The Joe Rogan Experience - #698 - Dr. Carl Hart

Episode Date: September 21, 2015

Carl Hart, Ph.D., is an associate professor of psychology and psychiatry at Columbia University. He is known for his research in drug abuse and drug addiction. Hart was the first tenured African American professor of sciences at Columbia University.

Yes! Welcome back Dr. Hart. Good to see you brother. Good to be here man. Pull this sucker right up to you right there. It's good to be here. I was in Mexico City and in my hotel room and there's only like two different channels that speak English. So I'm forced to watch Fox News. And I saw you on the Bill O'Reilly show. Those clusterfuck shows where they have one person, like Bill O'Reilly's

the host, and then they have all these boxes with all these different people, and everybody's talking over everybody, and the whole thing only lasts like three minutes, and they're tackling these complex subjects. You got maybe like a half a sentence out before you got interrupted. I don't even remember what the topic was. It must have had something to do with drugs and addiction. They brought you on, right? Yeah, I think that episode was drugs and texting addiction.

Texting addiction? Really? That's what it was? It degenerated into texting addiction, yeah. Jesus Christ. I thought it was marijuana or something. It was marijuana initially. Right. Because we were concerned about what they were concerned about. The high the supposed high number of marijuana users, the new high number.

Right. And then the thing is, is that I was trying to make clear that the numbers of marijuana users today is considerably lower than what they were in 1978 or 1980. But they weren't aware of the information from 1978 or 1980. Is that like the numbers per capita? Because there's so many more people now. No, it was percentage of, in this case, the percentage of high school students who were reporting marijuana use in the past 30 days or the past year. marijuana use in the past 30 days or the past year. Okay.

It's like I recently found out that there's a hundred million less Americans in 1970 than there are today. Yeah. That sounds about right. That is fucking crazy. If you really stop and think about that, I mean, 40 whatever years ago, a hundred million less people. Yeah. Yeah. We're still growing growing yeah god we're fucking crazy

we can't keep this up that's ridiculous so they were they were smoking more pot back then more kids more percent more higher percentage yeah the highest percentage of americans who were smoking or using any illegal drug was about 1978 1980 about, about that time period. It hasn't been anywhere near that high today. It was probably, like, right after the Nixon administration. Like, that fucking idiot probably had everybody just doing drugs. When you've got a president that's that messed up, gets busted with, you know, Watergate and, you know, just all the foolishness involved in his administration,

I bet he led people to drugs. Well, you know, there all the foolishness involved in his administration. I bet he led people to drugs. Well, you know, there's a whole lot of theories about it. But, you know, one of the theories is that people became distrustful of government and things that government was saying. So not only that, kids were experimenting in the 60s. And this was later in the 70s. They were still experimenting and being distrustful of the government. So it's not surprising. But the thing is, is that even then, drug use rates weren't that high, really. I mean, because the people who

were using marijuana at the time, they're now running the country. They're now doing, they're in these responsible positions. And they're doing about as well as previous generations. And so it's not a big deal that people use drugs. In fact, you know, I'm working on a new book. And the thing is, is that what I'm going to argue in the new book is that more people should be using drugs. Like, well, when you say more people should be using drugs, here's the thing about, I hate the term. There's two terms that I have a real problem with I don't hate them but I think they're they're they're weighted addiction is one of them and drugs is another one because addiction is like when you start talking about

addicting being addicted to texting I have friends that are definitely they definitely are inclined to check their phone way too much like they feel compelled when they're in traffic they can feel like there's a red light and they're like, oh good, let me check my phone. Like I'm at a red light. Like Jesus Christ, what the fuck is going on? But I think that's an impulse. It's just a foolish pattern of thought to call that an addiction and then to call like alcoholism the same thing where you could literally die if you stop drinking. Well, that's crazy. These are not the same things. Yeah, well, you know, when we think about addiction,

it's a simple sort of definition that we use in medicine. And the definition is that does it cause you a tremendous amount of distress and is it disrupting your social occupation or your family sort of functioning? That's kind of it. I mean, so people can indulge in a behavior every day multiple times a day but they're handling their responsibilities and they are not distressed about this behavior they wouldn't meet criteria for addiction whereas somebody could like use alcohol or cocaine or some drug once

a month or once a week or what-have-you and then they have all of these disruptions surrounding that drug use and they may meet criteria for addiction whereas i could be using cocaine every day but handling my responsibilities it i'm not distressed by it i don't have these problems related to it i'm not an addict even though i'm using it every day so addiction has to do with social disruptions and being distressed, not actual amount of use or how many times you engage in the behavior. But this sort of definition is missed upon many of people in the general population. Yeah, most people don't think about it that way. Most people think that if you don't use it, you're like, if you don't say if you do something

every day, like i had a friend who was a longshoreman and he worked with this guy that would shoot heroin every day at lunch and that always freaked me out because the guy showed up for work every day on time he was a responsible guy he was married he had children and this guy would get heroin he would cop every morning he would go there and he would sit in his truck and he would shoot up and, you know, whatever, however long that that lasts, you know, he gets an hour lunch break and he would come back and go to work. And I would like every day, he goes every day. I did it every day. Well, you know, I, this past summer, the past three months or so I, I was in Geneva. I just got back in the States. And I was working in a heroin clinic where they

administer heroin every day, seven days a week, twice a day to people who meet criteria for heroin addiction. And when I say they administer heroin, I don't mean like small doses. I mean doses that go up to like a gram a day, a thousand milligrams a day, a lot more than what people use here in the States typically. And these people who are getting heroin every day, a large percentage of them also go to work. A large percentage of them have families and they're taking care of their responsibilities. This is their treatment and this is a treatment that works for them. But their

treatment includes two daily doses of intravenous heroin, seven days a week. And so when I think about, well, one of the reasons I went there and I did this because of the way we think of heroin in this country, we think of it as such as evil drug. And that's just American mythology. And that's just wrong. And that's ignorance. But that's how many, including drug experts in this country, think of heroin. But that's just, we have all of this great technology, but we're so ignorant when it comes to many of these drugs. So heroin administered intravenously on a daily basis, it's not devastating? No. In fact, some people would do better by having a daily dose of heroin or another opiate.

No, it's not devastating. See, even me, I would go, fuck, man, that's got to fuck you up, like taking heroin every day. Yeah, and it's been this whole journey, man, since I saw you last time I've been all over the world and this whole journey to see what people do with drugs or with drugs they're using and how they do it it's been so eye-opening even for me someone who has spent their life studying drugs and I'm learning so much more now and but the Swiss experience about the Dutch also do this. There are some parts of Germany that does this. They have small programs. In the UK, they had

small programs. There are other countries, but the Swiss by far have the biggest program and they've been the most successful. They've been doing this for more than 20 years now. And they started doing this in response to HIV concern. People were worried about folks getting HIV, so they had to do something. They had to have clean needles. We had to make sure that the drugs were pure. So they were worried about death, HIV, all of those things. And this was the rational response, where they put it in a medical community where people got treatment along with their heroin. And they have no plans of going back, nor should they, because it works. Boy, that's hard for Americans to swallow, right?

And is it because of all the propaganda we've been fed? Is it because just of misinformation? I mean, you would say propaganda, but even me, someone who's a pro-drug, for the most part, person, I would say, God, heroin every day is probably going to fuck you up. Yeah, I mean, but you raise a good question. Is that part of the propaganda? I don't know.

I mean, obviously, there are people who use this as part of propaganda, but in part, but I don't think they're trying to use it as propaganda. I think they're ignorant, and they're close, many people. But then there are other people. Just think about some of the films, Trainspotting. You think of a number of these films. All of those films now can't use that salacious story anymore to grip us. It's not reality, but it makes great films.

It made great sort of subjects for documentaries. When we think about musical heroes and people who say, well, they were misunderstood, so they used heroin. That's not, I mean, they use heroin because it's a rational sort of use of the drug. When you think about its ability to decrease anxiety, its ability to like make people

or have people relaxed and just be in a space where they finally can get some peace. When you think about all of the things that many of these sort of musical icons or these great artists have to deal with it's rational it makes rational sense the thing that I'm trying to do is how do we how do we allow people to do these things and be safe how do we still keep them safe because people are going to do it that's a fact I mean we've been trying to get rid of heroin or in our things and be safe. How do we still keep them safe? Because people are going to do it. That's

a fact. I mean, we've been trying to get rid of heroin or in our country for some times, but every year we have 100 or 200,000 new heroin users every year. That number has not changed for 40 years. And I don't expect it to change. Well, if that number hasn't changed, but the population has increased, how does that work? Well, that's why it's like between 100,000 and 200,000 every year. I mean, it's been fluctuating between those numbers. But the point is that we're going to have a substantial proportion of heroin users, new heroin users. These are new heroin use every year. And on top of that, people don't consider the people that take opiates in pill form that are prescribed by their doctors, which is incredibly high.

And I've known many people, I've close family members that have ruined their lives getting fucked up on pills. And I want to say addicted, but now I'm reluctant to say addicted. Well, maybe some were addicted. I mean, maybe that describes some people. But please understand, the majority of people who use those pills, use them responsibly, and they know what they're doing. But there are people, like you said, who ruin their lives as a result. But the thing that we have to think about is that if the majority of the users of these pills are fine, and then you have this subset, this smaller subset who are not, it tells you that it's not the pills. But by that same token, there are still some issues I have with the way we have our pills, or the way we do our pills in this country, opiate pills, we put acetaminophen in these pills,

and which I am not a fan of having acetaminophen in those pills because acetaminophen is the number one reason for liver toxicity. And so sometimes if people really want to push a dose of their opiate, they have to get even more acetaminophen that would, that's the more dangerous of the two in no situation in this situation why do they put acetaminophen in the pill what is the function of it it is stated that they put acetaminophen in the pill because it's an added pain reliever but i don't think that's the real reason i think the real reason that is in the pill is think of it this way. On the California highway, I think the maximum speed limit is like 65 or 70.

Now, imagine if someone designed a car that had tires on it that blew out when you reached 75 miles per hour. So it's like this safety valve. So you blow out the tires or somebody exceed the speed limit. I think acetaminophen is in the pills and opiate pills for that reason. You take too much, you blow out your liver, you die. Really? So you think they put it in there for added liver toxicity to make sure people don't take too much of the opiates? I think it's in there, yeah, to discourage the use of opiates. Absolutely. Wow. And I think that's sick. And I think that that's a problem, because when you think about even other countries like Geneva or Switzerland, you don't see acetaminophen in these medications like they are here.

You certainly don't have people prescribing them like they do here with the acetaminophen. You know, it's like you don't need that in there. If you want somebody to take an additional pain reliever, you prescribe it or you tell them, you recommend it, but you don't need the number one reason for liver toxicity with opiates. I think it's there to have people blow out their livers or to discourage people from taking more opiates. So would that be to alleviate their responsibility,

to make sure that less people have opiate addictions? Like, what, why? That doesn't make any sense to me. Yeah, so it's like, okay, if you know that you, if you take too much acetaminophen, then that would discourage you from taking the opiate. That's what I think the reason is. Wow, that seems weird to me. That

seems like they would have to have had a paper trail in order to, I mean, it seems like that has to be something that would be discussed. Well, I think, like I said, the stated reason is that it provides an additional pain reliever. And I'm saying it doesn't make any sense. If you want to have that additional pain reliever, simply give somebody acetaminophen or ibuprofen or something else, but you don't need to put it in with each other. Yeah. So would they do that to make some sort of a proprietary blend or something like that where their pills would be different than others?

Does that make any sense? No? No, because these things are all generic now. Right. So there's no one making tons of money as a result of this. They're all generic. And they all have that stuff in them?

In the United States, you think about, you've heard of Vicodin? Vicodin is, I think, oxycodone and acetaminophen. Percocet, Percocet actually is oxycodone. Vicodin is hydrocodone and acetaminophen percocet perks that actually is oxycodone vikadin that's hydrocodone and acetaminophen but all of these percocet percocet percodan vikadin all of these things have acetaminophen in them Wow you know I don't have a lot of experience with opiates but I did get a knee surgery once and they gave me this morphine drip they gave me this little thing that you could press anytime you want that didn't have a seat of benefit

I pressed the shit out of that button But that did not have that did not that did not That didn't have a seat of medicine and then you like you say you press that button and then you probably needed it and that's Cool, and you were successful you're doing your thing. You have a successful podcast. I mean, that's luckily I don't know man if you kept he kept me with that button might be still in that hospital bed you know that's you know I'm just fucking around but I do have a friend that broke his nose my friend Brendan shop he broke his nose and they put him on those pills they put him on Oxycontins after they gave him a

nose surgery and his friends wound up taking them away from him after a couple of months. He was just taking them all day. He could have, certainly could have. Like I said, Ben, there are some people who get in trouble, but the vast majority of people don't. But the problem is that people, their simple reframe is that it's these pills. It's not these pills. So you think that some people just have that sort of compulsive behavior and that behavior could manifest itself in drinking too much coffee or it could manifest itself in taking those pills or it's essentially the behavior that's an issue more than it is the actual substance or the medicine? Well, you know, people overindulge in activities for a variety of reasons.

And if we really want to understand why they do it, we have to understand that individual person situation. And oftentimes we're too damn lazy to do that. And then it's so much easier just to blame the drug. But when we blame the drug, there are some serious consequences. And that's what I'm saying. It's like the consequences is that now we have this new legislation. We have this new effort to go at the people who use these drugs.

And that consequence, those consequences are inappropriate. And so that's why I try to get people to be like, well, look at the individual person's situation. What happened with that person? Because it ain't the drug. I assure you that. It's fascinating that in Switzerland they're doing that. Geneva, that's where you said it was? Well, Geneva, Zurich, Bern, yeah, throughout the major cities in Switzerland.

And they're giving them these high doses. Do they have a program if they want to wean off, if these people want to stop doing it? Yeah, so this program is for people who want to stop, people who want to wean off, if these people want to stop doing it? Yeah. So this program is for people who want to stop, people who want to continue. They also have methadone, they have buprenorphine, they have other sort of treatments as well, but they just, this is just one of many options. That's all. And the methadone is what we always heard of in America. Like the, I think I told the story last time you were here, but I to work play pool at this place that was right next to a methadone clinic and these people that would go and they'd get their methadone

then they'd come over and play pool and they just look like zombies we'd call them methadone Ian's that's we used to call them but they would come over just zoned out and they were just fucking out of it and this guy that I work with was saying he's like you know that methadone shit they give them is actually worse than the heroin. And I was like, that doesn't make any sense. Why wouldn't they just give them heroin? Well, I mean, that's the question that the Swiss ask. Why don't you just give people what they want?

Right. I mean, so there are answers to that question. I mean, you said that methadone was probably worse. It certainly can be for some people because the half-life of methadone was probably worse. It certainly can be for some people because the half-life of methadone is a lot longer. It lasts forever. It stays in your blood for a long time compared to heroin. So some people say, well, you know, I don't want to have a long-acting opiate such that it makes me feel kind of slow. That's why I want to use heroin as opposed to methadone. Whereas other people, methadone worked of slow. That's why I want to use heroin as opposed to methadone.

Whereas other people, methadone worked for them. That's fine. Whatever works. But then there are people who say, well, just give folks what they want. And that's what the Swiss say in this case with heroin. There will be some heroin users who say, I want to get off of heroin. I want to do whatever I can do to get off because I don't want to shoot a needle, for example. And methadone works well for them. Buprenorphine works well for them. But then there are other people who just say, no, I want to continue to use heroin with

the needle. And as an adult, you should have that right. You should have that option. Yeah, that is the issue, right? Isn't it? Because if we can freely purchase alcohol and even more insidious in a way is the amount of sugar consumption that people in this country, especially our consumption of sugar. And this is something I've really been focusing on a lot lately because I've been educating my kids about how much sugar is in things. It's really hilarious because my seven-year-old was talking to my 5-year-old yesterday, and she was like, there's 9 grams of sugar in that. And they're having this little conversation about this thing that she wants to drink

that's supposed to be healthy. She's like reading it. There's 9 grams of sugar. To see a 7-year-old do that, I'm like, wow, this is kind of cool. But sugar can fuck people's lives up, for sure. And I know a lot of people that are addicted to sugar. Not just compelled to eat it, but it actually changes their gut flora. You know, the actual flora inside their body craves this to the point where these people, they get crazy for it.

People get really crazy for sugar. And it just causes all sorts of health consequences. But no one wants to say, hey, we should outlaw candy bars. No one should say that. Right. Exactly. Right. Right. Same thing with booze. Right. No, no, we, we have, we could, we all, everyone in this room, we could drink ourselves to death just with the shit that I have in my closet over here in that little kitchen. We could go in there and just chug those bottles and we'd all be dead. They'd find us dead that's crazy right no but we won't do it right exactly i mean but we just drove a car here i mean i could have just driven that car off of a cliff yeah but we don't do that right because we're adults and we are you know we have some autonomy the same should be true with

sugar the same should be true with these drugs. But the thing is, is that one of the things that concerns us about sugar is that for so long we've been lied to about the role of sugar in disease. And so people didn't realize that sugar was causing all of these problems. And so people felt like they were misled. That's OK. Now we have better education. So now you make these decisions with your eyes open. The same could be done with drugs. You make these decisions with your eyes open.

You're an adult. You certainly can get in trouble with this particular drug or that particular drug, but here's how you do it more safely. You certainly can get in trouble with sugar, but here's how you can do it in a way that's reasonable and more safe than not. And through education instead of by demonizing things and by propaganda. And I think being moralistic, that's, you know, it's, we are very judgmental and moralistic about a number of things. And I think that the drug issue is ideal for perpetuating our moralism. Yeah, and it's a weird one too, right?

Because don't you drink wine in church? We serve wine. That's fucking, it's a drug. I don't know. I haven't been to church in a while. I haven't either, but I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure that's supposed to signify the blood of Christ, right? Is that it?

Yeah, it's booze. They're getting hooched up, hooched up for Jesus. But it's, we're very strange in what we allow and don't allow other adult human beings to do. And that really sort of gets to the heart of all this. And then we're also very squeamish about the idea of needles. And when you say this program in Geneva is super successful and they're giving people intravenous heroin up to 1,000 milligrams a day, I'm like, what? Needles? Jesus.

You know, that's something, the actual administration of it, like the method of administration makes people squeamish. Yeah, you know, but we give needles in hospitals. We do those sorts of things. And one of the things about this program that's nice is that they have clean needles. They have clean drugs. And so it decreases the likelihood that they will have abscesses and those sorts of things or other sort of blood-borne illnesses or concerns. They are decreased. In fact, people are more healthy being in these programs, than not being in these programs so they they have made me they've convinced me so intravenous heroin can in effect act in a lot of the ways that maybe some prescription drugs like Xanax or maybe some antidepressants

do would they alleviate the anxiety that certain people have? Oh, yeah. I mean, heroin sort of, or so a number of these people, I have to tell you, they have psychiatric illnesses. It's like some of them have schizophrenia, some of them have depression. They have a wide range of illnesses just like any other identified addictive population. Heroin, for example, helps people in many cases control their sort of psychotic behaviors, their sort of delusions. And so heroin can be a very useful drug in a wide range of sort of, for a wide range of symptoms. We know this. At least people in medicine know this.

Well, let me clarify. At least people in medicine outside of the United States know this. This isn't, this is not anything that's earth shattering or groundbreaking. Well, what is the difference between the education that they receive outside of the United States and inside of the United States? Just the bias that we have about certain medicines? Yeah, we are, we cannot divorce our drug education from our social control. And so when we think about how drugs or drug policy has been used to go at the groups that we don't like, and if we're not a part of the out group, we just kind of accept this information uncritically. And we've been told that people who use heroin,

they have those issues and they're not like us. They're those people. And why is, why should we question it? We don't know them very well. And we see people putting a needle in their arm. Something must be wrong with them. And so you can tell all of these incredible stories. Physicians believe these stories in this country. Our medical experts or addiction experts believe this sort of stuff. But it's not true. It's not reality. And so that's one of the reasons that I traveled and I continue to travel and to learn. And I'm learning so much about my biases that I held and that I'm trying to get rid of. I'm trying to really just focus on the evidence. So in a sense, like the United States is very unique in its propaganda and unique in its sort of singular view on drugs? Well, given that we have such a big military, it's hard for us to

be unique because other countries, what our military might and our money we kind of tell them what to think too so we're not unique canada canada is one but all of south america or a large portion of south america even some places in europe asia you know a number of places share our screwed up views on drugs because they've been told to share our screwed-up views, because they get some money for having these screwed-up views. Like, we support various programs in Colombia about drugs, eradication of drugs, and all around the world. So these countries share our views. But places like Geneva, that's really autonomous.

And there are some other autonomous nations that actually look at the evidence and see what's best for their population and not what's best for the people of the United States. And they don't just accept the propaganda without thinking about their population. Have you seen there's a new TV show, Fear the Walking Dead? It's like the new spinoff that's in L.A. I have not. No, I I mean I've been away you know from the United States so I watched it and I thought

immediately of you because there's a character in it that's a heroin addict this young son is a heroin addict and while he was in this spoiler alert everybody if you're a fan of the show and you haven't watched any of the up I don't know spoiler alert here alert. Here it comes. Fast forward. The kid's a junkie, and he's in this drug den, and he's shooting up, and this chick he's friends with turns into a zombie and starts eating people's faces and shit. Sounds like something I should watch.

Yeah, it's great stuff. Well, they get him to a hospital, right? They've got him in the hospital for days, right? He's a little sick at first, and then he seems fine. And then his withdrawals kick in, and his cravings kick in, like fucking days later. Like days later, he can't take it anymore. He's shaking, and he's throwing up all over himself, and he falls to the ground. He has seizures and throws up on himself.

But like a day ago, the kid was fine. A day ago, like his face has all the color in it, looks normal. And I remember what you had said last time you were here, that withdrawal is a lot like getting the flu. It's like getting sick. And then it goes away and everything else is just sort of in your head. Well, yeah, you know, the severity can vary based on the extent of how long people have been using the drug, obviously. But, yeah, it's the flu, basically.

And you're not going to die. And all of these sort of dramatic characterizations that we see on TV, it's to sell their product. It's really to sell their product. And the problem is that people get educated on that sort of stuff. Yeah, you were going to say bullshit. That's the right way to say it. Yeah, it is bullshit. I forgot where I'm at.

I thought I was on O'Reilly. My bad. If you were on O'Reilly, you would have been interrupted 150 times already. We've already gone to 30 commercials. Yeah, this kid in the show, his mother actually breaks it. Spoiler alert. Spoiler alert. His mother actually breaks into the school to get pills for him.

She breaks back into the school and then she has to fight zombies and shit. But she breaks into the school to get pills for her son, and she's going to slowly wean him off with these pills. But the fucking kid was normal just a day ago you know yeah you know man it's too hard for me to watch this stuff i mean i mean you know on the one hand it's like i'm trying to be a regular citizen and just you know appreciate art or whatever people do but then on the other hand it's just that i just know the consequences of that rubbish you know the consequences that it gives some idiotic politician raison d'etre.

So they feel like this is their reason for being now and then they can go after this drug because they saw it on this awful TV show. Yeah. The TV show is actually really good. Yeah. Well, it's just I think the real issue is, like many people, the writers and the producers probably aren't heroin users. So their idea is based on the popular mythology, the popular culture, the idea that we've all been sort of fed by Trainspotting and all these other films. They're sort of just repeating that. No, I'm glad you pointed out that you can have a good TV show, but get the drug issue

wrong. Yeah. No, that's a great point. Yeah. But it's real wrong, obviously. But a lot of us have this idea, and I swear, before I met you, I mean, and I'm a person who's, I'm not averse to drugs. I thought of it all as, I thought heroin, like, oh yeah, man, you can get addicted.

You do it once once you're addicted and then you're fucked it just somehow or another becomes a part of you that's why I've always had a problem when they start talking about marijuana addiction like how many people get addicted to marijuana because I don't understand what even the mechanism would be for you to get addicted to that yeah I mean again if we go back to the definition that I talked to to start it with, when we think about social disruption, disruption of family function, work, and that sort of thing, and it's causing you distress, you can clearly see how somebody might be addicted to marijuana.

A low percentage of people become addicted to marijuana, but you certainly can see that, yeah, somebody might get distressed by their marijuana use fine and so they could meet criteria for addiction but when you compare marijuana addiction to alcohol nicotine cocaine or any other drug it's lower than all the rest of those drugs but certainly it's possible that somebody has some distress and have psychosocial disruptions in functioning. So the disruptions in functioning is what really identifies someone as being an addict. But if someone is a person who's using heroin on a daily basis but shows no disruption in their life, shows no problems with their social situation or their job functioning or anything like that, but

then they get off of it. Yeah. Then they're an addict. Because if they get off of it or they try to quit cold turkey and then they get all fucked up because of that, well, then you would have to kind of qualify them. Well, that's just one criteria. Withdrawal symptoms are only one criteria and you have to have, I mean, that's only one symptom.

So you have to have several symptoms in order to meet criteria for addiction. But if you only have withdrawal, that's not an addict. I mean, because you can think about somebody who's taking an antidepressant medication or somebody who's taking morphine for praying. All those people can experience withdrawal, but we wouldn't call them an addict. I mean, it's just like withdrawal is just a common sort of drug effect after a long-term use of a drug. Caffeine withdrawal. All of these things are, I mean, when people have a hangover, oftentimes that's acute withdrawal. That's just an acute sort of manifestation of withdrawal symptoms. But we wouldn't call them an alcoholic simply because they went out and partied for a couple of nights. And so withdrawal is not the only criteria that we use to determine addiction.

But most people would. And most people would be wrong. And that's part of the problem here, right? Because they are looking only at withdrawal. Withdrawal is not a big deal. only at withdrawal, which withdrawal is, it's not a big deal. Uh, it's only, it only becomes a big deal when we're talking about alcohol withdrawal from chronic alcohol use, or we're talking about barbiturate withdrawal from chronic use because the person can die outside of those drugs. I mean, those are the only sort of more commonly used drugs that we worry about withdrawal. The rest

is there. You'll be fine. People constantly throw around the term addiction then, I guess, in an incorrect way, in a technically incorrect way, because I know a lot of people that I would say are addicted to coffee, where they need to have coffee in order to wake up and function. Yeah, but like you said, they use it wrong. Yeah. I mean, because the coffee is actually helping them to maybe do their job better and not disrupting their job. The coffee is even is helping them in their human function. Well, the last time you were here, you explained something that really I never knew either.

It's that the thing you just discussed, that a withdrawal is actually, or rather a hangover, is actually your body withdrawing. Like the compensatory mechanisms that your body uses to deal with the alcohol in your system, that's what the feeling of being hungover is. Is your body just withdrawing from that alcohol? Certainly that can be a symptom of withdrawal, the hangover. Absolutely. I mean, you put a foreign substance into your body and your body tries to adjust. We call it homostasis. This is a normal response. And then alcohol's half-life is so short that it's in the body. And then before your body gets a

chance to adjust completely, it's gone. But your body has already overcompensated. And so what you're seeing is this expression in some cases. How difficult is this? Like when you, if you tried to discuss this to like the Bill O'Reilly crowd, like there's a lot of people that are not going to swallow this definition. Like their idea of, their definition of addiction is very different than what you're saying. You know, like before we went on air, you and I was talking a little bit. This past summer, I've been all over. I mean, this past, well, since I saw you last, I've been all over the globe.

And one of the things that when I give these talks, when people say, I heard you on the Joe Rogan show, you know, all over the world from Vancouver to Brazil to Geneva to the Philippines, all over. I know when they say that I heard you on the Joe Rogan show, I know that they are thinking people. I know that these are people who look for information outside of the normal sort of source of information. And so those are the people who I'm trying to reach, the people who are actually grappling and struggling with these ideas and trying to evaluate the ideas for the merits based on their merits. And that's it. Whereas when you talk about the O'Reillys and you talk about the politicians and you talk about these people, those are the people

who I like talking to least. I mean, not necessarily O'Reilly himself, but some of the people who watch him. And so I'm trying to reach the general public, the people who watch your show, the people who are into what you do, the common folk who are out there who are struggling and they're trying to learn. And I think if we reach them, the politicians will follow them, not the opposite of way around. And so my least favorite people to talk to are politicians. I mean, it's as an adult, me and you, we you like to talk to people who take you seriously, particularly when you're respecting them. Politicians oftentimes don't give a shit about you. They only care about their votes and how they can use you for those votes. You know, it's insulting to me to talk to people in that

way. And so I try to avoid them. Coming here to this place, I know that there will be people out here who listen to you who will struggle with this, but they will evaluate it based on its merits. And that's all you can ask, is that people evaluate your arguments based on the merits. And then you have conversations, discussions, and you go back and forth, and the best evidence wins. And everybody understands those rules. And those are your listeners. That's not the politicians. That's not the talk show hosts. Those are not those people. And so they're not the people who I'm trying to reach. And it helps to keep me sane because I can't deal with people who don't use evidence or don't play with evidence as part of the rules. Yeah, that's a great quote that's on your website about,

I make sure that I don't engage in conversations with people that don't abide by the rules of evidence. That's a great quote. And I agree with you about politicians, too, because essentially politicians just go where the wind of public opinion goes. And so many of them, they have a team of people deciding what they're talking about. A team of idiots oftentimes. Yes. And unfortunately, those people oftentimes, when these politicians, they'll get involved in debates or get involved in some sort of a public function where they're discussing something or

giving a speech, and they can say things that are just absolutely inaccurate and those things when people aren't really discerning or they don't have the time maybe to go over the evidence these people take that as fact yeah I know you know that's this is why I continue to be out here because when people make those kind of statements based on no evidence and they're just lies they're just inaccurate The consequences of those lies and inaccuracies are so great, and there are so many poor people who paid a price for it. That's why I continue to stay out here, and I stay out here to call those people out on it and try to embarrass those people. I mean, I'm a firm believer in embarrassing politicians when they tell these lies, when they make up this

information, because they are ruining too many people's lives as a result. Well, they're agents of poor information oftentimes, whether they want to be or not. I think all they want to do is get elected and stay in power and then serve whoever paid for their campaign. That's it. That's exactly it. It's a terrible system, if you think about it that way. That's it. It's a terrible system. That's why I'm glad you do your thing, and I'm glad that people all around the world are checking you out. Well, now, when you're on these travels and you're going around the world,

did you go to Portugal at all? Did you talk to anybody from there? I talked to people there, like high officials there, but I haven't been to Portugal yet. And, you know, I think you bring up Portugal because they decriminalized all drugs. So, too, did the Czech Republic. The Czech Republic did it before Portugal, but we all know about Portugal. Yeah. And so that's a good thing. I mean, it's just simply means that people can't be arrested for drug possessions. And drug possession is considered like a 10-day supply of drugs in Portugal, which is a good thing.

And then there are other places around the world that people are doing other innovative things, like in Sao Paulo, Brazil. So Brazil, the mayor of Haddad is paying drug addicts or drug users, paying them a salary, giving them housing, giving them food, three meals and that sort of thing to make sure they show up for work. And if they're coming to work, that means they're not getting into other activities. And so he's trying to keep his certain areas of his city safe doing that. And then we talked about the Swiss. And so there are a number of people thinking about innovative ways to deal with drugs and to treat people like adults and not children, like in our country. We are still concerned about moralism, even though there have been some states that have said, as you well know, Colorado, Alaska, Oregon, Washington, they've said that we're going to legalize marijuana for adults, and they have. And I suspect California will vote in November 16 to see if they want to do the same thing. So despite the sort of moralism, we still have some people out here

pushing for progressive, rational, adult sort of drug laws. And so I hope we continue to see this. Well, when I look at the current state of politics in America, and I look at what we call our leaders and the way they discuss drugs, what I'm looking at is it's almost like they're trapped in an ancient way of thinking that doesn't work anymore because of the Internet. Because of the Internet, we have so much access to information now. We have a freedom to actually find the truth. So like what you're talking about, where people have these misconceptions, and then you come on and you give the absolute truth, fact-based evidence,

and you're forced to like examine, like, why do I have these assumptions in my head? Why do I have, and why do I, I mean, I was forced to confront these when I talked to you the first time. I was like, why do I have these ideas in my head? Have I really researched them? Is this something that I've, am I out there in the field talking to people that are addicts, talking to people that are treating them? Absolutely not. No.

This is just train spotting. This is just, you know, popular culture, politics, giving, politicians giving speeches. That's all I know of it. And I think our base of understanding is expanding now. I agree. Thanks to people like you. Well, thank you. I mean, because of what you're doing,

obviously these alternative media forms, right? I mean, when I think about coming to your show, my publicists and those people, they wasn't on the book radar, which is a mistake. But I mean, we know better now. People are learning now. So that's really encouraging to me that we have these alternative forms of media out here on the one hand. But you made a point.

It slipped my mind now. We can go on. I forgot the point. Well, about politics being stuck in this. Oh, yeah. So as we think about the politician, as we think about the politician, I think the last Republican debate, there were a couple politicians, I think, Bush and Christie. And they were saying how they would bring the federal government in to change what's going on in Colorado. Oh, the Chris Christie guy.

Yeah, yeah. Those guys, you know, that kind of logic and thinking. I think that if he actually got the nomination, that wouldn't happen. I don't know if they have to say these kinds of things, but it would be nice if the American people really punished these idiots who say things like that. Because on the one hand, we think about the folks of Colorado taking this vote and the whole issue of states' rights. And this is what the Republicans say they really like. Well, I don't mean to go after the Republicans because I think they're the same as Democrats, quite frankly. So it's not that's not this is not a knock on them as a party. But when people talk about states, right, right, that's what this is. The state have decided.

And so the public, the American people should really slam idiots who say things like they're going to go after a state. What about this issue of states' rights? I mean, and so I think Republicans and Democrats should really go after these people for saying remarks like that. Well, Chris Christie in particular, because a lot of the things that he says are totally inaccurate. And then on top of it, what is his concern? I'm assuming his concern is the health consequences of marijuana use. Well, the health consequences of being a gigantic fat fuck are way worse than the health consequences of marijuana use. I mean, that guy is morbidly obese and he's talking about people who smoke a plant that makes them happy. That's ridiculous.

The idea that you're going to take that right away from responsible adults like me. Like, I don't know how old he is, but I don't think he's much older than me. Yeah, no, I feel you. No, I hear you. But I love your outrage about this. I mean, but this is how, this is what Americans have to do. Yes. About heroin.

Mm-hmm. About cocaine. Boy, that's a tough sell, man. That's why I said it, that's a tough sell, man. That's why I said it. It's a tough sell, but people think of coke as dudes who won't shut the fuck up at parties, want to start businesses with you, want to tell you about some shit that they never really did. That's what people think about coke. Assholes.

Well, they haven't done coke with people I know. Damn, I need to be around at least people you know that do coke, because everybody I've been around that's on coke is an idiot. Well, you know, some of the people who do coke around me are in government. So I guess they can pass as idiots, too. Well, it's the same thing with alcohol, right? I mean, here's an example. There was a guy that I know that's a soldier that came back from Afghanistan.

He's got all sorts of pain and issues from the war. And he takes Oxycontin. And he's trying to get off of it. He's slowly weaning himself off. But he'll take like a couple a day every day. And he was describing it to me when I was at a bar. And my immediate reaction was like, wow, man, that dude's on it right now. He seems so normal.

And then while I'm thinking that, I'm next to people that are drunk off their ass at this fucking bar at the improv. I mean, these people are hammered, just sloshed, and they're probably doing way more damage to their body right there. And I'm like, wow, this poor fuck's on pills. and they're probably doing way more damage to their body right there. And I'm like, wow, this poor fuck's on pills. You know, I mean, it's interesting how we have these categorizations that like the pill, the Oxycontin pill, like, oh, this guy, he's got to be fucked up.

Meanwhile, to my left, there's a bar filled with people just throwing back this liquid poison and torturing their liver and their brain. Yeah, man, see, this is the new book. When it comes out, I'm going to have to come here. this liquid poison and torturing their liver and their brain yeah man see this is the new book and when it comes out I'm gonna have to come here but this is precisely what I'm trying to deal with I'm trying to show people how to use drugs to enhance human functioning experience and so forth now that means that as we get older we may have to change our drug use from something like alcohol alcohol might be a little too toxic on some of our livers as we get older, we may have to change our drug use from something like alcohol. Alcohol might be a little too toxic on some of our livers as we get older or toxic in other ways for us as we get older.

And some other drug like Oxycontin or something else might be more beneficial for you to achieve that goal that you're trying to achieve. And that's what the new book is trying to look at, to help people change their drug use according to their age, their maturity, all of these things, and how to keep them safe, and also to help them to accomplish that goal that they seek, to enhance human experiences. When we go to parties, we take drugs, we take alcohol in order to, as a social lubricant, you know, but maybe that social lubricant isn't working for me as much these days. Alcohol disrupts my sleep, you know, but maybe that social lubricant isn't working for me as much these days. Alcohol disrupts my sleep, you know, whereas an opiate is perfect. You know, I can chill, I can relax and I can get some great sleep and I can be here to do your show and be bright

and bushy tailed and I'm ready to go as opposed to having that drink the night before, but have an Oxycontin or something else. That's interesting. You know, I think also we're dealing with a reaction. Like when you were talking about people in the 1970s that were doing the higher percentage of them were smoking marijuana, and it could have been a reaction to the Nixon administration. I think in a situation like that, you get that preacher's daughter sort of effect. The suppression where people just want to react to that suppression.

People don't like being told what to do. And in the case of things like cocaine, there's that naughty factor. There's the fact that it's forbidden. There's this factor that what you're doing is something that's illegal, and that makes it more exciting. I think that's one of the things that was highlighted by the decriminalization in Portugal and the subsequent effects. And even Colorado, when you look at what they've shown in Colorado is the lowest instances of drunk driving in, I think, something like 15 years, lowest instances of violent crime that they've had in a long time, and no deaths.

You know, they're talking about, like, one guy jumped off of a building when he was high on pot edibles. Listen, people make shitty choices all the time, whether on pot edibles, or they drink too much Dr. Pepper Pepper or they have too many fucking Twinkies. I mean, wasn't there a guy in San Francisco that killed somebody that used Twinkies as a defense? The Twinkie defense.

Yeah, it was like a famous defense because sugar is a drug. I think that responsible adults being able to make choices based on evidence and based on reality and fact, that should be the foundation of our society, how we treat almost everything. Joe, man, you just laid it out with marijuana. I absolutely agree with you, but I just, I want to push you to think about heroin in the same way, cocaine in the same way, because what you just said about marijuana, you're absolutely right right but it also applies to these other psychoactive drugs um yeah we just need to make sure people know how to

do these things safely i i'm i'm opening my mind to this i just don't have any experience in any of those i was always scared of uh coke because when i grew up i had a friend and his cousin got, he became a mess. He was selling it and all this dude did was do coke and hang out in his house and watch TV and sell coke. And he lost a ton of weight and he looked like shit. He made some bad choices, but he could have made those bad choices doing a lot of different things. Just like you talked about the guy who possibly jumped out of the building after the edibles and had some other issues. You're absolutely right.

There are a lot of issues. I mean, you can, I'm sure, you can look at my talks. You can look at other people. You can see, you'd be like, okay, can you tell what drug I'm on? Can you tell what drug this person is on? Of course you can't. Right. I'm on. Can you tell what drug this person is on? Of course you can't. Because people, most of us, are adults and responsible and know what we're doing.

What's a good drug to take right before you do the O'Reilly Show? No, actually with the O'Reilly. Beta blockers? Nah, a beta blocker might be helpful, but you might want to just take a low dose of amphetamine so you can be really alert and attentive and ready to go. Ready to attack. Yeah, you'd be ready to go. That's that style. You know, I had Peter Schiff, do you know who he is? He's a financial genius and very controversial character, very, very, very successful, but has these like controversial ideas about economics. But I had him on the podcast and I don't know how many podcasts he's done, but he started off the show like because that's how they do it. You know, when you go on those talk shows, you got to be able to fucking fire.

But this shows three hours of just chilling out and talking so about an hour and a half in he starts to slow down i'm like you want a drink it's like yeah i'll have a drink so we got him a jack daniels on the rocks we sit and then and then he got casual about an hour and a half in and it became an actual conversation like i'm i know virtually nothing about finances so i wasn't challenging him. I was just asking questions, and I wanted to find out, you know, I wanted to get him to illuminate certain perspectives. But he was ready for someone to jump in.

He was ready to be that split-screen thing when you have one person on one side, one on the other, and they have opposing viewpoints, and they're just talking over each other. I understand. I sympathize with the cat because I know how it is. And then before you know it, it's over. And then you don't really get, many of us think, all right, it's not our opportunity to educate the American public.

It's not. It's really an opportunity for the host to show how smart they are. That's what it is. Yeah, it's just also a lot of just preaching to the choir nonsense. They want the conflict of two people with opposing viewpoints yelling at each other and calling each other morons.

Pseudosymmetry is what they want to pretend that each issue has a certain amount of evidence over here and a certain amount of evidence over here. And the sort of real story is somewhere in the middle it's like no most issues don't happen like that but that's how non-thinking people can see the world but the world doesn't work like that no it doesn't what

was that documentary jamie do you remember the name of the documentary that i was talking about where these people that were hired to go on and talk about uh jesus christ i just watched it really recently what is it mirage men was it mirage men yeah um they were hired to go on these shows and talk about whether it was initially it was whether or not cigarettes and nicotine were bad for your health and addictive and and then it became about global warming, the same people. And they would go on all these different talk shows and just spout out this stuff very loudly and with confidence, and that was literally their job.

They were being hired to do this. So they would go on these talk shows, and they would just yap. They would just talk real loud and real confidently and talk over people, and their function or their career was to try to change opinion with these short little bursts. Yeah. Yeah, that's what they do. And I don't do that very well. Yeah.

Well, that's why I had to contact you after I saw you on O'Reilly. I was like, you look so frustrated. Because that shows it's so fucking retarded you know i try not to show frustration i really do so if i did that's not that's not good well i should say knowing you you looked mildly perturbed on the outside if i didn't know you i'd be like that guy handled that really well because they just fucking talked over him i I mean, they give you like, I mean, I'm not even exaggerating. You might have had a talk for, you might have got out 20 seconds worth of talking before they were talking over you. Yeah, you know, the thing is just so perplexing to me that you can be so irresponsible and have this stuff be on the airways and not get in trouble for it.

And then what they're doing on many of these shows, they're doing more harm to the American education than most people. And yet they're not in jail. In fact, they're being rewarded handsomely for this sort of thing. And then we're putting people in jail for these other minor infractions. It's distorted, man. There's something really sick about this system. It is.

And it seems like it's trapped in momentum that these shows have always existed the way they have, you know, with these seven-minute segments that go to ad break. You know, one host, loud, boisterous guy, talks over everybody. These shows have been around for so long like that that they're a comfortable model for us. Yeah, and for some people, they're not comfortable for me because I tell you, I've been really trying to rethinking, like, where can I live in this world? But, you know, the U.S., they're making it very hard for me to want to stay here. But you know, I have children that I have to raise here, but

after that, I'm out. Really? Where are you going to go? Canada? Canada's good. Fuck, no. No disrespect to Canada. I mean, I love it up there. Canada is really U.S. light, man. Really? Yeah, I mean, Vancouver is a little different, but the rest of Canada is trying to be like the U.S., particularly when it comes to drugs and all of these issues.

Yeah. Yeah, Vancouver is the most open-minded when it comes to drugs. Yeah, I mean, Vancouver, I really dig the folks of Vancouver. Don't they have some sort of a heroin program in Vancouver as well? They do. It's on the DL. Don't they have some sort of a heroin program in Vancouver as well? They do.

It's on the DL. It's for research purposes. But they certainly have a program where they're giving heroin. And it's a research project at the University of British Columbia. I was there on Friday night. I did a theater there. And you could drive by the theater and get a contact high with your window open. Like literally just drive by.

It's so, marijuana is so open there. You know that contact high thing is not counted it's not real right it's not real i've hot box people in this very room how dare you i'm gonna change your research well we we fuck some people up in this room right right where you're sitting we have wrecked some people let's let's do it today let's see if it's real. I don't think it's real. You don't think it's real? But we could do an experiment. Here's another reason why I think it's real.

There's this place in Toronto, and they have, I don't want to give them up because I don't think it's legal, but they do a comedy show there. And they have, the front is like a bong shop, and then the back they have a comedy club. And they have no ventilation whatsoever. You walk into the back back room you are in a fucking cloud of marijuana smoke the the candles are no longer burning on oxygen they're burning on marijuana smoke there's no oxygen in the room you're breathing pot only and you will get high as fuck because i have a friend who doesn't even smoke pot and i took him to the show he's like straight edge he was high as fuck he was like dude i don't even know if i could walk and i was like exactly this is this is a reality like you just need to be in extreme situations i'll take you

to toronto right um i'll show you i i bet that room will fuck you up i guarantee you what we need to do is take someone who's totally clean, like someone who doesn't do any marijuana whatsoever, and make them sit in that audience and watch an hour and a half comedy show and then get up. That's cool. Let's do it. And then we can also test their urine.

We can do all that stuff. Yeah, let's do it. Well, don't they test positive, though, if you're at a party? I mean, can't you test positive for some of those more stringent drug tests you know i i know people say that you know but i i haven't seen that but i i don't know for sure i certainly haven't seen it but maybe maybe it's possible do you know the issue that's going on right now with the ufc and this guy named nick diaz no this is a huge story in the world of sports because nick Diaz, who is one of the most popular fighters in the UFC and is a very outspoken marijuana enthusiast.

He's also extremely healthy. I think he eats mostly vegan, except I believe he eats some fish. He runs triathlons on a regular basis. He swam back from Alcatraz twice. He's known for being one of the most fit guys in the sport, but he loves marijuana, and he smokes it all the time. The UFC has instituted, the Nevada State Athletic Commission

has instituted a new drug policy in regards to marijuana where they've lowered the threshold considerably, like much, much lower. So you literally would have to be high like the day of the fight in order to test positive. So he is administered tests from two different organizations, one of them the World Anti-Doping Agency, WADA. And WADA is a blood test, which is much more accurate than what Nevada State Athletic Commission

uses. Nevada State Athletic Commission uses a urine test. The blood tests, both before and after the fight, find him to be under the threshold, so he passes. But Nevada, using their urinalysis test, say that he fails. They fine him $165,000, and then they ban him from the sport for five years. It's a huge outrage. and then they ban him from the sport for five years.

It's a huge outrage. Well, it should be. I mean, really, marijuana shouldn't even be on any of the, even water. I know water increased their thresholds that's required to trigger the penalty, which is a good thing. But it shouldn't even be on water's list because when we think about drugs and performing enhancing drugs, clearly people are not using marijuana to enhance performance. That's not where they're using it for recreational purposes. And maybe that was the day before or several days before.

But it certainly has nothing to do with their competition. And so it should be off of those lists. And so it should be off of those lists. And I mean, this is what people should protest and argue about, demonstrate about the NFL, the NBA, all of these things. They should remove marijuana from that. They should also remove cocaine. Cocaine would not be used to enhance performance. But inside, in competition, you don't think it would enhance performance as a stimulant? Barely. I mean, it's such a short-lived thing. Amphetamines can do a better job of that, but cocaine would be barely. It really would be. I mean, but if we start talking about drugs and sports, and then we're really being honest, we have to think about why are drugs banned from sports in the first place?

I mean, and so if we start doing that, and then we can systematically go through the illogical sort of reasoning behind these bans, people say, well, we care about the health of the athletes in drugs. Okay, regulate drug use in sports and make sure that they have a physician and so forth. But if you really cared about the health of athletes in sports, you ban boxing, you ban

all of these sorts of things. You ban football. You ban all these. So that's bullshit. That's not why we care about drugs in sports. Not because of the health of the athletes. That's just not true. Well, we say that athletes are role models. Why

should athletes have an additional responsibility more so than anybody else that's a very good point you know so that's crap and you just go down the list and think about why we ban these things and it just doesn't fit we ban them because of moralisms and the war on drugs and that's just inappropriate because we're now starting to see that the rationale on which the war on drugs is built is problematic at best what do you think of a situation like say the lance armstrong situation where he's involved in a sport where he tests positive for some stuff well i don't even think he did test positive that's right i think they weaseled their way around the test so well that he never really tested positive,

but he ultimately had to admit to using performance-enhancing drugs. They strip him of his Tour de France titles. Then on top of that, because he was sponsored by the post office, he gets hit with defrauding the government. When you defraud the government, they are allowed to sue you for three times the amount that they gave you. So if they gave him $30 million, they're suing him for $90 million or something crazy like that. And on top of that, once you strip him, if you're going to give that title to the next person who didn't test positive for that,

you've got to go down to down to like 18th place, which is hilarious. So like my friend Bill Burr, hilarious comedian, had a great bit that he did about this on the Conan O'Brien show. He was like, so basically our steroided up guy beat your steroided up guy. I mean, they're all steroided up. The whole sport is predicated on it. I mean, that're all steroided up. The whole sport is predicated on it. I mean, this sport.

And I've even heard it argued by doctors that doing the Tour de France without the drugs is arguably more dangerous for the athlete's body than doing it with the drugs. Well, Tour de France has always had drugs in it. I mean, everyone knows this. And so this notion that it's going to be clean in it. I mean, everyone knows this. And so this notion that it's going to be clean or it should be clean, it's a pipe dream. It's really ridiculous. I think that, you know, the whole Lance Armstrong issue, not talking about him specifically, but we should allow drugs in sports. That's what we should do.

We should just regulate it and be honest and upfront about it. Is that possible? Do you think that's possible in this environment that we're in right now? Of course it's possible. It was possible right before we got in this environment. Drugs were in sports. I mean, we think about the Olympics. For most of the Olympics, people were using performance-enhancing drugs. That's how we got more selective antibiotic steroids, because of the Olympics, people were using performance-enhancing drugs. That's how we got more selective anabolic steroids, because of the Olympics and East Germans and that whole sort of thing. But actually, they were here in America, but it was competition with the old Soviet Union. So I think that, yeah, it's possible. It's possible if we stop being hypocrites about it and people say, well, it gives some people an unfair advantage.

Yeah, that's a big one. Now, that's a joke. That's really a joke. I mean, particularly when I think about every four years when the Olympics come around and Americans get proud about all the medals we win. When we fucking win medals from a country like Switzerland that has 7 million people. New York City has more people in it than Switzerland, the entire country. Of course, we're going to have more medals than Switzerland or some other small country. Is that an unfair advantage? Not yes, but hell yes, it is.

But do we talk about that? There are some people who have resources and other people don't have resources. We're going to always have this unfair, so life is unfair. Well, the most unfair advantage in the Olympics, in my opinion, is when they let NBA players play basketball. Like, Jesus fucking Christ. I mean, I know we want to win, but holy shit. I mean, you let Michael Jordan or LeBron James or someone along those lines play in the Olympics against some dude from Czechoslovakia?

That's kind of fucked up. Well, you know, their argument was that the other countries were allowing their NBA players to play. Fine, I mean, but from the outset, when you have these huge countries like the U.S. and competing with these other smaller countries who have limited resources, come on. Are you kidding me?

And we talk about like fair advantage and unfair that there's also there's people that have natural advantages like lebron james again like that guy if you look at him that is a genetic freak of nature well you have very few people that are ever going to have a body like his right right? I know, but they're in the NBA. Right. But I'm saying, even amongst the NBA, he sort of stands, he's an outlier. Obviously, he's incredibly disciplined. Obviously, he's talented.

Obviously, his massive work ethic. No question about it. Obviously, he has basketball intelligence that surpasses 99.999% of the people in the game. There's all these other things on top. But then, on top of it, he has this fucking race car body. You know, I mean that like a Guy, you know you take a you know someone who's less physically talented They're they'll never going to if they both do the same amount of work. They both try as hard You're never gonna be that guy, but you know, there are people who have bodies like his, and they're not him. I mean, you've seen this throughout sports where people have these phenomenal bodies, but they're not him.

So it's not only their sort of physical makeup. It's people's drive, their work ethics. All of these things I don't think are emphasized enough. I don't think are emphasized enough. I mean, you and I, the thing about it, we're talking about LeBron James and not Jack Brown because we don't know him. But Jack Brown has a hell of a body. But we don't know him because he doesn't have the ethic, the work ethic. He doesn't have the drive.

He doesn't have all of these things. But you and I can go and look at the NFL roster or some roster, and we can see some guys who are just built and they just look great. And then we don't know who the hell they are. But we're talking about him because this is a selection bias because we see him and he's doing it. But I don't, this whole genetic thing, I need to see some evidence before I start to talk

about genetics. I don't know to what extent that contributes. But what I do know is that work ethics and drive and people putting in the work, I know that pays off. I absolutely know that. It certainly does. And you need all those things. You can't just have genetics. Genetics just, what is that expression? Hard work beats talent when talent refuses to just, what is that expression? Hard work

beats talent when talent refuses to work hard. Is that it? Yeah. And that is absolutely the fact. When you got a guy like LeBron James who has talent and hard work, then you get a superstar. And you get that in all sports. But the argument being that he does have

this advantage physically that the average person with an average body just does not have but the average person in the nba does they have this body they have they look they can look like lebron could they know could a lot of them oh yeah i mean there are some guys who are pretty big and uh fast and um those sorts of things. Well, here's a good example. In the UFC, in mixed martial arts, they used to allow testosterone replacement therapy, and it was kind of abused.

And the way it was abused is the way the male endocrine system works, as it's been explained to me, obviously I'm not a doctor when you take testosterone your body stops producing it so what these people would do is they would take it and then they would get off of it and their body would have very low testosterone then they would get a blood test and the doctor would say hey you have low testosterone you need testosterone replacement therapy so we had guys that are in their 20s that were getting testosterone replacement therapy, which is kind of crazy. They would take it and then they would take large amounts of it and recover much better than other people would. They would be able to work harder and train harder.

And we had some instances, and this is one guy named Vitor Belfort, who was the poster boy for testosterone replacement therapy because his career was kind of in a lull. He got on testosterone replacement therapy. He's a guy who's been fighting in the UFC since 1997, okay? And he's in his late 30s. And then all of a sudden in his late 30s, he is fucking smashing people. And he looks like a god. I mean, his body's just chiseled.

He's got super confidence. He's super aggressive, attacking, and he's just highlight reel knockout after highlight reel knockout in his late 30s. Then they take away testosterone replacement therapy. The Nevada State Athletic Commission says, you know what? This is just, we don't believe in this anymore. We think this is being abused. Everyone's going to have to get off of of it and one of the reasons why they

did it is because they tested him out of competition just randomly they grabbed him and he was off the charts like non-human levels so they they make him get off of it he then fights for the title after he gets off of it and he looks like a shell of himself his body is like soft his like skin is loose like he and he he just doesn't he doesn't have endurance like he just he got destroyed in the first round by the champion and everybody looks at and goes well see you know this is what happens when you take a guy like that and you get him off the stuff but there's a certain amount of people that look at a guy like that and go man wouldn't you like to see him fight on it wouldn't you wouldn't you like to see what he could do if

you kept him on it because he seemed like a monster yeah i mean i know i would i'd like to see you know because if we're going to draw the conclusion that the steroids was the reason that he was fighting like that so now that we did the A portion or the AB portion, so now we need to go back to A, put him back on the steroids, and then I'll feel more confident that, yeah, it was a steroid. But the question is, though, is that an unfair advantage for him versus the person he's competing against who is clean and natural? His opponent, Chris Weidman, who's the champion, is notoriously clean.

He's just hard work looks clean you know doesn't look like a guy who does any steroids at all it just works hard he's smart he's tough yeah so yeah so we should give the champion an option to use steroids if he wants to use them he can do it if he doesn't he doesn't have to but the other guy we should also give him that option and then let's see what happens the problem with that in mixed martial arts as opposed to any other sport is that giving someone testosterone or a steroid is going to allow them to administer damage to their opponent that they might not be able to do without it. So their opponent is going to suffer because of it. It's a different thing.

Like the ability to deliver a basketball into a net is one thing, but the ability to kick somebody in the head is a completely different thing. And the idea being that if you give someone EPO, for instance, which expands your endurance threshold, you will be able to throw more strikes, you'll be able to attack more aggressively without worrying about conserving your gas tank, and that you could damage someone in a way that you would not have damaged them naturally i don't see that as a problem i remember when mike tyson was knocking people out when people walk in the room on the off in the ring with him there was always that potential that you might get damaged in ways that might that's right yeah and so i i don't see this as a problem. We should let it into sports. And, you know, this is part of the risk of what you do.

It's as simple as that for me. And then we should also monitor the athletes and make sure that they are, they do have healthy levels and levels that are not going to cause toxicity to them. But I don't see that as a problem. You know, it's interesting, conversely, guys who have gotten off of it, they can't take punishment. Like there's a one specific guy and this guy, if anybody has an argument for taking it, it's this guy, his name is Bigfoot Silva, and he actually is a giant. He has gigantism. So he has a tumor on his pituitary gland and he was taking external, what is it? Exogenous, that's how you say it?

Exogenous. Exogenous testosterone. And if anybody has an excuse for taking it, it's this guy. Well, when he was on it, God, this guy could take a fucking punch. I mean, he had this war with this guy, Mark Hunt, this epic five-round fight. And then when he got off of it, he gets hit and he just goes down. fight and then when he got off of it he gets hit and he just goes down like it's it's really shocking the difference in his ability to take punishment while on it and then while off of it see you know i have to tell you i'm a bit outside of my expertise so i don't really know these guys

but i you certainly have piqued my interest and i want to know more about it because, you know, just to be logically consistent, I think that these things should be allowed in sports. And if I'm going to have that position, I like to know more about like the things that you're saying, like when he was on it, he could take a punch. Then when he got off, he couldn't take a punch. I don't know how many years between that and age, what role age plays and all of these sorts of things but i like to know more i'm just um i'm just at a disadvantage because i just don't know right i don't know enough of the details about it um but i would just challenge people to think about hey what if we allow drugs in sports well one of the things that it does do that it helps, it helps recovery. And apparently it mitigates the effects of damage.

It can mitigate the effects of damage that you take, not just in training, but also in competition. Yeah. And in that sense, it would benefit people. But I do see the argument, and Ronda Rousey's made it pretty eloquently, that if someone is taking a steroid, if they're cheating, quote unquote, that it's going to allow them to administer damage that they would not have been allowed to do or would not have been able to do with just hard work. Well, I know that's a conjecture, but I don't know if that's true. I have no idea if that's true. I understand. I understand.

It's the most extreme version of sports, fighting is. So it's the most extreme consequences for this debate. Sure. And I think that it's a perfect place to start because it is a sport that you're going to get in the ring. You better be a man. I ring, you better be a man. I mean, you better be tough. Or a woman. Or a tough, tough woman. You better be, yeah, you can't be a wimp getting in that ring.

So I think that it's a great place to think about this. But the notion that somebody would be able to administer more punishment because they're on steroids, I don't know if I accept that. I don't know if I accept. Just God needs some evidence before I come to that conclusion. I understand your position. I'm pretty sure that's a correct position, though, that you would be able to administer more. I think if you take very talented athletes that already have all those attributes, discipline, hard work, and then you add steroids, you're going to get a more efficient body.

You're going to get a body that functions more. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. But we're talking about delivering blows. You think that people will be able to deliver blows in ways that. Yeah, I do. And on top of that, I think also with fighting, a big one is confidence. And there's something about those guys that are juiced to the tits. They're confident as fuck because they're barely human. I mean, when you hit these super high, hyperhuman levels of testosterone, you get these incredibly aggressive, confident men that can do things that they might. And then subsequently when they get off that stuff, boy,

their confidence erodes radically. Right on. And their Instagram pages start looking like suicidal strippers. It's all like motivational quotes and shit. And like, you know, they get real weird. Jealousy is the ultimate experiment that we have to tell people they're on these things and let's see if their confidence is increased, right? And we can see whether or not it's a placebo effect,

this sort of confident thing. But I know that they have real physical effects, so I'm not denying that at all. But the confidence piece would be interesting to see whether or not somebody will still have this confidence if we give them placebo and tell them this is what they are. But isn't it fascinating also that we're still talking about drugs, like that term drugs is just such a weighted and loaded term.

The fact that that term could be used for a steroid as well as for aspirin or coffee. It's really kind of unfortunate that we have this one blanket term that applies to psychedelics, and as well it applies to testosterone, and it applies to heroin. I mean, there's too many things. I actually like that. Do you? Do you? Yeah.

Why don't you like it? I mean, because when we think about... one of the things that bothers me about the psychedelic kind of movement and god bless them people who enjoy this thing but you know people separate their drug use like the psychedelic users like i'm using this to go on a higher plane or for some other reason as opposed to the person on the corner who's getting high. It's like you can rationalize your drug use however you want, but you're using drugs, and it's all the same thing. So it's a beautiful thing. It's like we're all together in this.

I'm not better than you with my drug use, and you're not better than me with your drug use. Oh, I see. I love that. It's the elitism of the psychedelic community that annoys you. Exactly. Or other people.

I mean, this notion like even the marijuana smokers, when they talk about marijuana and not talk about crack and not talk about heroin, what the fuck is that? I mean, come on.

You're doing a drug just like I'm doing this drug. And so it's hypocrisy. It's the same elitism that is pervasive throughout our society. Well, I think the idea is that when they're doing marijuana or something like that, they're being responsible. They're taking something that makes you more socially aware and casual, whereas when you're doing some speed or some meth or something

like that, you know, you're stealing cars and fucking driving into pedestrians. That's how people look at it. You're laughing hard, man. Because you know I hear these things, right? Like, I have done all of these things. Right. And it's not like I am stealing cars or doing any of these. You don't get wacky when you get on the meth?

No. I mean, what? You know, look at me. I mean, my life revolves about around my work. And, you know, my idea of a good time is being able to write a new paper, to write a book. And but that doesn't that doesn't mean that I don't appreciate drugs and drug use. And I think this is the majority of drug users. In the world of academia, does your stance cause controversy? Because you're obviously a very educated guy, very well respected, but yet you say this so openly that you enjoy drugs. Like, whereas a lot of people would shy away from that,

even if they do research on the drugs themselves. I've had people that, you know, even guys that work trying to legalize drugs that are very hesitant to admit their fault. Like Rick Doblin, I had him on the podcast. He didn't want to admit that he had taken Provigil before the show, which is, I mean, he did, but he was hesitant to it you know and not slamming him at all cuz I love no me too he's a great guy but I found it fascinating that this there was this like hesitancy to admit that he took

something that is so mild like ProVigil gives you a little bit of energy sure it doesn't alter your heart rate. It certainly doesn't alter critical thinking processes. But he was hesitant and he's the head of maps. Yeah. See, not to talk about Rick's situation specifically, but just in general, when people are reluctant to say these things, that's part of the problem. Because we need to have people get out of the closet. There are so many people who go to jail, who get in trouble, who lose their job for doing a behavior that well-respected people in our society engage in. I've been all over the

world and I've been hanging out with some of the more some of the movers and shakers in a variety of society and I have seen them get high and they are responsible people and they are people who I will want my children to be like in many cases some of these folks now many of those people are closeted but them being in the closet allows this hypocrisy to go on, allows us to go at the poor people for doing a behavior, engaging in behavior in which many of us engage in. Something's very wrong with that. And that's very, for me, very hypocritical. And I like to look in the mirror as a man, as an adult, and to say that i live my life as honestly as i can in that regard and so what kind of man would i be if i wasn't honest about this it i mean i'm the person who has given thousands of doses of these drugs to people and carefully studied their effects, written books on this stuff. If I can't

say this, why are you here? Why am I here? I mean, what is, I would be embarrassed as a person, and I would deserve to be embarrassed as a person, because I didn't take the opportunity to help my fellow citizens who are catching hell for doing the same thing that I and others do. That would be wrong. Well, kudos to you for taking that stance. But I think that's a brave stance. And in the world of academia, like how is that accepted? I don't know.

I haven't thought about it. All I know is that I have to do my job. So I do my job and, you know, I try and do my job as well or better than my colleagues. That's all I can do in those spaces. But, you know, those are not the spaces in which I live. I mean, I work there, but I'm trying to be a citizen of the world. And so that's just a narrow aspect of my life. That's very admirable. And I'm glad you're alive. Thank you, man. I'm glad there's people like you out there. It's so important, I think. I really do. I think

these conversations where a guy like you, who is so educated in the subject, can expand people's minds and say things in such an honest way. I it's just it's very critical because it's because we are so hesitant to admit these things you know I mean I run into situations with parents all the time you know I go to school with their kids go to school and then the Google me they'll find out how many all the fucking drug talk is the one that freaks them out the most not the fact that I'm involved in cage fighting. That seems fine. They want to get tickets. But the drug stuff is the weird part, especially the psychedelics ones. Psychedelics are the ones that seem to freak them out the most, more so even in the pot. Like DMT. I've had more parents ask me about DMT, with this curious

cross-armed. So what is this DMT. This curious cross-armed so what is this DMT stuff? Well see I have children too so you know I get similar sorts of things. I'm sure. And you like me are an odd looking fella. You know with your crazy dreadlocks. Your long fingernails. Like who's this motherfucker?

This guy's a doctor? Yeah. Yeah you just hit it on the head but you know that's the sort of thing that drives me right that's why when people are sleeping i'm working i mean i'm working around the clock you know uh but i pretend that i'm not you know i pretend like i'm just chilling and you know i'm one of the most uh sort of uptight people you want to meet when it comes to work. You know, I am a, yeah, I'm a, I'm a difficult person to work for. Because you're a workaholic.

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. But your work is very, very important to you, obviously. Yeah, absolutely. You know, it's like if you're going to be in the game, you got to be in the game to win it. Yeah. Well, it's also what you're doing is so critical at this juncture, because I think we're in a transitionary stage in our culture. I think our culture is opening its mind. And I think, as we said before, because of the Internet, because we can have conversations like this where no one can step in and stop us. It's already too late. Everything you've said, it's all streamed.

People have recorded it. People are listening to it right now. There's no way around that. People are getting it. They're playing it in their car. No one can stop it. And once that information gets out, then they'll Google it. A vast majority of the people that are curious about this will start looking into some of the things that you've said and go, wow, that's fucking true.

Wow, this is crazy. And then they'll talk to people at work. They'll talk to people at the gym. They'll talk to people that they're friends with, and then it'll expand further and further and further. So I think what you're doing is critical. It's critical at this juncture. So the fact that you approach it like it's so critical is why, you know, you're so important. Well, thank you, man, because, you know, that's how I try and see it. You know, you're so important. Well, thank you, man, because, you know, that's how I try and see it. You know, it's like I think about like I don't want to let people down by me not working as hard as I can, particularly when it's so important, as you point out, for so many people. You know, because young people, older people, people are always going to get high. They're always going to get high.

So one of the things we can do is we can help them do it more safely and more effectively. We can actually do that as opposed to saying, don't do that. Come on. If you're a thinking person, you want to know why. It's more important that kids and people challenge me, challenge everyone. And when they challenge us, they might actually go and engage in this behavior. Okay, I have my own kids. So that means my kids hear me talking about this. So my kids might think, well, drugs aren't that bad, because I heard what my dad said. So I have to understand that there's

a potential that my kids will use drugs too. Yeah, I know that. But the thing that I try to do is make sure they're safe and they know what they're doing. And also that they understand their role about educating their friends and keeping their friends safe and even educating their teachers. Like I get my kids say, dad, I had the drug talk in class. And this is what this person said, this teacher said, or this person said that the majority of people who use marijuana go on to use other drugs and become addicted to marijuana some other drug so my kid my young kid has to raise his hand and be like um mr x it's exactly the opposite of what you just said and then the teacher teacher says, you know, like, what evidence do you have for this sort of thing?

Of course, my kids, they do. And he's like, well, look at the last three presidents of the United States, you know. And so he goes on and he educates the teachers in that sort of way. But, you know, that's right. That's a hard thing for a kid to do. It is. But he feels compelled to do it because he understands that that's part of his responsibility too. There was a great lecture by Terrence McKenna once where he was talking about his kid being in class.

And Terrence McKenna is sort of a legendary figure in the psychedelic community. And his child was in class, and the teacher was telling his child that LSD causes brain damage. And he said, no, it doesn't cause brain damage. And the teacher said, well, who told you that? And he said, Albert Hoffman. And when you've had a conversation with Albert Hoffman, and you're dealing with some fucking high school teacher in Podunk, Colorado. Well, it'd be interesting if the teacher knew who Albert Hoffman was.

He probably did. Yeah, I hope so. I would hope so. Yeah. But it's this, the narrative that the brain damage narrative is a big one. Yeah. And, you know, like, boy, there's a lot of things that can potentially cause your brain to not function at its best. And some abuse of drugs is certainly on that list.

But there's a lot of things that we do on a daily basis that are not good for you, like poor diet, like a lack of exercise, like being stuck in polluted cities, like breathing in brake dust and fucking exhaust fumes all day. All these things are terrible for you. Yeah, but we really have to challenge the brain damage narrative. I mean, one of the things that we do is that we don't challenge it. I mean, so like when we, one of the things, when we think about the brain damage narrative, it has gained more energy in recent years, in part because we

have this technology of neural imaging of brain imaging but what in fact what has happened with brain imaging is that brain imaging has become a projection test basically you know what i mean when i say a projection test um no i don't you know inkblot tests okay so uh or warshop these sort of psychological tests where you throw up some image and you ask the person, what do they see? And then, you know, you get this sort of, they'll tell you their interpretation. And then the psychologist has his or her subjective interpretation of what that means. That's what brain imaging in drugs, in the sort of drug field has become. It's become a projection test

so that means that the sort of what the examiner sees is what the test or the information becomes so it's a subjective sort of view a subjective view of what the examiner thinks. And so you can take brain imaging, for example, you can take the data and give it to two different labs. Just give the data to two different labs and you don't tell them who the participants are. I would bet you any amount of money that the two labs would not come up with the same interpretation. You know, so people think of this as like being hard science. It's there, and this is what we see, and we know it. It's not that way. It's really, there's a lot of subjectivity that goes into these sorts of tests.

And so one of the things we have to do is just push back and ask people when they talk about these drugs causing brain damage, where? What's the evidence? These are the questions that people have to ask. Please show me the evidence of the brain damage that you're talking about. Because it's true. Amphetamines can cause brain damage. Nicotine is a lot more dangerous than amphetamine, heroin, and all the rest of these things in terms of potency and that sort of thing. But we take nicotine in doses that we avoid any sort of damage that, or most of the damage associated with it. We take all of these drugs in doses that causes euphoria, which is way below the doses that causes toxicity.

So when we start talking about brain damage, humans don't usually take drugs in the doses that will cause brain damage because if they did, the drug effects become unpleasant and humans won't take it because it's so unpleasant. So the notion that these things cause brain damage, you need to really ask people to show you the evidence. I have not seen the evidence in humans that all of these regular any of these recreational drugs is causing some brain damage so when they have those scans and they show the brain and they show the effects like when someone's on

X amount you know milligrams of this or of that what I always wondered that like what are you seeing when you see like highlighted portions of the brain like what is that just activity in that area so if we're talking most of the studies have been done when people are not on drugs i mean we can talk about when people are on drugs we'll do that and so what you do you typically do you have like a group of methamphetamine users in one group and then you have people who've never used methamphetamine in another group and you image their brain you might do what this thing we call a pet image that was that was popular where you inject a radioactive compound in somebody's body and this compound

selectively binds to let's say dopamine cells in the brain and when it binds to the dopamine cells since it's radioactive it lights up and it and then so you can see how many dopamine cells are in a person's brain or region or you can get an idea of the dopamine cells and how many are there one of the things that has done a sort of popular way that it's done is that they say the methamphetamine users have less dopamine receptors than the non-methamphetamine users and so that's interpreted as saying methamphetamine caused the methamphetamine users to lose dopamine cells kill cells basically now we don't know what we're what was in the brains of the of the methamphetamine users before

they use methamphetamine we only know from this one scan that's one problem another problem is is that we don't know what the normal range of dopamine receptors or are in a person's brain so if you look at like your brain versus my brain, we'll see differences. What does that mean? Or if you look at the brains of people who never use drugs or anything, you'll see differences. What does it mean? And so we have a wide range, just as humans, we have a wide range of dopamine cells in each person's brains versus somebody else. So you can't say that methamphetamine caused these people to lose dopamine cells because we don't know if they lost dopamine cells in the first place.

And another thing is that you have this tremendous amount of overlap of dopamine cells in this case in the methamphetamine users compared to the controls. So that means that some people in the methamphetamine group has more dopamine cells than people in the control and vice versa. So what does it all mean? It doesn't mean what it typically means is we don't know, but what we know it doesn't typically mean is that it caused some brain damage. Because when you look at these people's functioning, cognitive functioning, other functioning, they look just like anybody else who didn't use methamphetamine. That's fascinating.

So that's really interesting. So the only way to tell would be to take someone who is healthy and doesn't have a history of drug use and monitor them, get them hooked on methamphetamine, and then see what's happening to their dopamine receptors then you certainly that that could be a way of doing that but that would be really expensive and i don't know if it's just ethical yeah i mean we have these natural experiments already so we think about amphetamine use became big in the 30s and we have this sort of history in the military we still use amphetamines. Pilots use them. Yeah, pilots are always on that stuff when they fly missions, right, to make sure they're sharp.

Right. So you have this history. So you just look in the general population, and you say, all right, what is a dopamine-related illness? You look at a dopamine-related illness. One of them is Parkinson's disease. You lose dopamine cells, you get Parkinson's disease. Do you have higher rates of Parkinson's disease in methamphetamine users? And, you know, the bottom line is that you don't generally see this.

You don't see higher rates of Parkinson's disease in methamphetamine users. I mean, that's just one thing. But you can just look throughout the society, and you can see various illnesses, particularly neurological illnesses, and see, do you have a greater rates of this illness in people who reported this type of drug use? And you don't really see that. And so I when I hear people talk about the brain damage thing, particularly when they show brain imaging, that's not evidence of brain damage. You know, when you have animal studies, you can give animals amphetamines for every day for their life, and then you kill them at some point, and then you look at dopamine damage, for example. You certainly can see damage. When you give amphetamine at doses 30, 40 times what humans take, yeah, you can see damage when you give amphetamine at doses 30 40 times what humans take yeah you can

see some toxicity it's clear but now when you give the doses that are comparable to what humans take over that same period of time you don't see this really yes so the stimulants and the effect of the stimulants don't result in brain damage unless you're at just ridiculous levels. Absolutely. This is the same thing that I worry about with steroid use. You know, this is why I want to make sure that we actually regulate it, because we want to make sure people are not taking doses that are so large that they might actually be causing some damage. And when you don't regulate it, yeah,

you run that risk. And so regulate it. And if you really care about people, that's what you would do. And then you make sure that you monitor them regularly to make sure that they don't exceed those levels and you educate them about the potential consequences. Well, a good example of that is probably the bodybuilding community, because if anybody takes steroids at hyperhuman and preposterous levels, it's bodybuilders. And yet very few of them wind up dying from it. There are a few cases of guys that were like really big in the 80s and 90s that are now dead from heart attack. But if you ever see what those fucking guys look like, you realize like these are not people that are taking normal levels. These are not people that are even taking commensurate levels to their peers.

Like a lot of them are taking just these insane, insane. And some of them have come clean about their routines and what they would use. I mean, they were just redlining. They were just redlining their system on a regular basis. They were trying redlining. They were just redlining their system on a regular basis. They were trying to win, and they were trying to— and that's a sport where you have to take steroids. I mean, you're not going to compete with a Lee Haney or a Dorian Yates. You're not going to compete with them if you don't take steroids.

It's a sport that is really—you have to—it's the only way it works. Your human body is not supposed to be that big. Yeah, well, yeah, my concern is that we should make sure we keep them safe by making sure that they understand what they're doing and how to do it. But that is a crazy sport when you think about it. I mean, some people don't even consider it a sport, whatever, an activity, whatever you want to call it. You know, because it's not like you're doing anything other than standing there looking big. It's weird, right? Because you're not, you know what I mean?

It's like you're not trying to run faster. You're just standing there. Is that a sport? Well, you know, if they think it is, they're competing, right? It's an activity. It's certainly a legit activity. And they're competing, right? Yes, I guess.

But the competition is so subjective. It's like, you know, And they're competing, right? Yes, I guess. But the competition is so subjective. It's like, you know, you look at one guy. I mean, I don't get it. I look at the, like, if I look at Mr. Olympia and there's, like, the top five guys, like, they're indistinguishable to me. They're all just giant, huge dudes. I don't know. How the fuck does one person win and one person not win? I don't get it.

Yeah, but, you know, our ignorance shouldn't prevent them from having a sport. No, no, no. I'm not saying prevent them from having a sport i'm saying is it a sport yeah it's an activity but that's my thing our ignorance should prevent prevent them from calling it a sport right i mean you know there are some sports that i just don't get i mean golf is clearly a sport but right is it though my wrestling coach in high school wouldn't even say baseball is a sport he's like it's a skill game coach murphy it's a skill game it's not a sport you get tired you get tired when you gotta you gotta push through it when you're playing baseball get the fuck out of here that's not a sport you make us run hills if we said it was a sport

okay well you know that's how i feel too but, the thing is, is that my view on this certainly should not be considered. You know, even though that's because of my own ignorance. I should not, I shouldn't have much of a say-so there because of my ignorance. I understand. Even though I have my view, but, you know, my view is less important. Well, in bodybuilding, if there is consequences to taking the level of steroids that you need to take in order to get that big. Like, didn't Arnold have open heart surgery? I think Arnold had heart surgery.

I'm pretty sure. So I think for a lot of those guys. But Arnold has had a fun. I mean, his life has been, you know, I don't know why he had open heart surgery. But, I mean, clearly he used steroids. He said this. But I don't know if that's the reason I mean You know the number one sort of reason that people die in the United States is heart disease

And they get that for a variety of reasons many of them have never taken steroids So I know it's obesity right isn't it's obesity poor eating habits a wide range of things Yeah, genetics lack of exercise a lot of not enough alcohol, no alcohol. No alcohol? I mean, moderate alcohol use is associated with lower levels of heart disease and stroke and all the rest of these things. Why do you think that is? It just relaxes people, takes a little bit of the edge off and less stress on the body maybe? There is a component that has been identified in alcohol that they think is helpful at getting rid of plaques and that sort of thing. But it's not definitive. I don't know. Is that one of those things where you'd have to take a healthy person and expose them to alcohol and monitor as well? Same thing

with methamphetamine maybe? Well, you know, it's like if you do a wide range of different types of studies, you know, because there's no perfect study. But if you have all of these different types of studies and then you have the evidence pointing to the same way, the same direction, it increases your confidence that this is real. And that's kind of what happened with alcohol. large studies with thousands of people that have looked at folks who don't drink alcohol, those people who drink moderate doses and those who drink excessive or larger doses. And the moderate drinkers, time at the time, they are associated with all of these positive outcomes. And so it's certainly starting to increase my confidence that it's something real going

on where people should drink moderately. Should drink moderately? Yeah. Wow, that's controversial, right? It's pretty controversial, isn't it? People should take a little heroin. They should drink moderately. Should do some steroids.

I'm obviously not really stating your position. But there's a thing in red wine. There's an antioxidant called resveratrol. Isn't that something that they've associated with health as well? Yeah, they were thinking about it was specific to red wine, but now they think it's just alcohol in general. In a perfect world, Dr. Carl Hart, if you were the drug czar, first of all, why the fuck do we have a czar? Aren't they evil? Isn't that like a czar? Aren't they, like, evil? Isn't that like a fucking dictator?

Well, they are. Yeah, in a way, right? Yeah, if you know anything about what happens with U.S. drug policy, you can't help but think that they are evil. It's kind of ironic, then, that we call them the drug czar instead of the drug chairman or the drug, you know, overseer or policy coordinator. Well, you have to understand the first drug czar was William Bennett, and I think he tucked that title, and that's where he's been. He ran with it. He's like, well, I'm a fucking czar.

I'm going to act like one. If you were, I mean, say if President Obama or President Trump, when he gets into office, is that scared the shit out of you or what? Not really, man, because I live in this country. Look at all of these people who run this country. I mean, it doesn't scare me. They're all not that different. Well, I think if anybody would be different, it might be Trump.

I mean, he's the only one that's financially independent. Yep. And that's probably why he's so— Well, and he also has a personality, and the other folks who are running for the Republicans don't have personalities. That is true, yeah. But this is not an endorsement by no means, but this is just the state of fact. He has a personality. And personality means a lot in this goofy country.

Yeah, Dr. Hart, you're obviously very educated in this subject, much more so than the average person. What do you recommend we do in this country to handle drugs? Yeah. So the first thing I do, you know, it would be you'd be really hard pressed to have me like working government for once. I just want to state that because the thing that I love about being an academic is that I'm a free man. And then in government, the first thing I would do was decriminalize all drugs. That would be the first thing that would happen immediately. Then I would change our educational sort of programming in this country surrounding drugs. All of these things that vilify the drug and say that it's the drug that causes that, that would be out. People who are doing the sort of things that it's the drug that causes that that would be out people who are doing this sort of things that the government is paying for their money would dry up if they didn't change

their the way that they're educating that's that's another thing another thing i would do with uh police forces that i had control over they would when they confiscate drugs their the main mission is not to arrest people the main mission is to keep people safe whenever they confiscate drugs, their main mission is not to arrest people. The main mission is to keep people safe. Whenever they confiscated drugs, they would test them for adulterants and see what else is in that cocaine, what else is in that heroin. And it would be published in the local papers. It would be published in some local sort of form where everyone would know, avoid this type of drug or this packaging because it has this adulterant and that's not safe. Whereas something else doesn't have that adulterant. So the people would be informed immediately. Then another thing I would do, I would work on legalizing or

regulating all of these drugs, figuring out what would be the best regulated market for marijuana, what would be the best regulated market for cocaine, what would be the best regulated market for heroin, how do we best regulate ecstasy, how do we do this? And that's where I would go. And we would get rid of the people in jail who are there because of drug violation. Obama's done a little bit of that. He's kind of scratched the surface getting people out of jail that are in for nonviolent drug offenses.

But it was a very small amount of people, and there was a big ado about it. And I couldn't help but be underwhelmed because i think it was only like 65 people or something like that i don't remember what the i think the total now has gone up to like 80 something jesus christ there's fucking million people in jail we have 2.3 million yeah yeah but how many of them are in there for no no you're right you're right you're insane it's probably half the population right yeah no i'm with you man like you you you've been overwhelmed i mean underwhelmed i have been um disappointed i mean i voted for obama and uh i was hoping that we get a lot more relief on this thing so i mean we the crack cocaine was originally punished 100 times more harshly than powder cocaine at the federal level it's now

punished 18 times more harshly than powder cocaine that doesn't make any sense they're the same drug right that's just racism right well you know that's or at the very least come back to racism targeting economic disparity i mean you're targeting people in in poor communities yeah yeah we our um enforcement of drug laws has been racially discriminatory. That's a fact. But we certainly can come back to the racism piece. So that sort of thing, we were expecting Obama, his administration, to push for a one-to-one equating with crack with powder. It didn't happen.

And by the way, it's 18-to-1 now. And then when you look at the arrests of people who are being arrested, it's still 80 percent black. It's still this racially discriminatory sort of effect. So changing that law didn't have any impact on that. That's one thing. And then when we think about the people who are being the sentences have been commuted, you know, he has become the president who has commuted more sentences than any other president. I think Johnson was ahead of him at one point, but now he's surpassed Johnson. But we have to think about when Johnson was president, we might have had 200,000 people in jail. Now we've got 2.3 million or so.

So really, this is a drop in the bucket, and this is disappointing to me. in a bucket and that this is disappointing to me i i am so um uh discouraged uh and um it's heartbreaking actually because we thought we would see this president be more bold about these things raise these issues and um some of it is some of these sort of arrests are related to race and race. Racial discrimination is important. But one of the things that happens in our country when we start having this discussion or these discussions about racial discrimination is that we still we're in this frame where poor black people, poor other people, white people, all these other people in the country who are catching the same hell are not working together as a result of keeping it, this conversation tied to the racial discrimination. Although racial discrimination is important in a lot of domains and that we should not forget that. But there are people, there are white poor people catching the same hell for the same or similar reasons.

The reason might not be conspicuously race, but it might be for other reasons. Like I said, I've been traveling all over the world and I went to Belfast, Northern Ireland, and you got a lot of fans there, like the Catholics, although they're not really Catholics. Many of these people are not really Catholics, but they're catching hell for similar reasons. You know, they're being dominated by a British sort of occupation, if you will, and they have similar problems as poor people have in this country. And so one of the things I'm struggling with is that I'm trying to get people to see how poor black people's struggles in the U.S struggles are connected with poor peoples in Brazil.

All around the globe, these people have more things in common. And then sometimes the conspicuous characteristic of race kind of blinds us from our connection with other folks. And so I'm struggling with how to communicate this in a way that everybody can see hey we're in the shit together and there are a few elitist sort of people who are benefiting from us going at each other's throat and not understanding and then us also just playing right into it. One of the things about cocaine and heroin and ecstasy as opposed to marijuana is that marijuana obviously is really easy to make.

You put it in the ground, you water it, it grows, harvest it. It's simple. It's like you see it as a leaf. You don't have to worry about there being a bunch of stuff in it. When you talked about, what's the word you use, adulterants? Adulterants, yeah. When someone's taking cocaine and cutting it with something else, that becomes, when you look at it, it still looks like white powder.

Legalization, if we legalized it as opposed to decriminalizing it. If you're decriminalizing it, what you're doing is you're not prosecuting people that are using it. But what do you do with the people that are selling it? And how do you move to an ethical, responsible, open market for something like this? So when you say, what do you do with the people who are selling it? You mean the people who are currently selling it or the people who will be selling it? People that will be. See, if we go to decriminalizing, obviously that means that you're not going to prosecute the people that are using it, but how do they get it?

Do we change that? So decriminalization, thinking about Portugal and the Czech Republic, you still have the illicit markets in those places. And so people have to understand that decriminalization is not to go at the illicit markets. Decriminalization, the major reason that you decriminalize is that you don't want to put your citizens in jail and you want to encourage them to get help if they need help. So it's about the sort of user. That's kind of what you're doing.

But if you're worried about illicit drug markets and you want to get rid of illicit drug markets then regulation is a way to go legal legal regulation and if you worry about adulterants legal regulation is a way to go because you get rid of the black market and you get rid of the potential dangerous compounds that people cut these drugs with. That's my major concern. That's why I kind of push for now regulating these markets, because I'm more afraid of the adulterants. I'm not afraid of heroin. I know how to keep people safe with heroin. I know how to keep people safe with cocaine. But I don't know how to keep people safe with some of the cuts because I don't know what they are. Right. And no one knows until you test it.

And it just seems to me that if we accept the fact that people are doing drugs in this country, and we kind of have, right? I mean, it's not like there's ever been a time in our country that people stopped doing drugs, even for a month. There's never been like a month of no one doing drugs in this country. So the entire time. Our president wouldn't function. Right. I mean, those guys take sleeping pills and stimulants to get going.

I mean, they have to. Do they really? They have to. Like, you think Obama takes sleeping pills? All right. I can't say for sure that he does. But if we had a bet, I would bet you a lot of money that he does. Just because he's so tired because he works so crazy hours?

He would be, I would say, irresponsible if he didn't take sleeping pills. Really? Of course. Sleep is one of the most important human functions. And I want my president to be getting sleep. But when you take sleeping pills, doesn't it alter your REM sleep and fuck with your cycles? important human functions and I want my president to be getting sleep but when you take sleeping pills doesn't alter your REM sleep and and fuck with your cycles some of them certainly can so you try to find once like opiates are outstanding for sleep you're a big fan of the opiates aren't you are you working for the opiate industry are you are you involved somehow but there are

there others that will work and I'm sure he has some good physicians. I mean, look throughout history. The presidents have taken stimulants and sedatives as well as they should because they have to be on these different coasts and they time change, and they have to. It just doesn't make—I mean, people who have to be in the public eye i assure you they are taking drugs to enhance their human experience and function so uh to go back to that there's never been a time it's not like an achievable goal there's never been a time where we've gone a month a week a year, without anyone in this country doing drugs. So we know that the drugs are always going to exist. It would seem to me

that this country that's obsessed with making money to the point where we have privatized prisons and we allow people to profit off of people being in jail, wouldn't it be a better source of income to instead tax legal sales of drugs, to make everything legal, tax it, and then you get the benefit like you got in Colorado. Colorado is the first state ever to get more taxes from marijuana than they do from alcohol, which is incredible. They made more money this year from marijuana than they have from alcohol. And alcohol has been around forever. And alcohol has been around forever. If we did that with cocaine and with heroin and with ecstasy and all these other drugs that we know people are already using,

and we also know people are selling illegally and not paying taxes on it. It's not like people are selling Coke and going, you know what? I'm a Coke dealer, but I'm a responsible American, so I like to pay taxes. I made $100 million this year. Hey, how did you make that money? I'm fucking hustle. You know, hustle and flow. You know how I do. No one's going to pay taxes. I made $100 million this year. Hey, how'd you make that money? Ah, fucking hustle. You know, hustle and flow. You know how I do.

No one's going to do that. So we're missing out on all that tax revenue as a country. I mean, it's economically unsound to not legalize it and tax it. If you know for a fact that people are going to do it, it seems economically irresponsible. fact that people are going to do it. Yeah. It seems economically irresponsible. And then the idea of these public or private prisons, private prisons are a giant issue in this country because they also lobby and the prison unions, the prison guard unions and police officers unions lobby to make sure the drug laws stay in place to make sure that they have work. It's insidious. It's creepy, and it's scary. Yeah, private prisons now, the thing is, is that there are all those things you said,

but understand they only make up 11% of all prison beds in the United States. They're going to Brazil now, and they're going to some other places, and it's important that we are aware of what you just said. But we also need to be aware of places like Louisiana. I think they have the largest number of prisoners in the country. They have local sheriffs who kind of operate like private prisons. So they bid or they get these state prisoners to be housed in their jail, get these state prisoners to be housed in their jail and they receive a certain amount of money for having those those prisoners in their local jails so this is a way for the local sheriffs

to generate income revenue by taking the prisoners from state prisoners into their local jail jails and so this technically is not private prison but this is certainly unscrupulous. And people should be aware of this going on throughout the country as well. So private prisons are a concern, but also these local jails and local sheriffs, they're doing similar things. But legalizing drugs, though, would be financially a huge boon to our economy. though would be financially a huge boon to our economy yeah i i think so um um yeah i think so but people will um people um i don't know if that argument alone is is going to be as it'd be compelling i mean i certainly think it's an important argument so not not alone but it's something that should be considered especially in the wake of what's going on in colorado yeah yeah yeah and there are people

who are saying in terms of colorado they're saying that yeah colorado is generating all of this tax revenue but they're having to pay out a lot of it too because they have to enforce this new law and so people are kind of distorting on sort of story. But I think over time, Colorado and other places, it's going to show that this is a huge benefit and the benefits far outweigh the risk, I think. And similar to what's going on in Portugal, where you see the decrease in violent crime, the decrease in addiction, the decrease in all sorts of different problems. Decrease in revenues to their prisons and all those things.

Yeah. All the negative aspects that we associate with drugs. Yeah. A lot of it is negative aspects of crime. Yeah. See, the thing about Portugal, too, you have to understand, in places like Portugal, Switzerland, those kind of places where they kind of take care of their people, they are more of a homogenous society than we are. And when you have a place like the United States where we're not as homogenous like L.A., you guys have every nationality, ethnic group, race, they're all here. Not homogenous at all. And so one of the things that the drug laws has done,

it has allowed us to separate out those people we don't like and go after them. So if we decriminalize, it makes it more difficult. So you're taking away that tool. Whereas Portugal, the Swiss, and those folks, they're such homogenous societies they kind of care about the people in their society because the people who are in power they see that many of the people who might be subjected to these laws they look like them they are them in our society since it's not as homogenous it's easy for us to think about these drug laws being used to go after those people who don't share our value.

That's what we say, but they really don't look like us and they're really not us. So this can't really happen because we know that there are a number of people who look like folks who are in Washington and they're they're using drugs they're using a lot of drugs but they're not subjected to drug policy i see what you're saying and so it's like we have to be honest about why we have these policies in place in the first place they allow us to go after the people we don't like without explicitly saying so. So I think overall, like as an overview, what we're looking at is we have a society that has a lot of ignorance when it comes to both the prevalence of drugs, the use of drugs and the effect of drugs. And that ignorance is part of the problem. And it's shaped not just public opinion, but also shaped policy shaped how politicians address these issues like like a guy like chris christie that is allowed to say

ignorant stuff the reason why he's not booed off stage when he does it is for a lot of the people in the audience they don't know that what he's saying is unbelievably ignorant yeah and he kind of provides the cover for them you know um they kind of support these things because they're not happening to them. And it's those other people who don't share their values is what they say. But they really don't look like them. They don't dress like them. They don't go to the same schools. They don't do any of these things.

So Christie, when he says that, he's saying this because he's representing what many Americans think, and he's providing cover for that bigoted ignorance or that uninformed perspective. So what you're doing now with this touring all around the world, and are you speaking in all these places? Like, what are you doing? Yeah, you know, I spoke at the World Health Organization this past summer, universities in Belfast and London, Geneva, of course, Brazil. I was just down there speaking. I'll be in Canada next month. So just doing all of these talks, I'm trying to have these kind of conversations, trying to inform people, trying to let people know that they've been hoodwinked all around

the world, and they've been hoodwinked, particularly countries that follow the U.S. drug policy, and try and expose why the countries are following this policy that is having detrimental impact on their citizens. How is this received? Is it universally received, or is it there's different places that are more open to it? Yeah, you know, in Brazil, for example, they have followed the U.S. wholeheartedly, and Brazil has 50% of their population is black, right they have like the greatest african population outside of africa uh they um and mo and and their prisons their jails are filled with black people and the poor people in the country are black and their drug policy is being used as a tool to further

marginalize this group basically and so when I go down there and speak, and I'm brought there by their government, oftentimes, it's well received, even from the ruling class and the government. And so it's a conundrum to me, quite frankly, that I'm so well received there by the ruling class. But there are some people who who are uh very interested in changing policy geneva and those places what i'm saying to them those folks there they're like no shit we know that you know and they they are their drug policy is reflected or it's more uh rational go to france they're equally as ignorant as we are and they use their poly drug policy just like we do, they're equally as ignorant as we are, and they use their policy just like we do, and they're equally arrogant as we are. Belfast, they're trying. I mean,

their Catholic population, they're on the siege, basically. Vancouver, they feel the message, of course. Norway, all of these people, they are responding because they know this is not I'm not. I wish I was brilliant and bright and all those things. I'm not. You know, this is not anything that's earth shattering. These people know many of the people around the world. that's earth-shattering date these people know many of the people around the world columbia went there was in columbia uh... those people their politicians they know

but they're getting a lot of money from the u s continued this sort of war on drugs mexico they know but they're getting a lot of money from the u s the continuous war on drugs has a mexico decriminalized a lot of things the decriminalize everything but nobody talks about it because as i pointed out earlier in portugal a person is allowed to have a 10-day supply of drugs before that that triggers some sort of

criminal prosecution so you can have a 10-day supply of methamphetamine heroin whatever So you can have a 10 day supply of methamphetamine, heroin, whatever. In Mexico, you get you trigger a criminal offense when you have just a small amount of something. So it's it doesn't really play out in the spirit of decriminalization so they're still they probably did it to appeal to the united states laws or to abide by what the united states is looking for them to do yeah i don't know exactly why they did it but i know they're continuing their war on drugs in part because of us, which is a war on drugs is really a war on people and particularly a war on poor people, as we know. And I'm against wars, you know, and I'm an ex-military person. Now, if people want to see you talk and are you still traveling? Yeah. Yeah.

Where can they find out about you? My website, drcarlhart.com. And when is the new book coming out? New book won't be out until after the presidential election. Okay. All right, man. Well, thank you very much. You're always awesome.

I really appreciate you coming on here. Good to be here, man. I really dig what you do and thank you for having me. Thank you, sir. I appreciate that very much. And follow him on Twitter, Dr. Carl Hart on Twitter. Is it drcarlhart.com is your website? Yeah.

Okay. Thank you, brother. Appreciate it, man. Thank you. Good night, everybody. Good night, everybody. Oof. you