. And in some cases, just using MDMA one time is enough. And the term you used, it like rewires the brain. It's like resetting the hard drive or like turning the term you used, it like rewires the brain. It's like resetting the hard drive or like turning the computer off, turning it back on again. Yes.

And I think it also changes the way people think about drugs because these are not escape drugs in the same sense as heroin is or fentanyl is or cocaine is. These are drugs that sort of just give you a refocused perspective on reality itself yeah and i don't need to tell you about dmt yeah yeah it's another one it's the same but i mean that's also uh ayahuasca is also very successful for people to quit using it to quit smoking using it to quit alcohol people that have issues. It sort of gets to the heart. It lets you understand, like, hey, we're going to take you on a little journey into the mind and show you through dimethyltryptamine, show you what's fucking with you.

Right. This is something that you've sort of stored away in the back of your brain. Right. It's rotten. And you're always ignoring it, but it's always there. So it flavors everything you do. Right. rotten and it's you're you're always ignoring it but it's always there so it flavors everything you do right and psychedelics one of the things that they do is they shine a bright light on all of those weird parts of the mind that we all have we all have weird memories or weird feelings or weird you know thoughts of inadequacy or self-hate whatever it is that cause us to be self-destructive

and make poor choices. And a lot of times we're not even aware of it. These things sort of fester in your subconscious. And DMT, psilocybin, a lot of different psychedelic drugs, which oddly enough, the most potent ones, they mirror normal human neurochemistry. Oh, that's amazing. Which DMT is a part of normal human neurochemistry. It's produced by the human body.

Right, I've heard that. Yeah. And I've heard that like ayahuasca is like 12 hours or whatever experience. It's a long experience, yeah. And I've heard that DMT is basically the very peak of that, like distilled down. Yeah. The way I describe it is mushrooms times a million plus aliens. Did it have like a profound like lasting impact on you?

Oh, yeah. It changes who you are. You're pre that thing and then you are now you know. Now you know that there's a whole another dimension to understanding and to experience. It's just – it's very, very, very different than the normal static world that we all live in. Yeah, there's this guy called Sasha Shulgin, who, yeah, you know, Sasha Shulgin. So I got to go to the farm where he designed all his drugs. And, you know, he dedicated his whole career to trying to, you know, discover new psychedelics that could be used as medicine. And so he took the chemical structure of mescaline, was one of his most often used. They're called the scaffolding effect. So it's like that's the chemical scaffolding.

And so he would tweak little bits to try to come up with new drugs, sample a tiny bit himself. If it did nothing, took a little himself if it did nothing took a little more a little more a little more till it till it had an effect and he invented over a hundred new drugs he he was working for um dao chemical uh the people who invented agent orange um at the start of his career and he invented like psychedelics while working there that have like the dow you know dow was like patent patented um and so he invented this drug that was known as uh stp as a psychedelic it stood for serenity tranquility and peace i think and so this was like a hippie era drug and there was um the hell's angels actually

got into selling it and distributing it it was uh it was this this crazy story but they but the problem was the hell angel hell's angels got the dosage wrong so they gave everybody way too much and there was this big um this big protest in golden gate park in San Francisco. In San Francisco, it was called the Human Bee Inn, and they were protesting the banning of LSD that year. It was 1967. And so everybody went to the Golden Gate Park, took this stuff, this SDP, and this really high dosages, and they all, like, freaked out and ended up in the hospital.

What's it made out of? I don't know. It's some kind of not related LSD. Is it available now? I'm sure it is, yeah, on the dark web. I'm sure you could get it, yeah. I don't know. It doesn't sound that great.

Even in its regular proper dose, Sasha Shulgin has those books called PCAL and T-CAL, which are basically cookbooks and how to make all his psychedelics and even he like wasn't that crazy about this one but but anyway after all these people in golden gate park started freaking out and dow chemical realized that it was their guy doing this they're like all right all right that's enough shut him down yeah um have you ever heard of uh hamilton morris yeah yeah he's great he's the og hamilton's pharmacopoeia he's great i've seen him on here

yeah yeah he's the most knowledgeable person that i know in terms of for sure the history of these things and he interviewed sasha before he died he loved sasha yeah he did yeah yeah he's he takes a scientific but yet uh uh a connoisseur's approach to drugs. I mean, he's very scientific about what's happening, but yet he'll talk about it like the way Sommelier would discuss a fine wine. Yeah, I remember he was talking about it. He took a cannabinoid and he's like, it's my crown chakra is feeling. Yeah, he's hilarious when he's blitzed on that show hamilton's pharmacopoeia and you know

his dad right yes yeah it's amazing earl morris is such an amazing documentarian yes yeah um we did a podcast we've done two but the first one we did we got way too high we were useless i remember you guys talking about that yeah we were useless i mean we were useless it's like hey hamilton morris is on the show that was the early days show. That was the early days of the podcast, too. The early days of the podcast, we often got way too high. I had to figure out how to dial it in. Yeah. That's the number one thing people asked me when I said I was going on this show.

They're like, are you going to get high with Joe? I would be so useless and impart no information. And plus, it's like the opioid epidemic. I got to get my facts right. Well, it doesn't seem like appropriate time to get fucked up. Yeah. Yeah. What are you trying to do with this book besides let people know the history of fentanyl?

Do you feel like with education, you can do some good because people will be armed with facts and understanding, and they can make better choices. Yeah, all of the above. Like all branches of the U.S. government have been reaching out to me about this book. That's great. That's good to hear. Yeah, people want it. Like this China stuff, nobody knew anything about what China was doing and why. And so I'm, you know, like the left and the right i sort of like like this book which is a

rare consensus because the the right wing is really into like china is fucking with us and the left wing is really into this uh this idea of harm reduction and that's my big sort of talking point is like the war on drugs stuff is i always compare it to sex education right i mean we can teach abstinence believe that kids aren't going to have sex stick our heads in the sand or we can do understand kids are always going to have sex kids are always going to take drugs let's try to help them do it more safely right and so you know if if I've been in rooms where it was like hardcore law and order Republicans, and I just try to like make my point like, you know, we can keep doing things the way we have. We're failing miserably. Why not give these other methods a chance?

You know, and a lot of times they have a proven track record of success in places like europe like what are we waiting for right yeah we have this puritan ideal you know this the abstinence ideal and then we apply that to drugs and i just think it's so foolish it really is and i and it it's also so politically dangerous to say anything other than that. Yeah. I think it's, you know, the good news is like the optimistic thing is that that's slowly changing, you know. And a lot of people say, well, during the crack era, there's a lot of racism, people say. Like during the crack era, it was all about like lock these people up, you know, criminalize the users. But now that it's like the white politicians, kids who are

dying from opioids. Now, all of a sudden, this is a this is a health problem. And this is something we need to address as a disease, you know, and so that's there's no doubt that that's true. But at the same time, the positive is that like this is spilling into other realms, too. So I went to North Dakota, this small town, Grand Forks, where this 18 year old kid overdosed and died on fentanyl. And it just shocked the town. Everyone freaked out, but it inspired all these new reforms. So now they have all these new laws in North Dakota, like things like the Good Samaritanitan law where if someone is with you and they die from drugs you can call the police and they won't arrest you you know what i mean because that that happens in

a lot of places still right if you know they they blame the person who they're with and um and they have things like they can use skype like a skype type service when they live in these small rural towns to get a prescription from a doctor far away. They can use these services. And what they told me in Grand Forks is that this system is, it's spilling over to other, even like alcoholism now, people are starting to think of that as a disease. And so i think there is slow progress being made well that's that's good to hear i mean it just takes time right for people to understand that this is this is a real issue that's affecting everyone i think you're right about the racism in terms of like the attitude about crack versus cocaine and that could clearly be demonstrated by sentencing. Yeah. People were sentenced, the mandatory minimums for crack use were so much higher.

When people got caught with crack or selling crack, I mean, they went to jail for a long fucking time. Whereas people got caught with cocaine, they didn't go to jail for as long. And the treatment, the sentence is much smaller. And Dr. Carl Hart, you know? Yeah, yeah, he's great. He's great as well. I've had him on here. And he was explaining, he's like, look, there is no difference.

He's like, it is cocaine. I mean, this is cocaine. If you want to break it down to the drug effect on the body, they are the same thing. And one of them sends you away for a long time. One of them doesn't. Yeah. Well, for my book about west coast hip-hop called original gangsters i interviewed uh freeway ricky ross has he been on here yes a couple times

yeah so he um the original rick ross the original rick ross yeah the real rick ross exactly and he his sort of the innovation of their era was uh was called ready rock and so before people would people preferred to smoke cocaine even before crack was invented freebase that was right exactly richard prior got in trouble with yeah yeah exactly so the innovation was to make it so you didn't have to freebase it was ready to smoke so they called it ready rock and um easy ease uh first record label, his record label was called Ruthless, but they were going to call it Rock House Records for that reason. And so he was a crack dealer before he got in the music industry. Yeah.

The Rick Ross story, the real Rick Ross story, I should say, Rick Ross, Freeway Ricky which is what they used to call him was making millions and millions of dollars did not have any idea that he was involved in that whole Oliver North which is incredible they were using the cocaine money

to fund the war with the Consciousness Sandinistas yeah it's yeah Rick Ross is I wrote about him, and so I ended up actually playing tennis with him because I heard. He's a really good tennis player. Yeah, I heard he was, and I was a big high school tennis player too, so I was like, let's do this.

And he's, you know, he's got some years on me. I don't know how old he, I think he's maybe late 50s, but he was holding his own. We played on like a South Central tennis court somewhere, and he took some games off me. Well, his story is incredible because they sent him away on the three strikes rule for life and then while he was in jail he learned how to read then he learned how to understand the law and he started like literally taught himself to be a lawyer and then realized like no the way they

used the law was incorrect and unlawful. Three strikes means you get arrested for larceny. You get out, you get arrested for larceny. You get out, you get arrested for larceny. They did it in one swoop. So they gave him two charges at the same time and then put him in for three strikes. And he was able to successfully prove that that was wrong. That's why he's out right now. Wow. He's so smart. One of the things he taught me that, you know, you always hear about crack babies all the time and the 80s like cover of Newsweek crack babies. He was like, you know,

crack babies aren't real. That's not a real thing. He said that his, I believe, I hope I'm not speaking out of school. I think like his wife like maybe smoked crack while his son was in utero and never had any problems. And he's like, yeah, look around. Do your research. Crack babies is not a real thing. That's crazy because I remember hearing that as well. Crack babies was a thing we were all worried about in the 80s. Oh, my God.

Wait until the year 2000. All these crack babies are 20 years old. Yeah. Where are they now? Where are they now maybe they're mumble rappers maybe that's what's going on maybe that's it i shouldn't laugh at that yeah you did though because because you understand real rap music oh man i'm just worried about real hip-hop the old man right i know it's just so lame to be like the kids these days i'm

definitely that that's who i am yeah that's i'm embracing are you into hip-hop i was yes okay who is your kind of generation naz huge naz fan uh gangstar love gangstar um of course biggie tupac you know the the classics you know i mean big daddy kane i'm a i loveD. Yeah, that's old school East Coast stuff. Just, you know, God, there's so many. It's just that era was like, I mean, there's a couple eras that I just listed, but it's lyrical. Like Nas is my favorite, I think, because his lyrics, they're so intricate.

You know, the way he words things like you just go oh shit you know you hear his lyrics you just go oh this is like the king of he's like the oh shit king yes for lyrics man he's the best what was the was it rewind what was the one where he he played the whole song backwards oh yeah i know what you're talking about from the bullet going back into the gun all the way through the entire story he starts at the end and then backs up the story amazing maybe he had some fucking classics i think he's the best writer in all of hip-hop yeah well you know it's just his beats don't always hit me the right way but he's got so many classics he's earned like the right but um but my big thing because I did live in New York,

and I was an East Coast music snob. And Biggie is clearly the best ever. I got one for you. Let me find out if you're real. Cool G Rap. Oh, yeah. I mean, he's the original. He's the best.

He's undisputed. Undisputed, underground guy. People don't know. You list some of the greats of all guy like people don't know like you list like some of the greats of all time people don't say cool g rap go back and listen to cock blocking that is one of the best fucking songs ever to this day i'll go listen to that song and it'll make me laugh yeah that was uh yeah i mean that that like 80s New York stuff is so, so much of it. Hill Street Blues. Like, so intellectual, so amazing wordplay.

Yes. But see, when I came to L.A., though, everyone's like, Tupac, Tupac, Tupac. And I was like, I don't get it, man. His flow is not that great. You know, I just don't get it. But the more I, like, listened to his lyrics, the more I saw he was more than just a rapper. He was like a cultural influence.

He was like a political leader to a lot of people. And finally, I'm like, yes, I get it. He stood for something. And now I just don't hear Biggie the same way, you know, because so many of his songs are about partying and crime and stuff. And the bigger message of Tupac just really won me over and then well I don't think it's a competition but I know what you're saying I mean Tupac definitely had a different vision but Biggie you also have to realize Biggie was like

how old was he when he died oh yeah 24 or something yeah yeah I mean Tupac was 25 and one of my favorite videos of Biggie is Biggie standing on a street corner when he was like 16, 17 years old rapping. Do you ever see that? I think I have. Oh, Jesus. With the lumberjack stuff. Yeah. He's got a fucking, I think he might even have a piece of paper in his hand where he's like reading the rap off or he's got it like in case he fucks up.

Oh, yeah. But his flow was so good, even as a little kid. He was a fucking kid, man. And he was like as good as any rapper alive. Can you find that? Can we play that? We'll get in trouble? I'll play it for you afterwards.

After the podcast, we'll play it. And his breath control and his weight. Sometimes I feel like you've got to be fat almost to be an amazing singer or rapper. Well, comedians too. A lot of fat comedians like Patrice O'Neill, one of the greatest of all time. There was something about his girth when he was on stage. He had like power and like this whole thing. Here's Biggie.

The delivery. Yes, he's got a piece of paper in his hand. That's amazing. Probably a towel. Summer. He's so small. Probably a towel. Oh, it might be a towel.

Oh, yeah, you're right. He's 17 years old in Bed-Stuy. Yeah. And just murdering it. Murdering it. Oh, yeah, you're right. 17 years old in Bed-Stuy. Yeah. And just murdering it. Murdering it. He's not doing tapes. Everybody around him. No, look at everybody.

You know, I saw this early Tupac videos and heard early Tupac recordings, and his original style influence was actually fresh prince of bel-air yes well remember when he was a dancer for humpty hump yeah digital underground yeah well he was like in the background of the humpty hump dance yeah yeah arsinio hall you can see him yeah no tupac was a dancer. I mean, and when he was young, which is really interesting when they interview him, he was like, he wasn't thugged out at all. Well, he's the son of two Black Panthers, you know. The politics was always his thing.

What is that from? He's in Nothing But Trouble. Oh, that movie. The Gumby haircut. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Oh, I forgot about that movie. That was his debut.

That was his, like, solo like solo debut wow yeah digital underground whatever happened to them humpty uh humpty hum shock g he's still he's still around he's they were so good they had great shit when you write a song that's as profitable as the humpty dance i would imagine it kind of like saps your need to to do too much else when you're that set but no he has though he's he's the real deal there was a lot of great hip-hop in that era I mean I'm sure there's a lot of great hip-hop now but to me it's like it's almost like like I'm a classic rock fan as well like if I'm sitting there and I'm about to go for a drive and I'm like

what do I listen to nine times out ten, I'll go to Leonard Skinner or Zeppelin or The Doors or the Allman Brothers. What about Tom Petty? I love Tom Petty. I go to those classics for whatever reason. There's so much music. I know there's great stuff out now.

I still listen to some great stuff now. I love the Black Keys. They're still putting out killer shit the Vampire Weekend album is amazing I don't know if you've heard that Vampire Weekend, they're from New York it's a band the lead singer Ezra Koenig

is with what's her name, Jones from Parks and Recreation Rashida Jones new band? they're not that new Vamp uh our weekend it's fucking amazing lana lana del rey's album there's some great shit out there no doubt but it's just it's almost like there's too much there's like but that's what's great about music i mean it's an untapped like it's a well that never runs dry and that's what i always go back to it well it's

interesting to me too that much of i mean i it's weird when we talk about drugs because drugs seem like a blanket expression that you can throw over things that are good and bad things that are productive like caffeine and things that are terrible like meth but there's a lot of music that you would say is like oh well what the fuck happened between 1960 and 1970 because something happened yeah you go to the music of 1960 and then you go to the music of 1970 you go to the music of 2009 and 2019 they're fucking the same man it's like there's great stuff there's a lot of variety but there's no like what the fuck happened but from 1960 to 1969 what the fuck happened something happened and that that something is drugs that's you're you know it's like the whole societal shift went right around right along with

it they kind of fueled each other the uh the psychedelics absolutely um i guess that dirt weed they were smoking probably uh affected them too well they smoked so much of it it became effective but you know i've talked to some people and they said there was always some good weed back then you know they call it acapulco gold or whatever but there was no botanists some fucking scientists that are working on like some of the way you have today which is 40 plus percent thc mind numbing you know you can't feel your feet you know that kind of stuff like i don't think they had any of that keef and wax stuff like i just came back to la for the first time recently went into a legal weed store for the first time i didn't buy anything but but they're like the dosages are so high yes you know all of them like why there's got to be a connoisseur's market

for like micro dosing of weed like where's that well what you want to get is those cbd thc tablets oh i heard about their capsules and it's 10 milligrams 10 milligrams thc 10 milligrams cbd and it's so nice it's just a nice calm mellow high like you just like appreciate things a little bit more the colors are a little bit vibrant but you can just walk around and talk to people you don't you're not like fuck i gotta go home and get under the covers quick it's not you know and but the thing is there's so many like hardcore stoners today that they need those high doses because their tolerance is so high and they're just trying to melt their face off like every time they go in there they're trying to find some new thing that melts their

face off harder i just like i don't know man uh psychedelics like lsd you know i'm like going in the other direction really like we went vegan you know like not smoking weed really not like drinking much it's just like exercising eating like the best food i don't know i'm just like trying out this new thing just i i just want to feel good all the time you know what i mean so just experimenting and um we my wife actually got us into like whole foods plant-based so it's not you know like you can eat crappy vegan food obviously i heard nikki glazer talking about this you know People talk about fake meat and the impossible Whopper, and I had one. Terrible for you.

Yeah, but it just makes you feel as crappy like the old Whopper did. Yeah, it's terrible. If you cut out the processed food, that to me is what is making me feel like I have energy all the time. Yes. Sleep better. I haven't gotten sick. Good for you, man. That's where it's at. Be kind to your body. Your. Yes. Sleep better. I haven't gotten sick. Good for you, man. That's where it's at.

Be kind to your body. Your body will treat you better. That's just how it is. Drink more water. Exercise when you can. Do you meditate at all? Yeah, yeah. I've been getting big into that.

Yeah. How about you? Yes. I guess you and Nikki are talking about that a little bit. I mean, I feel like all these things that we're saying all these the moves towards uh positive lifestyle choices will and also in some way sort of negate this move towards these drugs and this this the attractiveness of these drugs if people are drawn towards being healthier and happier and cleaner keep your mind right you'll be less likely to want to seek this sort of that opiate just escape.

Yeah, it's 100%. It's like Johan Hari in his book. He's been on here chasing the scream. Yeah, he like blew my mind with these revelations that really it's just like people can age out of these drugs. You know, I always thought like when you're addicted to heroin or fentanyl it's like for life you're never getting free but when people get their stuff together they just age out of it and then they don't even have to try so um i agree with what you're saying well i think the attractiveness of living a happy healthy life is contagious it's very addictive and that people

addicting in the right way addictive in the a positive way you see someone living a good healthy life and being happy and being nice to people and smiling a lot laughing a lot and having your life go well where you're making a good living and you're you're being productive and creative and all those good positive things those are attractive to other folks and i think they see that and they go, oh, do I want to be like Mike over there who's doing well, or Cindy who's doing well, or do I want to be like those poor fools that are under the bridge

that are living in tents because they have drug addicts, they have drug problems? Yeah, I've had kind of a debate with my wife because she, you know, all these drugs like naloxone and methadone, these are opioids too, you know, so some people criticize it and they say, well, you're just advocating for someone to go off one drug onto another drug. And my wife in particular is like, you know, should really be encouraging people to go off these drugs altogether and like you know whether it's a spiritual approach meditation all that um you know and she's she's not wrong but it's just like what do the numbers

show what are people capable of doing you know it's um i don't have all the answers i don't have the answers for everyone my friend arty lang just uh i just did a podcast with him this weekend i heard about that and he's free and clean for nine months now i've never seen him look better his eyes they're they're they're sparkling like he's there he's present and he's talking and he detailed like all the various ways that he tried to get off and all the different things that he did and nothing worked other than this last time he just kind of hit that rock bottom thing and had slowly but surely worked his way out of being addicted into this place of sobriety. And then two days led to 20 days, led to three months, led to where we are now. And, you know, he's so happy. And, you know, he's still getting his piss tested like five times a week i mean he's under it's crazy because he's under this program

where if he fucks up he goes to jail i think he goes to jail for a long time he's not a dealer and he's not he didn't do any violent crime or anything like that he's just a user it's really strange that they've got him on this, this drug court thing. But what it's doing for him is it's forcing him to be accountable and forcing him to be sober. And then he's doing that. And then he's saying, look, I like this. I'm happy. I'm alive.

I'm doing great. I'm doing shows. I feel good. His fucking stories were insane. He's so funny. He was so much more vibrant than I've ever seen him before. And it was so, I love when I see people doing well. I love it.

I love when someone was, their life was fucked up and now it's not fucked up at all. Like he's doing great. He's on the right path. And the more people see things like that, I think the better it is for all of us. I think some people, it's like part of their identity to be like that guy who's like drunk yes you know in like the life of the party yes and even like there's so much like i'm no you know i'm not like a teetotaler but there's so much part of the culture is drinking you know what i mean and it's there's so many like i'm drinking beer for

breakfast like this is amazing and people get caught up in that and it doesn't agree drinking is not for everybody right you know but they um that it becomes part of their identity and so um we my wife and i do this uh thing called kundalini yoga have you ever done that yeah russell brand my friend ari just did it he goes uh got me high yeah it does i heard someone else describe it as like totally for drug people who like getting high drugs because you get that buzz in your head yeah it's like half meditation half yoga i'm like the world's least flexible person so it's not like hard yoga but it's just that you have to it's mind over matter stuff and so you do things

like, you know, we had to do this one where you put your arms above your head and hold it in this position and do this mantra for like 11 minutes. And you're constantly correcting your posture. You're trying to like, you know, look in your third eye and your brain doesn't have time to wander around and think those negative thoughts and how terrible you are right and at the same time it's like a physically demanding thing to do i mean it doesn't look like much but you're like sweating and um you know my wife like got got us into that there's so many recovery stories because um i really it's like people think it's a chemical thing, but it's like a mind thing so often. Yes.

And I think that the ability to silence all the internal chatter that you were just discussing, like that thing like you think about being a terrible person or you hate yourself or that is so common with people and so many people just live with those those thoughts bouncing around their head and they don't have an outlet and that's another reason why they turn to alcohol or turn to drugs to try to like squash that chatter but yeah when you force that's one of the things that i really love about yoga is uh no matter what's going on in my life it's's business stuff, personal stuff, creative stuff, whatever it is that's bothering me, I can do yoga. And the difficulty of those poses makes me concentrate almost entirely on them. And I take a concerted effort to just think about my breathing. And like meditation, you'll go off track and you start thinking about

things. Oh, I got to pay that bill. Oh, I got to do this thing. Oh, I got to make sure I call that breathing and like meditation you'll go off track and you start thinking about things oh i gotta pay that bill oh i gotta do this thing oh i gotta make sure i call that guy but you can get right back on a track if you just always concentrate on your breathing always concentrate on the pose concentrate on your breathing concentrate on the pose and just know that you're gonna get off track a couple times during thing but enough you'll stay on track enough so that there is some sort of cleansing effect. And when class is over, I feel better. I just feel better. What kind of yoga do you do?

I do hot yoga, like Bikram. Like Bikram yoga. Yeah. Yeah. There's a funny book about that. The guy who started that movement. Out of his fucking mind. Yeah.

Well, that's the fucked up part about it. The place that I go to, they actually change the name. Oh, really? It used to be called Bikram. And they're like, wow, this guy's too fucking radioactive radioactive and they teach the same postures which he didn't even invent by the way and these are fucking thousands of years old these postures and the sequence he didn't even invent he just someone else popularized it yeah he popularized it and look as gross as that guy is he's done a huge service by spreading his yoga across the country and it's

it's like many things in life things are messy you know life is life is a messy proposition and this guy you could say well fuck yoga because that guy is yoga no no yoga is a physical practice done by millions and millions if not billions of people it's the same uh with the leader of kundalini this guy named yogi baijan and he uh he's gross too he oh there's lawsuits against him since he died and stuff like i think any like cult people call the cult like they wear white there's um but he came from the punjab region in india and the the kundalini yoga was like only for the brahmins or only for the like elite class and so what he did was he came to the u.s and he brought it for like the common people and so there were people

apparently who were so upset about this back from india that there were attempts on his life i heard that he um you know he wore the wears the big um what do you call it that holds your hair? Turban? The big turban, yeah. It's bulletproof? No, but someone came in with a sword, and he had a comb stuck in there, and it was like I think a metal comb, and that was the only thing that saved his life from this sword attack from the back. That sounds like a great story, but probably bullshit. That's what I would say.

This sword bounced off my comb, and I am here to teach yoga. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, something happens when people become like a leader of something that, especially something that's so spiritually oriented and also sexual. There's something about yoga class. Everybody's in their underwear. Everybody's sweaty, and you're all like sort of releasing, and it's like it's very sexual in a lot of ways that's why people think yoga teachers are like the hottest teachers like if like a girl's

like a yoga teacher your friend goes dude i'm dating a yoga teacher like whoa yeah well my wife's taking a teacher training so so that's amazing i think it's just like they're literally you have like an aura you know what i mean there's something about it you're focused and yeah you know on making your being more healthy and yes but then for men for gross men the problem is like like all these women are like you you've brought me such amazing things he's like i got another amazing thing for you well i mean every cult i mean it's like quit being such a stereotype like have a cult but don't make it about seducing the underage women in the cult don't make it any of the women i mean it's always that's it always they always become sex cults yeah exactly always and don't like steal up everyone's money like just change the script

a little bit this time yeah i mean everything from waco to jim jones to all yeah if they wind up fucking everybody's wife and taking all the money yeah exactly what was that netflix documentary that place in oregon yeah amazing yeah amazing and again sex sex and money that's it was all about sex that guy was banging everybody it was like orgies yeah it's fucking crazy but that's always what happens it always becomes some wacky sex cult always yeah always yeah i mean that's the number one thing that makes people distrustful of cult sex and money yeah the things that people want out of life the most these are probably other than love which is probably the wisest choice that's part of it too like it's finding someone to care about you. That's why people join gangs. You know, Ice-T talks about that.

His own parents never said they loved him. But in the gang, they were like, I love you. He wasn't in the Crips, but he had like friends and they took him in. Yeah. People want meaning. You know, they want meaning in life. And I agree with you what you said also about a lot of times people use drugs or drink or whatever it is that's their vice. They become a prisoner to that thought, like that this is their identity.

Like, this is Mike. Mike's the drunk. Look at Mike. You getting fucked up tonight? Hey, I get fucked up every night, bro. You know me. Some of the best advice I got is to not be so worried about your identity. Like, think of it it was like a

small I instead of a capital I like I think about myself in certain ways you know I'm like I'm like the guy who likes hip-hop I'm the you know the guy who does this or that and that's you know but like do I need to be that guy like if I don't listen to hip-hop I'll learn about all this other music that I might like even better right you know and so the more you just strip that stuff away the more you can get to the essence of who you really are yeah the more you just just enjoy things and not wonder whether you should be enjoying them or whether they fit your package yeah someone's not just someone but many people have said this to me it's one of the grossest thing anybody has ever said they go i really love what you're doing with your brand uh like oh gross that is yeah but the fact that people people can see through that stuff so easily if you're really doing that oh fuck yeah they can but it's also

like the idea that you have you are a brand you're a brand ben westhoff you fucking brand you yeah i wish what what is that i I mean, what is a brand? A person's a brand? I love what you're doing with your brand. Like, ew. So if you ever meet me, don't say that. Oh, now they're going to say it. I think you pride yourself on just saying what you really think.

And I think that that is your brand. I mean, as lame as that sounds, not having a brand is like your brand kind of well fortunately i developed uh fuck you money at a time where i like during the fear factor days i got fuck you money and i used it to say fuck you and so like used it correctly so i just this is who i am like i'm nice i'm a. Like, but this is how I think about things. I'm not, I'm not going to like the problem with Hollywood. It's one of the giant problems is that you're always trying out for the next thing.

You're always auditioning. And that's a, it's, people develop an incredibly disingenuous mindset because the mindset is I want to be manipulative to the casting agents and the producers. I want them to like me. So I want to adopt whatever conglomeration of ideas they have politically, socially, I want to fit in. So this is why Hollywood is almost like universally left wing. It's not because the people are all, they all think exactly the same way because they're creative types and that would be ideal,

right? But that's not what it is what it is is the people that run the show know that this is how the show's run the show's run through progressive thought you vote democrat you support these candidates you want a woman president you wanted this you wanted that you're you've pro everything that that the left stands for and so these people they don't even have their own opinions they just have these opinions they've adopted because they think it's going to help them get through and so then they do get through and then they become famous and then they go who the fuck am i like they don't know who they are they don't they don't and then when it comes to like hey tell us your opinion on this like oh my

god they don't even know what their opinion is because they've never really developed opinions. They've developed an act. And that act is say the things that these people would like you to say so that you can continue to work, so that you can get picked. Because if there's two people that are up for a role and one of them is like this staunch libertarian who's like this pull yourself up by your bootstrap thing that you know doesn't believe in white privilege and and the other one is like super progressive i call myself a male feminist i want a woman president like that guy gets the role yeah i mean that's well the the ironic thing too though is like a lot of you know like real liberals see hollywood as this like reactionary place in its own right you know what i mean like the the the right wing like christian part of the culture sees hollywood as this horrible cesspool but then the left wing sees it as playing to this you know the weinstein stuff all the like

worst elements of um you know male dominated corporate culture epitomized in hollywood so it's it's funny how it's hated on i think yeah it is on both sides but i think that weinstein stuff is the same thing as the cult stuff it's just like you got a guy gets power and he has a bunch of people that have to like he he creates their careers like you want to be in this movie you gotta suck this dick and that's what he did i mean he literally did the casting couch thing on a grand scale. So awful. Yeah. It's,

it's what happens to so many people where they have that position where they're, they're taking people and they're hiring them and then putting them in these magical positions. Look at her. She's on the big screen. She's a star. I could have been the star,

but I didn't have sex with Harvey. And then this is this is creates that culture and that guy just just ran through that business with impunity i mean he was just doing it that way forever yeah i think um i don't know like when you look at hollywood movies like what it is and what the formula became i always wonder if this is if this is like something that developed organically or if it's like we're hardwired to want to see this kind of like take the 3x structure right like every movie has to have a 3x structure right whether it's the most independent or the biggest holly So it's like, why is that? Is that part of our brain? And take songs, like pop songs. They're all structured the same.

Verse, chorus, verse, bridge, chorus again. And I don't know. Well, you read any Joseph Campbell? Yeah. I haven't read it, but I know the basic ideas. Yeah. And Joseph Campbell, the journey of the hero, the hero's journey. basic ideas. Yeah.

And Joseph's Campbell, the, you know, the, the journey of the hero, the hero's journey, all, all that like mirrors itself,

like that, that's the structure of most of these fantastic stories where this hero goes through this transformation and faces this adversary and overcomes it. And this story is sort of is repeated over and over again and it's it's something that's like deeply embedded in in culture deeply embedded in the psyche of human beings yeah well yeah there you go yeah there's the answer yeah and so so when i'm trying to like write um a book like this i want to i want there to be narrative and tell stories you know what i mean like there's there's drug books out there and it gets way deep into the neuropharmacology and

you know but it's like ultimately you know 30 000 people dying of fentanyl is a horrifying statistic but it's almost impossible to wrap your mind around it. When you know one person who died, like my friend, his name was Michael Schaefermeyer in 2010. He died from fentanyl patches. I had never heard of fentanyl at the time. A patch killed him. A patch, and he was drinking at the same time, but then what actually literally killed him was

when he was sleeping with his face in the pillow, and he cut off, no, it just cut off his breathing oh jesus he didn't like have the strength to move oh my god and so so that's why they think these these number of deaths actually might be undercounted because his death was listed i believe as like cardiac arrest or something so that doesn't even show up as a fentanyl death for example and so um but yeah, just that one story means so much more to me than 30,000 people I don't know, for example. You know what I mean? Yeah, that's the problem. What is that old expression?

The death of one person is a tragedy. The death of a million is a statistic. Yeah. I think that was a Nazi that said that. Wasn't it Goebbels? Someone like that was well i think that was a nazi that said that wasn't it um gerbils someone like that i forget who it was someone terrible had that expression but we we don't there's so many people that's also part of the problem like 3 000 people die every year from aspirin 150 people die every year because coconuts fall on their head

oh really i think tylenol actually has the narrowest like therapeutic window it's really yeah single death is a tragedy a million deaths statistic when one dies is a tragedy when a million dies it's a statistic yeah well that's a little redundant why do you say twice is that a russian people a lot of times have tried, you know, many people have successfully killed themselves with Tylenol because it's got such a narrow therapeutic window. Like the amount that makes you feel better versus the amount that will kill you is not that far apart.

Oh, really? And it's the same with fentanyl. And that's why, like, I mean, you could drink too much water and kill yourself, right? Yeah, there was a woman who did that on a radio show contest. Really? She was trying to win like a game station, like an Xbox or something for a kid. It was like in, I believe it was in San Jose, and they were having a water drinking contest.

And there's also kids have done it, they were getting hazed for fraternities. They had to drink a bunch of water and they died. Yeah, and people, you hear a lot about ecstasy overdose deaths because people didn't drink enough water so like mdma isn't usually what kills you it's like you you're in the hot sun at a rave you overheat you drink you don't drink enough water but actually some people have heard that and then they drink too water, and that kills them at a rave. How much water kills you? I don't know.

How much water do you have to drink before you die? I think probably a ton. Let's take a guess. You think a gallon an hour for five hours. You think that'll kill you? A gallon, that is a ton of water for one hour. Yeah. You think that'll kill you?

For five hours? Five hours. I have no idea. Have you had a guess? No. We're playing a game here, I guess. I have no idea. Have you had a guess? No. We're playing a game here, I guess. I'm guessing no. I'm thinking three gallons an hour for three hours.

You're dead. You got the over-under on that? What does it say, Jamie? Is there a statistic? It's a millimolar. Miller. I can't say that. there a statistic? The millimolar. Miller. Miller. I can't say that.

Millimolar? Yeah, that thing. That's like for ketones. It's a sodium level thing. Oh, right. Water and the blood level that gets to your brain. That's what can fuck you up. So I'm trying to find out.

Oh, so it dilutes? Yeah. Dilutes your sodium. What if you drink water with a lot of salt in it? Then you're probably just pee it out. You can probably get sodium toxicity by the way that will give you explosive diarrhea trust me on that um last year we were doing the sober october fitness challenge we're doing all me and my uh you did this year too yeah but last

year we went crazy we did we had a fitness challenge this year we just went sober and we did a bunch of classes and different things but last year we went like five six hours of cardio a day like nutty shit and i was drinking literal just giant 64 liters of water with epsom salts or not epsom salts uh himalayan salt in it and if you don't get that mixture right that stuff will come rocketing out of your ass like a broken fire hydrant it's crazy and then i googled it afterwards i was like what is that and then i googled it it's actually like a salt enema by drinking a bunch of salt for whatever reason i guess your body just goes hey what is all this water and salt this guy's sick something's wrong here everybody out of the pool and it just it all backfired on you yeah it just but you got to get it right it's just you only need like a teaspoon

you don't need like multiple tablespoons yeah well i've been you know i ran a marathon and i'm into long distance running and it's gotten to the point where um at first i was always doing it for my health you know what I mean? I was like I'm getting my workout in, getting exercise. But then I grew to like it so much that it was like negatively affecting my health. You know, like I ran maybe 10 miles with my buddy Jeff the other day. And I just felt awful afterwards. But I love doing it, you know.

Why did you feel awful? Because you were worn out? I don't know. I was like grouchy with my kids. And, yeah, my love, you know, everything was depleted. I love doing it. Why did you feel awful? Because you were worn out? I was grouchy with my kids. Yeah, my love, everything was depleted. I was tired and hungry. Yeah.

Then the next day I was sore. But it's funny when you cross that plane to just wanting to do the thing itself. Yes. Well, that's a high as well. Yeah. You're obviously aware of the endorphins that you get from running. I never really experienced that the way i did during that sober october thing because one of the things that uh me and my friends talked about was how when you do do cardio for like five six hours a day you don't give a fuck like you like all of your fucks are gone yeah like things

don't bother you like people can yell at you you're like oh hi keep yelling this doesn't mean anything like things don't bother you yeah it's weird like you're on some i don't give a fuck drug and i was telling we were all talking about i was like if you could take that drug how great would that drug be because you don't you don't use any cognitive function it's not like you're high and you can't figure out what's going on no you're the exact same person but you have zero internal chatter and zero negative thinking it's like it's gone it's No, you're the exact same person, but you have zero internal chatter and zero negative thinking. It's like it's gone. It's like –

Yeah, that's the – the meditation is the closest that I get to that. Yes. You know, things bounce off you. You don't like judge everything so harshly. You just like – things come in. Yeah. You process it. You react in your own time.

You're not letting your ego get in the way i think there's a certain amount of physical requirements that all of our bodies have and most of those physical requirements are not being met and then when you do do something that wears your body out you go oh and then you realize like oh a lot of that anxiety was just this excess energy yeah it's just this this body which is designed to be able to perform your body's designed to be able to you know carry groceries and you know run away from animals they're trying to get you all these different things that your body evolved to be able to do and then most of what you do is sit in your car sit on the train sit in your

chair at the office. And that's what a lot of people do. And because of that, your body's just like, fucking fuck, fuck, fuck! Well, yeah, exactly. I went to the Boundary Waters. You know the Boundary Waters canoe area in northern Minnesota? No, what is that?

It's like this amazing chain of lakes where there's no motorized boats allowed. There's no motors at all. Some parts of it, planes can't even fly over. Really? And it's all portaging. So you take canoes and then to connect one lake to another, you have to carry your canoe over your head and like maybe a quarter mile. Some is like a full mile.

You've got your big packs on. With a canoe over your head for a mile? Yeah, with a canoe over your head. Well, it's two people carry the canoes. That's long. Some is like a full mile. You've got your big packs on. With a canoe over your head? Yeah, with a canoe over your head. Well, it's two people carry the canoes. That's long. It is long. And it's like the most amazing full-day workout. We would get up at dawn and, like, we'd be canoeing and portaging all day. And I had no idea my body could handle it.

I get my, like, 30 minutes of exercise in every other day. And I'm like, I'm good. But now we're exercising hardcore, eight hours a day and my body just loved it and by the end of it it was like oh we have to go back to the city life again and it's not looking forward to it yeah if you get your body used to that like i imagine if you you worked on a ranch or something like that you're throwing bales of hay every day and doing chores and walking around. Your body is just going to become accustomed to it. Your body becomes accustomed to the demands that you require of it.

But most people just don't use their body enough. And it's a really disappointing thing that where really intelligent people connect exercise with being a superficial thing. And there's less of that now than there was when I was younger. But that if you exercised and you were into your appearance and you were, you know, you were trying to look good by working out, you were somehow or another shallow and immediate. You weren't concerned with books and like intellectual pursuits. Yeah. Right.

But those things are not mutually exclusive right and in fact if you're really smart you realize that this is the only fucking body you have yeah and if you're really smart you realize that it's good to have a body that's not disgusting yeah the whole like uh hope i die before i get old like mentality like i don't agree with that like my kids it's like sports is our bonding thing. It's like sports, sports, sports, sports all day long. And I started to stop to think about that for a little while. I'm like, there's other things in life. You know what I mean? What's the values that I'm imparting on my kids for doing sports? But ultimately it's just like a sense of exercise. You know,

there's, there's some competition, competition but it's like it's not like they're crying if they lose you know a healthy sense of that and just this idea that um you want to see exercise and physical activity as your friend because that's a lesson you're going to use your whole life that is a great lesson and, to bring it back to fentanyl and drugs and drugs of escape, the more you can emphasize, the more we all can emphasize healthy choices with your life, the less attractive those escapes will be. Yeah. I think. It is. Why do people... The sad thing is that the opioid epidemic was so often started by people who were prescribed drugs from their doctors.

And so that's another thing. There's a sea change happening right now is that there's all these new regulations about what doctors are allowed to prescribe. They're trying to discourage them from prescribing opioids. And that's a positive shift, I think, for people who are new patients right so like if you get a root canal you don't need some crazy strong opioid you know you know or like to recover like from a dental procedure or whatever but the problem is that now they're starting to take away people's opioids when they've been on them for a long term. Like, I talked to this woman from Colorado, and she had a disease, I can't remember, rheumatoid arthritis or something. She'd been

taking opioids for years and years and years. And now all of a sudden, the doctor was like, I can't give you these anymore. You have to take these classes about alternatives to opioids, you know, and they talked about acupuncture and yoga and stuff like that and all that's great but she felt like just degraded you know and and and studies have shown that people if they get their opioid pills taken away they're going to turn to street heroin as a result and so the whole the whole thing is is insanely complicated yeah you talked about that that there's three waves, right? The first wave is the pills, second wave is street heroin, and then third wave is fentanyl.

Yeah, exactly. And so we're still facing the repercussions from the first one, and that's what all these lawsuits that you hear about in the news are all about. all about. And another scary thing is that up until now, people hadn't been asking for fentanyl by name. Like we said, it's just put in other drugs. But now in places like San Francisco, even St. Louis, fentanyl is starting to acquire a reputation as a street drug because long-time heroin addicts don't get high anymore. You know what I mean? They take heroin, and it just gets rid of their withdrawal symptoms.

And so fentanyl will get them high again, and so people are starting to seek it out. It's a bummer. I hate to end it like this, but I think it might be the best way. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks for being here. Tell everyone your book, Fentanyl Inc.

It's available now. Oh, yeah, absolutely. It's, yeah, Fentanyl Inc., how rogue chemists are creating the deadliest wave of the opioid epidemic. And thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. Thanks, Ben. It was good talking to you.

I enjoyed it. Thank you. Bye, everybody. I really appreciate it. It was good talking to you. I enjoyed it. You too. Thank you. Bye, everybody.

Much wider ranging than...