Jan. 12, 2021 - The Joe Rogan Experience
03:07:57
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
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unidentified
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The Joe Rogan Experience. | |
| Train by day. | ||
| Joe Rogan Podcast by night. | ||
|
unidentified
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All day. | |
| It's got, like, a lot of freedom. | ||
| Like, their ethos here, the way they look at things. | ||
| Like, they're not interested in the government telling them what to do. | ||
| I gotta tell you, you know, I was standing downtown, and I never saw homelessness here. | ||
| I saw people, like, working, a lot of jobs. | ||
| But now, I mean, what I saw when I was downtown, it's like I hadn't seen homelessness like this in Texas ever. | ||
| No, it's a new thing. | ||
| The government here changed the laws in terms of allowing people to camp out. | ||
| And so they camp out under underpasses and all that kind of shit. | ||
| Have you been to LA recently? | ||
| Not recently. | ||
| LA's insane. | ||
| Yeah, but LA's always been that way. | ||
| Never like this, though. | ||
| Never like this. | ||
| I've never seen Texas like this. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Texas have always seemed like they had jobs and people were working. | ||
| I've never seen this before. | ||
| Well, the COVID lockdowns affected everywhere, and I think it affected here less than it affected L.A., but I think the real thing is, you know, I mean, it's mental health, right? | ||
| That's the real reason most of those folks are out there. | ||
| They really need care. | ||
|
unidentified
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That's it. | |
| And then, you know, you've got a lot of drug addicts, and you've got a lot of mental health, which brings up your book, Drug Use for Grownups. | ||
| Drug Use for Grownups, man. | ||
| First of all, it's great to see you again. | ||
| It's been a while. | ||
| How long has it been? | ||
| About five, six years, man. | ||
| I didn't realize. | ||
| The world keeps spinning. | ||
| Yeah, you know, I didn't realize it was that long, man. | ||
| Actually, I was trying not to just be in the public for the sake of being in the public. | ||
| I always want to make sure I got something to say. | ||
| But really, I miss you. | ||
| I mean, I miss being here and I really dig what you do and the people you bring on. | ||
| Some people don't like them. | ||
| But I really, the space you created, thank you. | ||
| My pleasure. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Well, you know, it's a weird thing to be able to just talk to people. | ||
| And then the whole world listens. | ||
| Like, what do you got to say? | ||
| What's this person have to say? | ||
| What's this about? | ||
| You know what's remarkable for me is that you're a comedian, right? | ||
| That's what you were. | ||
| And the comedians have been our sort of saviors. | ||
| Of all people in our society, that's who we look to, the comedians, because they can tell the truth. | ||
| It's so nice to see Louis C.K. coming back. | ||
| These people coming back. | ||
| Bill Burr, I just love the shit that he's doing. | ||
| I mean, you know, we're not for the comedians. | ||
| We really be fucked up. | ||
| No, thank you. | ||
| There's a lot of scared people out there, and I think the comedians aren't as scared. | ||
| There's a few that are scared. | ||
| I think a lot of them are scared. | ||
| I mean, when that stuff happened to Louis C.K., they all kind of went quiet. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And that was really stupid. | ||
| You know, I mean, and I was expecting more of them to stand up, and they didn't. | ||
| Well, there was a bunch of different narratives, right? | ||
| And if Louis wasn't talking, you know, all Louis did was, like, release a statement. | ||
| But if you weren't talking to him, you didn't get his version of it. | ||
| Once I talked to him personally and got his version, I'm like, well, this is a very different version than what you're hearing from the public. | ||
| And from the people that are making the worst judgments on it, what it was mostly was he's kind of a pervert, and he asked if he could jerk off in front of them, and he had already been flirting with these girls, and he knew them, and they had made it seem like he was a monster. | ||
| He was cornering people and jerking off in front of them. | ||
| I mean, but even that's hard to cancel somebody. | ||
| You can just walk the fuck away. | ||
| I don't understand this. | ||
| Yeah, well, it was a man in power. | ||
| And this was post-Matt Lauer and post-Harvey Weinstein, and there was all this... | ||
| Yeah, the context. | ||
| Yeah, the context is interesting. | ||
| It's good and bad, right? | ||
| It's good that people like Harvey Weinstein are held accountable, but it's bad that people get scared. | ||
| And then it's also bad that you have... | ||
| Crazy people who can just accuse someone of something and everyone says, well, hashtag believe all women. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| And you're like, are you sure? | ||
| All of them? | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Because, like, let's slow down. | ||
| Like, you're going to believe Casey Anthony? | ||
| You're going to be like, there's a lot. | ||
| Like, who are you believing? | ||
| Well, that's why we need the comedians to speak up. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, it's a unique time in this world. | ||
| You know, I mean, we're experiencing, like, in many ways, the deterioration of our appreciation for government. | ||
| Deterioration for our... | ||
| Just civil society is in danger right now. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| Yeah, you know, that's one of the things that really has forced me to seek residence in another country. | ||
| You were saying you're in Switzerland now, huh? | ||
| Yeah, between Switzerland and New York, it's just that we have to do a better job of treating people better. | ||
| I mean, caring for people. | ||
| People who are not our family, just other human beings. | ||
| Even if you're not taking care of them, you gotta at least care about people. | ||
| And it's okay to not care about people. | ||
| That's some fucked up shit. | ||
| And that's coming from the highest levels of government, and it's like I don't like that ethos, and so I don't want to be around it because I don't want it to infect or poison me. | ||
| Do you feel like it has affected or poisoned you? | ||
| Of course it does. | ||
| You know, it makes me angry for people who like support Trump, for example. | ||
| They're all not racist, of course, and this sort of thing, but I don't understand How people can support a guy who's so mean-spirited and just attacks other people. | ||
| I don't understand it. | ||
| And so when my good friends, I have good friends who support Trump. | ||
| It's hard for me to talk to them. | ||
| Because I don't want to be rude or angry with them. | ||
| But I just don't understand how you support people who are just mean to other people. | ||
| I don't understand that. | ||
| I just don't get it. | ||
| I understand. | ||
| Yeah, I think the people that support them, there's people that I know that are military people that support them. | ||
| Now, I'm ex-military too. | ||
| I was a cop in the military. | ||
| So I know the military as well. | ||
| Yeah, their take on it is just that he released the shackles that the military had to go and take down ISIS. And he released some of the restrictions that the military had under the previous administration as far as engaging with terrorists. | ||
| They've shut down ISIS in like less than a year from Trump being in office. | ||
| And when I talk to people that are active military, they said there was a night and day difference between the way the military was funded, the way... | ||
| I'm sorry, I don't know about that. | ||
| I just don't know that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I don't know enough about that. | ||
| But I agree with you in terms of one of the best things about someone like... | ||
| Well, see, we have to see what happens with Biden because I can't imagine he's going to last. | ||
| We were talking about this. | ||
| I feel like it's sleight of hand. | ||
| He's the walking dead. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, come on. | ||
| Joe's been dead for some time. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But when Obama was in office, Obama's a statesman, right? | ||
| He's an eloquent speaker. | ||
| You hear him talk, and you're like, well, that guy's definitely smarter than me. | ||
| It seems like a person that should be president. | ||
| What Trump did... | ||
| Even though you might disagree with some of his policies, but he certainly seems smarter. | ||
| Presidential. | ||
| He's presidential and not attacking people. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I think that what Trump represented to a lot of people was like this deviation from this system that never supported them, that never served them. | ||
| They felt like politicians were all full of shit and finally this guy's gonna come in and you know even his ideas like clean up the swamp like this motto. | ||
| Like that, oh yeah, that's what we need. | ||
| That's what we need. | ||
| So they got behind it. | ||
| And then when they realized, whenever there's an us versus them situation, people oftentimes aren't thinking clearly. | ||
| They just pick a side. | ||
| I'm with you, Joe. | ||
| I feel you. | ||
| But when we think about Trump and the system not for them. | ||
| Let's just think about, like, fucking Black America. | ||
| When has the system been for Black America? | ||
| You know, so it's like, it's always been that way in terms of Black America, and that's fine. | ||
| And you just work, and you work, and you work, and you try and make the system work for you. | ||
| But you don't say that we're going to take our country down and burn this bitch down. | ||
| I mean, you don't do that. | ||
| Or you can't go hate other people because of that. | ||
| And so when people say that the system is now not working for them, I get it. | ||
| I feel the same way. | ||
| And we should work together to see if we can make this thing work for us. | ||
| You don't isolate yourself and then isolate other people or attack other people. | ||
| Because what happens is, like, I know those jobs went away. | ||
| In middle America, those factory jobs. | ||
| I know that. | ||
| In the automobile industry, in the paper mills, all those, they went away. | ||
| And people, they're suffering. | ||
| I get it. | ||
| But the reason for their suffering, they are misattributing. | ||
| And people like Trump exploits that sort of thing. | ||
| And manipulates these people and uses these people to do their bidding because Trump doesn't give a fuck about those people. | ||
| As you know, he doesn't give a fuck about them. | ||
| He despises those people. | ||
| It's like, I care more about those people than he does. | ||
| And that's the shit that just blows my mind. | ||
| Yeah, it's manipulative. | ||
| But that's what he had to do to get into office. | ||
| I know, and he did it well. | ||
| He had to be a populist billionaire. | ||
| He did it well. | ||
| I know, a populist billionaire. | ||
| That shit just blows my mind. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, this recent thing where those folks went to the Capitol and they were standing up on his behalf, and then he throws them under the Yeah, I threw them all under the bus after it was over. | ||
| Yeah, it's crazy. | ||
| I watched a video of it. | ||
| I had not seen much video of it. | ||
| I'd only seen a couple of videos on Instagram. | ||
| I was like, what the fuck? | ||
| I didn't want to get depressed and watch it, but today I said, let's get depressed. | ||
| And I watched a bunch of it. | ||
| I had no idea how bad it was in terms of the sheer number of people storming the gates and screaming and It's a small handful of cops that were supposed to protect it, and that one cop that got beaten, there's like a video of them hitting the cop with flags and shit. | ||
| It's like, what the fuck? | ||
| How did that happen? | ||
| How did it deteriorate to that? | ||
| I know, man. | ||
| It's really sad to me that that kind of thing happened, and then you have these fucking cowards, Rudy Giuliani, Ted Cruz, Josh Howley, all of these cowards, they're allowed to stand on their pulpit and say these things like they're tough, but they're nowhere around to support these folks in the first place, and they're sending them into the battle. | ||
| And now they will comfortably join the ranks of their members of Congress while these other people are going to go to jail and have these charges, which they should have, of course, but these leaders who manipulated them, there's no consequences to them. | ||
| I mean, I think that's the real crime. | ||
| Well, we'll see if there's consequences, because I have a feeling there will be for Trump. | ||
| I think this is going to be the end. | ||
| I really do. | ||
| Because I think there's very little chance that he's going to run in 2024 after this, because a lot of people were hoping for that. | ||
| A lot of his supporters were hoping for that. | ||
| But after this, I don't even think... | ||
| Yeah, I think the useful idiot is done. | ||
| I mean, I think the people like Mitch McConnell and those people, they don't have no more use for him, so he's done. | ||
| I mean, he's done enough for them. | ||
| They're happy with what he's done. | ||
| He's delivered with the Supreme Court and so forth. | ||
| It's time is over. | ||
| It's interesting to see, you know, we've always known that there's a certain faction of this country that's fairly simple. | ||
| Not that sophisticated, not very smart, and they like thinking in like a real narrow box. | ||
| And this guy came along and was their guy. | ||
| You know, and then we realized like, oh, like the assholes of this country were unrepresented. | ||
| And now all of a sudden they got represented. | ||
| There was a lot of people. | ||
| A lot of those folks that stormed the castle, that stormed Capitol Hill. | ||
| If you see when they get arrested and you find out who they are, a guy living with his mom, believe in QAnon conspiracies, thinks the FBI is sending out pedophile codes, that kind of shit. | ||
| Those guys didn't have a king before. | ||
| You realize how many of them there are. | ||
| But what about the guy who was, I don't know, a retired lieutenant colonel from the Army or the Air Force? | ||
| I mean, so there are people there who also had education and they were plugged into society, right? | ||
| There were a number of those people too, right? | ||
| I'm sure there was a few, yeah. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, I think that most of us are simple people. | ||
| And that's okay. | ||
| I think you should be able to be simple and have a decent life and enjoy yourself. | ||
| I think there's no crime there. | ||
| I think that's fine. | ||
| The real problem is that we allow our leaders to lie. | ||
| And then you can manipulate. | ||
| Even the most sophisticated among us can be manipulated. | ||
| And I think that's the real crime. | ||
| So it's like, not that these people were simple. | ||
| It's okay to be simple. | ||
| Maybe simple is the wrong word. | ||
| Maybe assholes was the right word. | ||
| There's a lot of people that are assholes. | ||
| And there was never a guy who said it's okay to be an asshole. | ||
| And I'm an asshole too. | ||
| Do you think that the majority of these people were assholes? | ||
| I think they could be assholes if they were led the right way. | ||
| But can't most of us be assholes, I think? | ||
| At the worst moments of your life, yeah. | ||
| Yeah, I think so. | ||
| But, you know, I think that when you have... | ||
| I'm telling you, man, I'm putting this square on those people in Washington. | ||
| Trump is one of them, of course. | ||
| But I'm talking about the Ted Cruz's and all of those people as well. | ||
| I mean, those people, they should face the criminal justice system for what they did. | ||
| Because these folks who are out here, we all have the potential to be assholes. | ||
| And then if you think that what you're doing Is holding up the liberty that we promise in this country, that you are being a real patriot and you really believe that you've been manipulated to do that by these leaders, they should pay the price. | ||
| And that's the thing that I'm really disturbed by. | ||
| It's like, yeah, we should get Trump. | ||
| Yep, absolutely. | ||
| But we should go after those other people as well. | ||
|
unidentified
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I don't know. | |
| What did Ted Cruz do? | ||
| Oh, with the election... | ||
| Oh, were you saying that the election fraud? | ||
| Election fraud, when he knew what time it was. | ||
| Those guys, they know they were being dishonest. | ||
| I think it's a political ploy, right? | ||
| Politicians take stances based on where they think their constituents lean. | ||
| And, you know, Stop the Steal and all that was trending on all these social media sites. | ||
| And I feel like for a prominent politician that's a manipulative person that looks at these things and goes, that's an angle that I can use. | ||
| You're absolutely right, Joe. | ||
| That's exactly what politicians do. | ||
| And we should expect more of them. | ||
| And until we do, they're going to continue to do that bullshit when they know that is bullshit. | ||
| And so you're right. | ||
| That's what politicians do. | ||
| So what do you think they were trying to do? | ||
| Do you think just posturing to try to get those people on their side for the future? | ||
| That's right. | ||
| I think that Ted Cruz and those folks were setting themselves up for a future presidential run or what have you and hoping that they get Trump, the kingmaker, to endorse them. | ||
| Even though... | ||
| Trump called his wife ugly. | ||
| I would have beat Trump's ass. | ||
| I mean, I'm telling you. | ||
| I mean, it's like, what kind of man allows that to happen? | ||
| He called him Lion Ted. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, but what kind of man allows another guy to call his wife ugly and not do anything? | ||
| Didn't he also infer that he was a serial killer or something? | ||
| His dad... | ||
| Zodiac Killer, that's right. | ||
| Yeah, his dad helped kill Kennedy or something, he said. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But what kind of man does that? | ||
| I mean, allows that. | ||
| I mean, I don't understand that. | ||
| Well, what kind of man wants to be a senator? | ||
| You know, it's a weird business. | ||
| You get deeply entrenched in that business and there's compromises that you make and a lot of weirdness I understand but you know like what kind of person want to be president? | ||
| That's fine. | ||
| I don't want to do that But I'm glad there are people that that do it and the thing is I think we should require them to be more honorable than we do we certainly should and and so like when when people are posturing politically when they know that That there's no chance that this election can be overturned because there's no fraud. | ||
| I think they should pay a price. | ||
| I think that is just too manipulative. | ||
| And I think their position requires that they be more honest. | ||
| And until we do, until we require this of them, Then I think that they will continue. | ||
| I think there's a style of behavior that lends itself to success. | ||
| Like business success and financial success. | ||
| And it's like a speed style. | ||
| Like people that are into amphetamines. | ||
| And people that are into getting ahead and pushing. | ||
| And I think that there's a style of behavior that leads itself to be compassionate. | ||
| Thinking more about community. | ||
| And I think that is more like A marijuana style or a mushroom style. | ||
| You think so? | ||
| Yeah, I do. | ||
| Try some of that. | ||
| I will. | ||
| CBD pineapple jalapeno drink. | ||
| No, I think a lot of these people that are... | ||
| Look, I'm a big proponent of psychedelics use, and a lot of times people think that that's frivolous. | ||
| That's a silly thing. | ||
| It's an escape thing. | ||
| I don't really think it is. | ||
| I think it seems silly and frivolous for people that have never engaged in it. | ||
| But I think that... | ||
| One of the things that could be the savior of this civilization I really believe this is the legalization of psychedelic drugs because I think if we had more people taking psychedelic drugs responsibly and Especially under the direction of real professionals if we allowed there to be real professionals We would allow people to have these experiences that dissolve their ego and give them this feeling of community and compassion I think a lot | ||
| of those people that storm Capitol Hill, a lot of people like Ted Cruz, a lot of people that run for government and manipulate people, they have no experience in these things. | ||
| They don't know what that is. | ||
| They don't know what those feelings are. | ||
| They've never had that kind of experience. | ||
| So when you say psychedelics, what drugs are you classifying? | ||
| Because you know the classification can be misleading and also not consistent. | ||
| So what drugs are you thinking of? | ||
| I think mushrooms are a big one. | ||
| So psilocybin. | ||
| Psilocybin. | ||
| Even psilocybin, just microdosing, I think could save a lot of people's future and just alter the course of the way they behave. | ||
| Well, I... Check it out. | ||
| I agree with you about drugs being useful and helpful for people to be certainly empathetic and understand other people's plight. | ||
| But I wouldn't limit it to what we call psychedelics. | ||
| You know, like we think about something like MDMA. It's an amphetamine. | ||
| Oh, it's true, right. | ||
| Yeah, and we think about something like heroin. | ||
| How is that an amphetamine, though? | ||
| How does MDMA work? | ||
| See this chemical structure here? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| This is methamphetamine. | ||
| Is it really? | ||
| Yeah, and so if you want to make... | ||
| Very few people like yourself are walking around with meth shirts on. | ||
| I always say that one of the things about meth is there's no meth advocates. | ||
| Well, I guess I am. | ||
| If you want to make MDMA, all you do is put another ring, a methylene-dioxy ring, and then that's MDMA. So MDMA is called methylene-dioxymethamphetamine. | ||
| That's what it's called. | ||
| That's the name. | ||
| And certainly people know about MDMA's reputation in terms of increasing empathy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And understanding and all those things. | ||
| But it's not a psychedelic. | ||
| In the classic sense. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Same can happen with methamphetamine. | ||
| Right. | ||
| The same can happen with heroin. | ||
| Depends on dose and all those sorts of things. | ||
| And if you've been to places like Burning Man and those festivals, and so you see all of those people and they're caring, they're sharing, they're doing all of these kinds of things. | ||
| But some of those same people go out into the world after that experience and they misbehave and they act like assholes. | ||
| Some of them. | ||
| Some of them, that's right. | ||
| I think it has some effect on their thought process and their understanding of the range of experiences that human beings can have. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| I'm a proponent. | ||
| I'm like you. | ||
| No, I know you are. | ||
| But you wrote a book on it. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Drug use for grown-ups. | ||
| Chasing liberty in the land of fear. | ||
| Yeah, no, absolutely, man. | ||
| Unlike me, though, you're a doctor. | ||
| You actually get respect. | ||
| It makes sense. | ||
| You know what you're talking about. | ||
| We'll see if I get respect with this book, because in this book, I'm making the case that you're making. | ||
| I'm saying that as grown-ups, you should fight for your right, your liberty to use drugs. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| For this reason that you're talking about, helping people to be more magnanimous, empathetic, giving, understanding, and all of these things. | ||
| But I'm arguing that drugs like heroin should be included there, cocaine should be included there, along with the psychedelics. | ||
| And so I agree with you, but I also understand that it has a lot to do with context, like where the drugs are being used, with who you're using it with. | ||
| And it also has a lot to do with who's using the drugs. | ||
| So the book is called Drug Use for Grownups for a reason. | ||
| Yeah, you got to be a grown-up because if you end up being a grown-up It's a difficult thing as you know, you know I have kids and I have these responsibilities and I got I have to make sure that I'm a good model for them Treat people well trying to teach them to treat people well treat people well a lot of people are not grown-ups and so If you add a drug to the mix You're not going to all of a sudden have a grown-up. | ||
| And so if people are responsible and grown-ups and empathetic, oh, drugs can really enhance all of those things. | ||
| And so I just want to be clear that you give a drug to an asshole, no matter what drug you give, you're still going to have an asshole there. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| I think some drugs can scare the shit out of them, maybe really make them reconsider why they're an asshole. | ||
| How do you like that pineapple jalapeno? | ||
| Oh, it's good, man. | ||
| It's pretty good, right? | ||
| Not bad. | ||
| Yeah, it's really good. | ||
| Not bad. | ||
| You know, you remind me of a joke that Neil Brennan had, you know, like comedians. | ||
| That's who I listen to. | ||
| I mean, I don't read. | ||
| I listen to comedians, and that's how I get my knowledge, you know. | ||
| But Neil had a joke that said, like, Right. | ||
| joke. | ||
| But he basically was saying, "You feel so good, you don't hear these people going out saying that we should restrict abortion," or something of that nature, right? | ||
| And so there is something to that, right? | ||
| When you're euphoric, you don't want to go out and you don't want to cause trouble. | ||
| You don't want to be aggressive or get into a fight with many of these drugs. | ||
| There is certainly something to that. | ||
| And so, yeah, I agree with you. | ||
| I think there's a trend right now with people that are very ambitious to take amphetamines. | ||
| It's a current trend that's being accentuated by Adderall. | ||
| I know quite a few people that get Adderall legally and they get it because of, air quote, fatigue or, oh, I have ADHD or ADHD or whatever the fuck it is. | ||
| You just like speed. | ||
| You like being revved up all the time. | ||
| I get it. | ||
| And if you're on a controlled version of this where you're not taking too much, but you're taking just enough, they're remarkably productive. | ||
| And also, they can justify taking it because they've got a doctor who told them that it's okay. | ||
| They wrote it down on a piece of paper. | ||
| Look, this guy went to school. | ||
| I got a little piece of paper. | ||
| A little piece of paper says, I'm good to go. | ||
| What's wrong with that? | ||
| I'm sorry. | ||
| Nothing wrong with that, but it's weird to me that those same people oftentimes would frown upon the use of anything that creates deep introspective thought, like mushrooms or LSD or... | ||
| Or even MDMA. I feel you. | ||
| But similarly, people who do alcohol do the same sort of thing, right? | ||
| It's a drug. | ||
| And they mock other drugs. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So it's hypocrisy. | ||
| But you also get people who do psychedelics, who, for example, don't think they will... | ||
| Presmirch something like PCP, which is psychedelic, but yet are proponents of ketamine. | ||
| And they are essentially the same drug. | ||
| PCP is the same as ketamine. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Ketamine is made by modifying the PCP structure, basically. | ||
| Same kind of drug, same effects for the most part. | ||
| Really? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| PCP has the same effects as ketamine? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yep. | ||
| I have no experience in either one of them, but I know people that have taken ketamine and having these crazy psychedelic trips. | ||
| I know people that take ketamine for depression. | ||
| There's a mist that a friend of mine gets, and she pumps it into her nose. | ||
| It's recently approved a couple years ago for depression. | ||
| So that's PCP. That's PCP. You hear that, Whitney? | ||
| You're on PCP. And you know what we say about PCP and the cops' lore about superhuman strength and all that's bullshit. | ||
| My friend was in a fight. | ||
| He got his finger bitten off when he was on PCP. He has his toe welded to where his finger is now. | ||
| His right hand, his index finger was bitten off, and so now that's his second toe on his foot. | ||
| It's sewed in place and curved so that he could punch people. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Joe, you got some wild ass friends, bro. | |
| He was my boxing coach. | ||
| Shout out to Joe. | ||
| You know, man, you do the MMA thing and that sort of thing, and that's sanctioned, for example. | ||
| So people can go out and knock people's head off, but drug use is not sanctioned. | ||
| Yeah, well, it's odd, right? | ||
| Because, obviously, mixed martial arts is very dangerous. | ||
| It's a dangerous endeavor, as is BMX riding, as is fucking gymnastics, man. | ||
| You want to do flips off a balance beam? | ||
| Weird shit can go wrong. | ||
| I've seen videos. | ||
| But, you know, I think it's great that people have the skills and they train and they do that sort of thing, and it should be allowed. | ||
| So I'm not saying that that should be restricted. | ||
| I think that's a great thing. | ||
| People are allowed to do that. | ||
| But the thing that I'm saying is that Wait a second. | ||
| Right. | ||
| We want to look at drugs in the same context. | ||
| You know, why are drugs banned? | ||
| Yeah, it's a good point. | ||
| Because why is it legal to ride bulls, but it's not legal to do coke? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Or legal to hit somebody, knock somebody's block off on a football field. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Very dangerous for both parties. | ||
| Yep. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yep. | |
| It's weird when we decide what you can and can't do. | ||
| Yeah, but it's rational. | ||
| Well... | ||
| There is a rationale to it. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| So when we think about drugs, let's just think about cocaine. | ||
| You and I, we always have good cocaine conversations. | ||
| We should probably do some cocaine and have a conversation. | ||
| Some good cocaine, of course, not anything that's like... | ||
| I've never done cocaine. | ||
| Are you serious? | ||
| Yeah, never done it. | ||
| Wait, no, I thought you got your start at the comedy store. | ||
| I did. | ||
| I thought that was Cocaine Central. | ||
| There's a lot of cocaine at the comedy store. | ||
| I avoided it. | ||
| When I was in high school, my good friend had a cousin who was selling coke. | ||
| And him and his girlfriend, all they did was do coke and hide. | ||
| They were in this fucking attic. | ||
| They were selling it and doing it. | ||
| And they were just like, I'm not joking, man. | ||
| They had an attic apartment. | ||
| They'd hide in the attic. | ||
| And I saw him like wither away. | ||
| Stopped eating. | ||
| Shrunk. | ||
| He was just an addict. | ||
| He was just constantly doing coke. | ||
| And they were all weird. | ||
| They were all nice and nervous and sketchy. | ||
| This is high school. | ||
| Yeah, I was in high school. | ||
| He was a year or two, maybe two years older than me. | ||
| So I believe this was... | ||
| I was probably 17. He was 19 at the time. | ||
| And he was just off his rocker on coke. | ||
| And I remember thinking, like, whatever that drug is, fuck that. | ||
| Because it seemed like the people that did it... | ||
| They got hooked so easy. | ||
| They loved it so much. | ||
| And it was hard to get. | ||
| And, you know, girls would do things to get it from guys. | ||
| And it was just... | ||
| There was a lot involved. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| That seemed... | ||
| I was afraid of drugs when I was young. | ||
| Because I had... | ||
| I was very insecure, and I had this burning desire to be successful. | ||
| Yeah, right on. | ||
| And I felt like drugs were for losers and people that wanted to escape reality. | ||
| You and I, we share this belief, by the way, this view. | ||
| So I agree. | ||
| That's what I did. | ||
| What changed you? | ||
| What changed me was years of evidence of watching people giving drugs to people in a lab and watching them get high and seeing predominantly positive effects. | ||
| Now this is now, I'm well into my 30s, 40s, and now 54, but over that long period of time, That's where I changed, though. | ||
| I'm not like somebody who came to this from high school, always liked drugs and thought of drugs. | ||
| I was an athlete. | ||
| I thought I was going to play professional basketball. | ||
| So I'm like you. | ||
| I was just like you. | ||
| Like, nah, I don't want to be like those cats. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| But then me actually giving drugs to people and studying their responses and then really checking out the history of why drugs are banned... | ||
| And just seeing how I was misled and manipulated and lied to. | ||
| And now that I use all these drugs and think how I'm a better person for it. | ||
| My life has been enhanced because of it. | ||
| My connection to my loved ones are a lot better. | ||
| But again, I'm a responsible grown-up, right? | ||
| I'm 54 years old and I know what I'm doing. | ||
| So when we think about something like cocaine, cocaine, not the bullshit that people sell on the street that's been stepped on. | ||
| So like when you go to places like Columbia and you go to the source and you get really good cocaine, Like, Colombia cocaine is about $7 a gram, whereas in New York it could be anywhere from $60 to $100 a gram. | ||
| And not as good as a product in Colombia. | ||
| So you go to the source countries and you get good stuff. | ||
| It could be a really good evening with you and your significant other, you know? | ||
| And all of these sort of stories of people being paranoid about the cops with cocaine, there are reasons to be paranoid if you're doing something wrong. | ||
| So I get that. | ||
| I mean, so... | ||
| Also worried about being arrested. | ||
| That's what I'm talking about. | ||
| That's exactly what I mean. | ||
| So there's a reason. | ||
| That's a rational sort of thing. | ||
| But what's irrational is that we're arresting people for what they put in their bodies. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Agreed. | ||
| Yeah, agreed wholeheartedly. | ||
| And I always point out that you can go to CVS and buy enough liquor to kill yourself. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| 24-7, all day long. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| It's so easy to do. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But when we think about cocaine and why it's illegal, cocaine came to the United States for the popular masses in the late 1800s. | ||
| And Coca-Cola, this guy John Pendleton, I think his name was, he put it in Coca-Cola, well, this product, a Coca-Wine, and he was out of Atlanta. | ||
| And he put it in cocoa wine in 1894. The next year, Atlanta banned alcohol. | ||
| So before Prohibition, alcohol was banned in Atlanta. | ||
| Just Atlanta. | ||
| Just Atlanta. | ||
| I mean, cities. | ||
| Interesting. | ||
| Various cities banned this. | ||
| Prohibition happened in 1920 nationwide. | ||
| So since they banned alcohol in Atlanta, he had to come up with a new formulation. | ||
| And so what he did was tuck the alcohol out, added carbonated water and sugar. | ||
| Then you have Coca-Cola. | ||
| This is how Coca-Cola was made. | ||
| And he put it in these soda fountains, so he sold it at pharmacies, at these soda fountains. | ||
| And they were for whites only. | ||
| So cocaine was typically available only to white people at that time. | ||
| But then in, I guess, maybe 1899, early 1900s, Coca-Cola began bottling the products. | ||
| Now it's available to black people. | ||
| And now you start to get the connection between violence and cocaine use among black people. | ||
| And this sort of narrative grew and grew to the point where we banned cocaine effectively in 1914, largely because of its association with black people using the drug. | ||
| A similar thing happened with opium in the Chinese. | ||
| That's the real reason that those drugs are banned. | ||
| Not because of pharmacology. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| Now that's not to say that people can't get in trouble with these drugs. | ||
| People do. | ||
| Just like they can get in trouble with alcohol. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| But the only stories that we tell about cocaine is the one where people get in trouble. | ||
| But I gotta tell you, Recently I watched Pete Davidson's movie. | ||
| What was that? | ||
| The King of Staten Island, I think it is? | ||
| It was the first time in a popular movie where a hero... | ||
| Pete used cocaine and he was still a hero. | ||
| So you might remember the scene where Steve Buscemi and I think Bill Burr, they were talking about... | ||
| I didn't see the movie. | ||
| Oh, it was a great scene. | ||
| I heard it was great. | ||
| A great scene where they were talking about Pete's dad and Pete's dad had used cocaine previously and Pete didn't know this. | ||
| But it was just a matter of fact. | ||
| The guy used cocaine. | ||
| He liked his cocaine. | ||
| But he was still a good guy. | ||
| He was a fireman. | ||
| He was a hero. | ||
| He was all of these things. | ||
| And they didn't besmirch him for using cocaine. | ||
| It's one of the few times that you see in popular culture that somebody uses something like cocaine. | ||
| And they're not besmirched. | ||
| They don't go down this path of becoming an addict and losing all of their possessions because of the drug. | ||
| And so I thought, like, they're doing something here that's different. | ||
| And that was a great scene. | ||
| Yeah, most of the stereotypes about cocaine in Hollywood are people using people, seedy people, people that... | ||
| Have no compassion for each other. | ||
| Ruthlessly ambitious people. | ||
| Doing coke and just all full of themselves and high on themselves. | ||
| I'm going to take over this fucking town. | ||
| That's what you hear and see. | ||
| Yeah, I hope that changes, man. | ||
| I know. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, I mean, I would try it with you. | ||
| I would try it. | ||
| Especially listening to you and knowing you probably get the real shit. | ||
| I avoid things that make me confident. | ||
| I'm not interested in that. | ||
| I'm confident enough. | ||
| I'm plenty confident. | ||
| I like things that scare me. | ||
| That's why I like marijuana so much. | ||
| I do. | ||
| People think I'm kidding. | ||
| I'm not. | ||
| I like the paranoia. | ||
| I like freaking out because I always come out of it to the other end with some sort of a lesson. | ||
| Because I think sometimes we can shield ourselves from things that we're really worried about. | ||
| Or shield ourselves from concerns that we have. | ||
| Or even from ruthlessly introspective thoughts that come with high doses of marijuana. | ||
| And that's the thing that freaks a lot of people out. | ||
| I find them very beneficial. | ||
| Some of the best moments I've had personally. | ||
| Or after some of the wildest trips where I was like, boy, this is rough. | ||
| But at the end, when it's over, I come out feeling so much better. | ||
| I feel you. | ||
| I mean, that's great. | ||
| I mean, because, you know, that's useful. | ||
| You feel like you're a better person. | ||
| That's cool. | ||
| But sometimes you just want to be euphoric and just enjoy your significant other. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| I mean, you know what I'm saying? | ||
| And so cocaine or some other drug might be useful for that. | ||
| And so it's not like you have to have only that experience that frightens you and you become a better person at the end of it. | ||
| I'm all for that. | ||
| That's fine. | ||
| You got that. | ||
| But I would just say broaden your repertoire. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| The problem is, if it was legal, it'd be great. | ||
| Like, you could get pure cocaine, and you knew what you were getting. | ||
| But if you're getting cocaine in Austin, Texas, you're probably getting it from some sketchy dude who is also selling a bunch of other shit. | ||
| I mean, I'm imagining. | ||
| I've never tried to buy it. | ||
| Yeah, but you know, two things here. | ||
| We got the technology to put on the streets where people can just submit small samples of their drug, 10 milligrams, which is nothing. | ||
| And then they get a readout of the chemical composition of their drug. | ||
| We have that technology if the public would put pressure on their officials to make sure that it's available to people where they can submit their drugs, small samples of their drugs, free and anonymously. | ||
| And then they get this readout. | ||
| The problem is it's so taboo. | ||
| Like, if you even admit that you do cocaine, people are like, look at this guy. | ||
| Ready to ruin his fucking life. | ||
| Barely hanging on over there, Carl. | ||
| Look at you. | ||
| Doing cocaine. | ||
| This is why, in the book, I admit my heroin use, my cocaine use, all of my drug use, so... | ||
| I'm trying to change that image because I have met people all around the world, some politicians and so forth, and got high with these people. | ||
| Of course, I won't say who they are, but the vast majority of people who use these drugs are people who are responsible for Take care of their families. | ||
| They care about their communities. | ||
| They do all this sort of stuff. | ||
| But Hollywood and the media and the mythology is so powerful in showing only this one image. | ||
| And I'm trying to really disrupt that because it's so harmful to so many people. | ||
| It is. | ||
| And, you know, I've had these conversations. | ||
| I've never done heroin. | ||
| But I did. | ||
| One time when I got my knee reconstructed, they gave me this morphine drip. | ||
| And you had a button. | ||
| You could press that button. | ||
| Oh, my God. | ||
| I kept hammering that button. | ||
| And I was in heaven. | ||
| My knee was fucked up. | ||
| And it was on this motion machine that's like constantly extending and contracting my knee. | ||
| Because it was post-surgery and I had my ACL reconstructed and they want you to move it a little bit. | ||
| So I'm sitting there on this bed with this machine that's going... | ||
| And I'm just going bang, bang, bang, bang. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Woo! | |
| So you've done heroin. | ||
| Yeah, yes. | ||
| It was amazing. | ||
| Because, you know, like this chemical structure I showed you, like morphine, with heroin, all you do with morphine is just add to acid groups. | ||
| The acid groups don't have any pharmacological effect, really. | ||
| And then that's heroin. | ||
| So morphine is heroin. | ||
| Morphine is heroin. | ||
| The bear aspirin company gave us heroin first. | ||
| Really? | ||
| So they marketed as a cough suppressant. | ||
| That's why they had to add these sort of these acetyl groups. | ||
| Now they have this new product, but really it's not a new product. | ||
| It's morphine. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| So what about codeine? | ||
| Codeine, it's also an opioid. | ||
| So the opioid poppy contains three drugs mainly. | ||
| Opium, codeine, and morphine. | ||
| They're all in that poppy, and they're all essentially the same drug. | ||
| But codeine is a lot less potent than morphine, meaning that you need to have more of it to have the effect. | ||
| Is codeine what was in NyQuil, the old NyQuil? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, I don't recall codeine being in NyQuil. | |
| There's some very potent something or another that's in old NyQuil that... | ||
| Not in our lifetime, at least. | ||
| No? | ||
| No. | ||
| What do you think it is that was in there? | ||
| Probably something like promethazine. | ||
| Do you know? | ||
| That's an antihistamine. | ||
| It's one of the older ones. | ||
| You know, the purple drink, they call it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And so that's currently in the codeine cough syrup. | ||
| It's codeine, promethazine, and I think acetaminophen, which is Tylenol. | ||
| And so it probably was promethazine because it'll put you to sleep. | ||
| It made me feel so relaxed. | ||
| I remember I had a cold. | ||
| This had to be the 90s. | ||
| Because I usually don't take anything. | ||
| I don't take aspirin. | ||
| I don't take Tylenol. | ||
| I rarely take nonsteroidal anti-inflammatories. | ||
| Why? | ||
| Non-steroidal anti-inflammatories are bad for your gut. | ||
| So I don't take those. | ||
| I generally look at pain like it's an opportunity to just relax and just accept the sensation of pain and not want to just dull everything. | ||
| Obviously it was different when I had surgery. | ||
| That was also 92, something like that, 93. But I was sick, and so I took some NyQuil. | ||
| And I remember just like my bed was just like giving me a hug. | ||
| Like I remember like, God, this stuff feels so good. | ||
| I think you just feel so good to be on the NyQuil. | ||
| I think you have an antihistamine. | ||
| That's all it is? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But antihistamines, they're no jokes. | ||
| I mean, you know, like when we think of the opioid crisis? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mm-hmm. | |
| I think a lot of people are dying because of antihistamines, too. | ||
| That's one of the main things that's going on. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Antihistamines, particularly the older ones, they knock you out. | ||
| So you know the antipsychotic medications, things like Thorazine or Halodon. | ||
| I don't know if you heard of those. | ||
| But antihistamines, antipsychotic medications, were made originally from a modified antihistamine structure. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah, so antihistamines are no joke. | ||
| See, I thought of antihistamines as something that just stops you from sneezing and makes your nose stop running. | ||
| Yeah, so too will antipsychotic medication. | ||
| And it'll stop you from vomiting as well. | ||
| It does that too. | ||
| See, the term antipsychotic is immediately, oh my god, you're taking antipsychotic medication. | ||
| You must be psychotic. | ||
| There's a problem, right? | ||
| There's an association problem. | ||
| Yeah, I know. | ||
| It's kind of a misnomer to call these things antipsychotics, antidepressants, because they're not really that sort of thing. | ||
| That's just what the pharmaceutical companies have labeled them. | ||
| Yeah, and that has allowed them to really get over it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Portland is in the middle of an interesting experiment, right? | ||
| Portland has essentially decriminalized everything. | ||
| Basically, they've decided to treat people like grown-ups and say, we're not going to arrest you for anything. | ||
| And I'm very curious to see where that goes, because we know what happened in Portugal. | ||
| Portugal did that, and they had a drastic decrease in crimes, drastic decrease in addictions, and it really opened up a lot of people's eyes. | ||
| They were like, oh, Jesus Christ, maybe we're doing this the wrong way. | ||
| And demonizing these substances, and also infantilizing people. | ||
| That's the big one, is another grown adult telling you that you can't do something, that you can't handle it, you shouldn't be able to, but also making this distinction just with drugs, but not with Other things that are legal, like bull riding or BMX riding or MMA fighting or a lot of other dangerous things that people enjoy doing, including drinking. | ||
| The problem is our perception. | ||
| We have this ingrained perception of what's acceptable and what's not acceptable, and you will see people at a bar with a cigarette in one hand and a drink in the other say, I don't do drugs. | ||
| I mean, we have this really Looney Tunes version of what drugs are and what a person should and should not be doing with their life. | ||
| And if you see someone who's out there, hey, I'm going to go do coke. | ||
| You want to do coke? | ||
| Like, Mike is losing his mind. | ||
| I experienced that with pot. | ||
| The people will go, you smoke pot? | ||
| I thought you got your shit together and you're into being successful. | ||
| I'm like, yeah, I do. | ||
| They're not related. | ||
| Well, Joe, that's why I'm glad you got me here, man, so we can try to change this shit. | ||
| Let's try to change this shit. | ||
| When we think about Portugal, you said Portugal, they decriminalized about 20 years ago, right? | ||
| Everything. | ||
| But we don't talk about Spain. | ||
| Spain never banned drugs, right? | ||
| And so Spain has always had a decriminalization policy. | ||
| And there are other countries like Colombia has decriminalization. | ||
| A number of countries that people just don't know. | ||
| Portugal was just really good at marketing. | ||
| And so the world knows about Portugal. | ||
| But really... | ||
| It's time to move on. | ||
| Portugal should legally regulate everything. | ||
| It should be legal in Portugal and around the world it should be legal. | ||
| Because even with decriminalization, the thing that I worry about with drugs more than anything... | ||
| Is the contaminants that people can put in the drugs, right? | ||
| They're far more dangerous, or they can potentially be more dangerous than the drugs themselves. | ||
| And decriminalization does nothing for that. | ||
| But if you regulate it, like we have done with alcohol, what we're doing with cannabis now in 15 states or so, you now at least have some quality control. | ||
| And that's where the problems come. | ||
| When you have tainted substances. | ||
| If we think about prohibition, the period between 1920 and 1933 in this country, we had a number of people dying and being maimed from tainted alcohol. | ||
| We legalized alcohol in 1933. At the end of 1933, those problems went away. | ||
| The quality control issues, they all went away. | ||
| And so that's where I'm hoping society goes. | ||
| Legally regulate these other things so we have this quality control. | ||
| Right, so you can buy actual substances and not these stepped-on versions of them, like whether it's heroin or whether it's cocaine. | ||
| The problem is perception, right? | ||
| It's that so many people do have these deeply ingrained societal perceptions of what these drugs are and what it means to do those drugs. | ||
| I know, man, but... | ||
| We need more dudes like you wearing meth shirts. | ||
| Yeah, well... | ||
| When I wear them, people don't know what it is. | ||
| Well, people don't know that this is a dimethyltryptamine molecule either. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| That's what that is. | ||
| I didn't even notice it, actually. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, I have to wear these shirts. | ||
| So, like, when I go to the airports, like, when I'm in places outside of the United States, people fuck with you because you're a dread and you're traveling and so forth. | ||
| You know, they want you to go to customs and so forth. | ||
| So I wear these shirts. | ||
| And I tell people, you know, like I'm a doctor, and they say, oh, is that a chemical structure? | ||
| And then I lie. | ||
| And so you say, yeah, this is in your brain or your body. | ||
| And then I start explaining it in great detail. | ||
| And then they just be like, all right, just get the fuck out of here. | ||
| So that's why I wear these shirts. | ||
| That's interesting. | ||
| You wear these shirts to stop people from fucking with you and it's actually meth. | ||
| Or something else. | ||
| It could be MDMA or something else. | ||
| Perception. | ||
| We have changed perception in our society before. | ||
| We certainly have with cannabis. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| And so I think we can do it with heroin. | ||
| But we need people to know the facts and the information. | ||
| And that's why I wrote the new book. | ||
| I know many people that have had problems with opiates, particularly pills. | ||
| Why is it that that seems to be so addictive? | ||
| Why are these pills so addictive? | ||
| You've got to give me a little more than that, Joe, because I know far more people who haven't had problems with these pills, because you know they're a lot like you. | ||
| You had the pump. | ||
| That's beyond the pill. | ||
| You had the morphine. | ||
| They don't gave me that for a day though. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| But the thing about it, you weren't going out there tricking to get some more of the pump, right? | ||
| I didn't have enough time to get addicted to it. | ||
| But they did give me pills that I hated. | ||
| I do not remember what it was. | ||
| I believe it was Vicodins or Percocets. | ||
| I don't remember which one, but I remember taking it. | ||
| And whatever it was, for me, the reaction was I felt so stupid. | ||
| They made me feel so dumb. | ||
| My mind was so dull that I just got rid of them. | ||
| And I sold it to some dude who was at the pool hall. | ||
| He goes, you got those? | ||
| I'll buy those off you. | ||
| And I gave them to him. | ||
| I'm like, take them. | ||
| Get these fucking things away from me. | ||
| Yeah, but you know, there are people who have problems. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Well, I have a good buddy of mine who got his nose broken. | ||
| Got his nose operated on after his nose was broken. | ||
| The doctor gave him pills. | ||
| Four months later, he's still taking the pills. | ||
| And finally, his friend said, Hey, man, you got to stop taking those fucking pills. | ||
| And they took him away from him. | ||
| And then he went through withdrawal. | ||
| And he was okay after that. | ||
| But he found himself in the clutch. | ||
| So if he went through withdrawal, right? | ||
| Mm-hmm. | ||
| Somebody was being irresponsible with his sort of prescribing, the doses that they prescribed. | ||
| You know, because in the new book, I describe just a little bit. | ||
| I describe putting myself through withdrawal intentionally, heroin withdrawal and opioid withdrawal. | ||
| Just so I could show people that this is not life-threatening. | ||
| And it was not pleasant, but it wasn't life-threatening. | ||
| What was it like? | ||
| It was like... | ||
| You've talked about it before. | ||
| You said it was like the flu. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| That's what I said. | ||
| But it was... | ||
| The thing that I wasn't expecting was I had this abdominal pain that I had never experienced before. | ||
| Like just the touch of my skin, it just radiated through my body. | ||
| It lasted for about 12 hours really. | ||
| But my dependence was not that deep. | ||
| It was only like several weeks. | ||
| I did this for like several weeks. | ||
| It wasn't And I was over it within 24 hours. | ||
| And it was just to make a point, really. | ||
| So this friend of yours, if he was going through withdrawal, the people who were prescribing his medications weren't watching him, right? | ||
| And the doses that they were giving him were probably excessive. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| But they weren't being responsible. | ||
| And that shouldn't have happened, right? | ||
| And if that's the problem that he had, he was going through withdrawal, no problem. | ||
| Just taper him off, and so he'll be fine. | ||
| He'll get back to his life without having these disruptions to have to go out and try and get something else so he's not experiencing withdrawal. | ||
| It's not a big deal to deal with. | ||
| Can I ask you this? | ||
| How do you taper off to avoid withdrawals? | ||
| What does one do? | ||
| Well, you just slowly decrease the dose over time. | ||
| And you can avoid withdrawals entirely? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So if you're taking antidepressants and then you're going to come off of them, your physician will taper you off because antidepressant medications, you will experience withdrawal if you abruptly discontinue them. | ||
| And so people know this. | ||
| Withdrawal is not a big deal to deal with. | ||
| Now, if he was having other problems, like he just wanted to seek opioids, then maybe he liked the effects. | ||
| And if he was still meeting all of his obligations and they weren't disruptive, what's wrong with that? | ||
| I think there's a lot of people out there that are taking it most of the time. | ||
| I mean, that's the wrong way to describe it. | ||
| I think there's a lot of people that are taking opiates on a regular basis and are just doing normal shit in life. | ||
| And many people don't even know. | ||
| I think that's an honest statement? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, I've been one of those people at periods in my life when I can get some good opioids. | ||
| Particularly like some good Afghanistan heroin. | ||
| And how do you take it? | ||
| Snort it. | ||
| Is that the way to go? | ||
| For me, because I'm vain. | ||
| I don't want to have track marks or anything. | ||
| And the effects of taking a drug intranasally, it hits you rapidly enough and I'm good. | ||
| I don't need to shoot anything. | ||
| The Afghan heroine connection is so bizarre. | ||
| You know, we've talked about this on the podcast before. | ||
| There's a really weird video from the early days of the Afghan war where Geraldo Rivera is on Fox News and he's showing US soldiers guarding poppy fields. | ||
| And that they're guarding the poppy fields so that the poppy growers will help them out and rat out the Taliban. | ||
| And we're watching this going, what the fuck are you talking about? | ||
| The United States Army is guarding poppy fields? | ||
| Where is that heroin going? | ||
| Who's selling it? | ||
| How's it getting out of there? | ||
| How's it getting to America? | ||
| Because it is getting to America. | ||
| And if the soldiers are guarding it, what else are they doing? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So much of our heroin in the United States comes from South America now. | ||
| It used to come from Afghanistan, but most of it comes from South America. | ||
| But... | ||
| Again, your major point is, why are we guarding opium poppy fields, right? | ||
| Because it's a lucrative market. | ||
| And, well, we're finally using our military for something worthwhile. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, so... | |
| You know, but to think about opioids seriously, you know, because the country thinks that we're in an opioid crisis and all of this nonsense that's going on. | ||
| I get these emails from parents. | ||
| I don't know if you know ASAPs, the ASAP group, the ASAP Mob folks, ASAP Rocky. | ||
| Do you know that group? | ||
| I don't know them personally, but I know who they are. | ||
| Yeah, so the founder of the group, ASAP Yams, Steven Rodriguez is his name, he died. | ||
| And his death was attributed to an opioid overdose. | ||
| I met his mom as a result of this and I looked at his toxicology and we had great conversations. | ||
| I consider her a friend now. | ||
| And so I take this seriously about the opioids. | ||
| When I look at how and why he died, he most likely died from ignorance. | ||
| That is, he didn't realize that if you mix something like oxycodone, that's what he had, oxycodone. | ||
| He had promethazine, which is an antihistamine. | ||
| Alcohol, benzodiazepine, a number of things in his system. | ||
| And those things combine to increase the likelihood of respiratory depression. | ||
| That's what I think. | ||
| Now, if he was simply seeking an opioid high, He would have been fine if he would only have taken the oxycodone. | ||
| But people don't realize that they shouldn't mix the opioid with an antihistamine, with alcohol, with a benzodiazepine, because that increases the likelihood of you having respiratory depression. | ||
| So many of these deaths are Caused by this type of ignorance. | ||
| And in other cases, we don't know why people are dying. | ||
| Like, for example, two, three weeks ago, I get an email from another woman who lost her son. | ||
| And what they told her was that the son died from an opioid, cocaine-related death. | ||
| She sent me to toxicology. | ||
| I looked at the levels of the opioid in his system. | ||
| This particular guy had fentanyl in his system and he had cocaine in his system. | ||
| Fentanyl is an opioid which is far more potent than heroin. | ||
| And we worry about that when people take fentanyl and thinking that it's heroin because they may take too much and die. | ||
| And cocaine was in his system. | ||
| But both of these drugs, the levels that were in his system For example, the cocaine was five times lower than the cocaine levels that we typically see in the lab when we're giving the drug and people are having a good time. | ||
| And the fentanyl level in his system was also really low. | ||
| So this poor guy What do you think he died? | ||
| Some substance that they didn't test for, maybe, or something else? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Is it possible that it was just an extreme reaction to the fentanyl and cocaine? | ||
| This particular kid, I'm calling him a kid, but he's 30-some years old. | ||
| He had a history of using these drugs. | ||
| So he would have definitely had tolerance to both opioids and cocaine. | ||
| So I don't think it was some strange reaction because these were his drugs of choice. | ||
| But my point is, is that people who are doing death investigations Medical examiners and coroners are allowed to get away with saying that someone died from an opioid-related death simply because the drug is in the system. | ||
| But when you start to really look at these levels, it's like, this wouldn't have killed the person. | ||
| And then they don't have to do their job anymore. | ||
| And I asked her about an autopsy. | ||
| And she said they didn't do one. | ||
| And so that really worries me. | ||
| Now, I understand that people can get in trouble with tainted drugs like heroin tainted with fentanyl. | ||
| That's a concern. | ||
| We have to deal with that. | ||
| But I'm also concerned that we have bought into this story about the opioid crises, and we are letting people off the hook in terms of informing the public about what's really going on. | ||
| Now, when you say that you think it's nonsense, like the opioid crisis is nonsense, I mean, there's a lot of people out there that are addicted to opioids. | ||
| Do you deny that? | ||
| No, I don't deny that. | ||
| A lot of people that seek refuge in pills, right? | ||
| They're just trying to avoid... | ||
| So let's just make sure we have our language. | ||
| So when we say addicted, we're talking about they meet criteria for this sort of substance use disorder that we've defined in medicine, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Okay, so the vast majority of people who use these drugs are not addicted. | ||
| Okay, but a lot of people who use these drugs are addicted. | ||
| Some. | ||
| A small percentage are addicted. | ||
| This is true. | ||
| Do you think that it's a side effect of... | ||
| Life problems, like they're avoiding their life in some sort of seeking, trying to seek pleasure in these things. | ||
| And so they're blaming the opioids on this sort of behavior pattern. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| So let's think about the towns where we see these that's being ravaged by the opioid crisis. | ||
| West Virginia, Ohio, some parts of Michigan. | ||
| All of these places, what do they call them, Rust Belt, places where we had these factories, we had gainful employment, all of these people were doing fairly well. | ||
| Factories are all gone. | ||
| These people had been middle class. | ||
| They're no longer middle class and now they're being offered bullshit jobs with bullshit salaries. | ||
| They can't take care of their families. | ||
| And now they use opioids too, right? | ||
| I mean... | ||
| use. | ||
| We won't talk about all the rest of these other problems that they have, but opioids are an easy sort of scapegoat. | ||
| And politicians get currency from this because they say we're going to pump money into the opioid crises. | ||
| We're going to open up treatment centers. | ||
| It's like, the fuck? | ||
| You don't need treatment centers. | ||
| You need jobs. | ||
| You need people here to have gainful employment. | ||
| That's what you need. | ||
| I mean, and so as long as you're not talking about employing these people, as long as you're not talking about making sure that they're not getting tainted drugs... | ||
| You're going to have these problems. | ||
| So it's mostly people that have problems with their life and then they seek refuge in these drugs. | ||
| But it's not really an opioid crisis. | ||
| It's more of a life crisis. | ||
| I would bet big money that they're using more alcohol than they are using opioids because alcohol is just more accessible. | ||
| But the opioid thing is just more sexy for the politician to focus on. | ||
| And the politician can come in and be the hero because they got a certain amount of money allocated for this region because of the opioid crisis. | ||
| Opioids are being scapegoated here. | ||
| And this is not to say people aren't having real problems, because I know they are. | ||
| I mean, I've been out to the Rust Belt in these places, and I get these phone calls from these parents. | ||
| And so I know this is a real thing. | ||
| What do you tell them? | ||
| Like, if a parent calls you up and says that they have a kid that's addicted to opioids, what should I do? | ||
| Yeah, I have gotten a number of parents who have done that sort of thing. | ||
| One woman has lost like three girls as a result of this kind of thing. | ||
| The thing is, I try to make sure that they are not judgmental and that they make sure that they can get their chow back. | ||
| A safe supply of drug first. | ||
| That's number one. | ||
| Because the real danger for me is when they start to get tainted drugs. | ||
| As you may know, I mean, they say that Prince has died from a fentanyl-related overdose. | ||
| He thought he had Percocet and he had fentanyl. | ||
| That's the real concern that I have at first. | ||
| So it's like, let's keep them alive first. | ||
| And then we can work on the stuff that is driving them to engage in maybe drug use that's disruptive to their sort of normal functioning. | ||
| Yeah, I think that was Tom Petty as well. | ||
| I think he died from the same situation. | ||
| A tainted drug situation? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| No way this should happen in a civilized society. | ||
| You go to a place like Spain, you go to Austria, you go to Colombia, you go to the Netherlands. | ||
| All of these places have these drug testing centers. | ||
| So you can take a small sample of your drug and they will give you a chemical printout of what you have. | ||
| And so you will know if your substance is tainted. | ||
| And we don't in this country. | ||
| Yeah, we have to change our attitudes about these drugs. | ||
| What do you think the best way, other than these kind of conversations and putting these conversations out in the public, what's the best way to get people to reconsider their preconceived notions? | ||
| Popular culture. | ||
| We think about comedians. | ||
| Let's think about comedians. | ||
| It's always a cheap joke. | ||
| You can say some stupid shit about crack. | ||
| People laugh. | ||
| They like it. | ||
| It's not true, but it keeps the narrative going. | ||
| That's one. | ||
| I watched the late night shows with Colbert, Seth Meyers. | ||
| I love what those guys do. | ||
| Colbert, during this COVID situation, always has a stiff drink with him now. | ||
| And then he's drinking his alcohol, then he's besmirching something like weed or something else. | ||
| It's like, come on, you're a smart guy, you know better than that. | ||
| But the same thing with Seth Meyers, they besmirch other drugs. | ||
| I mean, so you have to, they have to stop that. | ||
| They need to, because as long as they're doing that, it continues the narrative. | ||
| Our movies, When politicians say stupid shit about drugs, we have to check them. | ||
| When your family members say stupid shit about drugs and drug users, when you talk about a typical drug user, look at me. | ||
| I'm accomplished. | ||
| I do all of these things. | ||
| I'm productive, but I'm a drug user. | ||
| How often are you using drugs? | ||
| How often? | ||
| Probably every day I use something psychoactive. | ||
| Every day. | ||
| I mean, every day. | ||
| Not just like caffeine. | ||
| I don't do caffeine. | ||
| I don't do caffeine and I don't do alcohol. | ||
| That's hilarious. | ||
| No, I can't do those things. | ||
| I mean, it's like, if you're going to do a drug, do a drug. | ||
| Really. | ||
| You know, like a man. | ||
| That's how you said it. | ||
| Do a drug like a man. | ||
| Come on! | ||
| Have a fucking drink of whiskey. | ||
| Have some heroin. | ||
| Well, no. | ||
| I understand. | ||
| Check it out, man. | ||
| Like, alcohol. | ||
| As I get older, I can't do it. | ||
| It's not, you know, I have to listen to my body. | ||
| Heroin is a lot more gentle on my body than alcohol is. | ||
| Interesting. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, I just can't do it. | ||
| I can't do alcohol. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So for you to relax like a little sniff of heroin is a relaxing thing. | ||
| Oh, it's heaven. | ||
| I mean, I'm... | ||
| Chill. | ||
| It's great. | ||
| I mean, I can be forgiving and take the other person's perspective, understanding. | ||
| I want to be a better citizen, a better person. | ||
| That's so interesting because that is not how people think of heroin. | ||
| They think of heroin as someone... | ||
| Lying there with a rubber band strapped around their arm, like half out of it, needle poking out of their vein, life falling apart. | ||
| You don't think of someone becoming more compassionate, more interested in hearing someone's thoughts and ideas, putting yourself in their position. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| No, I know, man. | ||
| It's like the heroin user that we see in public culture. | ||
| It's some poor soul who has taken too much, typically intravenously, and is nodding or doing something. | ||
| If people are nodding when they're doing their opioid, that means they've taken too much. | ||
| And that means that they're wasting their high. | ||
| It's like, you want to be up for this. | ||
| Did I ever tell you a story about the pool hustler who used to do heroin? | ||
| No. | ||
| There was a guy named... | ||
| He had two different nicknames. | ||
| One of them was Buffalo Bill, because he had this crazy mustache. | ||
| The other one was Water Dog, and he was this dude in Connecticut. | ||
| And he was a top-flight professional pool player. | ||
| And he would gamble for big money, but he had to do heroin first. | ||
| So I used to play at this place called Executive Billiards in White Plains, New York. | ||
| And it was an unusual place at the time where there was a lot of action. | ||
| I mean, a lot of guys came there from all over the country to gamble because they knew they'd get games there because there was a lot of gamblers in that particular pool hall. | ||
| And it was open until like 5, 6 o'clock in the morning. | ||
| But the people who worked there all encouraged gambling. | ||
| My friend Guy, Guy Azariti, he's no longer with us, but he actually owned the place. | ||
| And so he loved the whole gambling aspect of it. | ||
| Well, this guy would go to the bathroom, he would shoot up, and he would come out, and he would sit on a stool like this. | ||
| Just sit, like, motionless. | ||
| Like, his lids would be heavy, and his arms would be like T-Rex, just, like, hanging there. | ||
| And he would sit there for, like, 20, 30 minutes, and then he would get out of it, and then he wouldn't miss anything. | ||
| It was crazy. | ||
| It was crazy. | ||
| Because he would play this guy George the Greek. | ||
| And George the Greek was this real gruff New York character. | ||
| Talked like this all the time. | ||
| This motherfucker can't miss. | ||
| He gets his shit and he can't fucking miss. | ||
| He would be so angry. | ||
| Because you couldn't rattle him. | ||
| You couldn't get... | ||
| Like... | ||
| There's a misconception of the term pool shark. | ||
| They think it's a guy who comes in and is really good at pool. | ||
| Sharking someone means to distract them while they're playing. | ||
| That's what sharking means. | ||
| Like if a guy is going to make a shot and you move and you try to do something to take his eye out. | ||
| Right on, right on. | ||
| You could do everything to him. | ||
| You could yell while he was playing. | ||
| He didn't see it. | ||
| He was gone. | ||
| He would have like gerbil eyes and just fucking shoot those balls right into the heart of the pocket. | ||
| And they were gambling for a lot of money. | ||
| And he was really frustrated. | ||
| But I'll never forget that. | ||
| This guy would do heroin and just couldn't fucking miss. | ||
| And their thought was that he had burned his nerves off. | ||
| That somehow or another, when he would do the heroin, he had no more nerves. | ||
| He had no anxiety, no nothing. | ||
| They weren't heroin users. | ||
| So they had all these ideas. | ||
| I don't know what about it was. | ||
| Clearly, he had an addiction. | ||
| But clearly, he was also a top-of-the-food-chain pool player. | ||
| It was very weird to see that these guys would come up with all these excuses why this guy could do heroin and beat everybody. | ||
| Well, yeah, you know, I guess I have a personal story that's kind of close, I guess, as close as I can get. | ||
| One of the things that I love to do is the day after doing heroin. | ||
| And then doing an interview or something, or doing something, a talk. | ||
| I am at my best the day after. | ||
| Because all of those worries are gone. | ||
| And you are just focused on what you have to do. | ||
| At least I am. | ||
| I'm just focused on what I have to do. | ||
| And the world is alright with me. | ||
| All this minor petty bullshit not bothering me, you know? | ||
| So would you do it, like say if you had some very important conversation on television or something like that, would you do heroin the day before purposely? | ||
| Oh, I have done it. | ||
| And I do, you know, when I did like a TED Talk, I do these kind of things. | ||
| I mark them by like a drug. | ||
| Like my TED Talk was on methamphetamine. | ||
| And then, you know, or some interview the day before I did heroin or something. | ||
| Just so I know in my head, and it just goes against all of these sort of stereotypes. | ||
| And it's what I do to feel better and to be a better person. | ||
| That's an interesting thing that people would never believe, right? | ||
| That you do heroin and these drugs to be a better person. | ||
| That flies in the face of conventional thinking. | ||
| I mean, as a comedian, I think about... | ||
| Getting on that stage, and then you have to have... | ||
| Your job is to make people laugh, and it's a hard thing. | ||
| All of us, we try to be funny in our life, and we're not funny, right? | ||
| And in our hands, it's not funny. | ||
| I think about all the pressure that, like, the top comedians have when they get on that stage. | ||
| And then you're expected to do it again and again in this internet age, too, with new material. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mm-hmm. | |
| How do you do that? | ||
| I'm thinking about like John Mulaney. | ||
| His recent troubles. | ||
| Guy hosted Saturday Night Live twice in the past year. | ||
| I mean, that's a big fucking honor. | ||
| How to show all this pressure. | ||
| You need something in order to do these kind of things and also to feel better and be upbeat and be excited to see these audiences. | ||
| When you are exhausted from putting this together. | ||
| I mean, you are just exhausted. | ||
| It's a hard thing. | ||
| And we don't have this conversation in society. | ||
| What we do, the conversation we can have in our society is, oh, yeah, that comic, he was out of control and drugs did that to him. | ||
| That's the only conversation we're allowed to have. | ||
| Like John Mulaney. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| The only thing we're allowed to do is have that conversation. | ||
| And it's like, wait, wait, hold up. | ||
| This guy accomplished all of this shit. | ||
| And I don't know this guy personally, and I apologize. | ||
| I don't mean to say anything negative about him because I think he's really funny. | ||
| But the point is that... | ||
| I know drugs were not his problem. | ||
| I don't know what else is going on in his life, but I know something's going on if he checked in. | ||
| But I know that this guy's accomplishments Are just inconsistent with somebody who is addicted to drugs. | ||
| That's just inconsistent. | ||
| I think, well, I don't know John well. | ||
| I've met him. | ||
| He's a very nice guy. | ||
| And I think, I agree with you, he's very funny. | ||
| Being a prominent national level comedian like he is, is stressful. | ||
| I can speak to that. | ||
| I do it. | ||
| It's stressful. | ||
| I think the discussion is that he sought out drugs because I think he had been clean before and then he started using again during the pandemic. | ||
| A lot of people were stressed out, believe it or not, about not being able to perform. | ||
| I understand. | ||
| Me too. | ||
| I get this. | ||
| Their identity is wrapped up in that. | ||
| But I agree with you that it's a psychological issue that's probably going on more than a cocaine issue. | ||
| And some people... | ||
| It's very difficult for them to adjust, right? | ||
| Like there's things taken away from them. | ||
| They feel like there's a hole in their life because they can't do stand-up. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| And then maybe they try to alleviate some pressure or alleviate some anxiety with drugs and they decide that they've gone too far and they're using it too much. | ||
| You think it's a psychological issue, though, more than a chemical substance issue? | ||
| Here's what I think, and this is pure conjecture. | ||
| Mm-hmm. | ||
| I think that maybe something happened in the poor guy's life. | ||
| And then somebody knew that he did cocaine. | ||
| And it was easy to scapegoat cocaine as opposed to what's really going on. | ||
| Right. | ||
| That's what I think happened. | ||
| You bust into a hotel room and John's naked with 15 hookers. | ||
| And you're like, I gotta stop doing cocaine. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| You know, the specifics of the story, I don't know what happened. | ||
| I'm just joking. | ||
| John, I hope you hear this. | ||
| Yeah, but I don't think it's cocaine. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| You know, I don't know. | ||
| I do know guys that, like my friend Jim Norton, he's been clean since he was 19. Let's think about that statement for a second. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Let's think about it because he's 53, I think? | ||
| Yeah, let's just think about that. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| He's been clean since he's 19. At 19, you're still a fucking chow. | ||
| Yeah, it's true. | ||
| And so it's like, what are you cleaning from? | ||
| Well, he was doing a lot of drugs. | ||
| At 19, I know, and he was probably doing a lot of other shit that he was fucking up. | ||
| I mean, whether it's from sex, driving a car, whatever it is, he was probably doing a lot of other shit that he was fucking up in. | ||
| And he's probably doing those things better now because he's grown up. | ||
| But yet we tell a story about him being clean at 19. That's some stupid shit that we say that. | ||
| What do you feel about alcoholics though? | ||
| Because there are people that just can't drink. | ||
| Or at least they say they can't drink. | ||
| If they drink, they just go off the deep end. | ||
| Yeah, I don't believe that. | ||
| I mean, that's just... | ||
| You know, people, if they feel like, I'm a better person, I don't drink, great. | ||
| That's great for you. | ||
| But to say, like, there's this general principle where people can't drink, that's not true. | ||
| That's just not... | ||
| There's no evidence for that. | ||
| No evidence at all. | ||
| So do you think that's just a common cultural narrative that there's people that can't drink? | ||
| It's a common cultural myth. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But that's okay if it's keeping you away from trouble in your mind. | ||
| That's fine. | ||
| That's your thing. | ||
| But do not act like that's a real thing. | ||
| So when a person is an alcoholic and they drink all the time, one thing that is true is that people, like alcohol is one of the interesting drugs in that it's commonly available and it's one of the rare ones. | ||
| Where getting off of it will kill you, right? | ||
| Like, if you are addicted to drugs, and they think that's what happened to Amy Winehouse, unfortunately. | ||
| Yes, yes. | ||
| Yeah, alcohol, if you just go cold turkey, eat your body. | ||
| Why is that? | ||
| What's the process? | ||
| Yeah, it's a dangerous thing, and we don't talk enough about this in society because people say, I'm gonna kick it, I'm gonna go cold turkey. | ||
| Don't go cold turkey with alcohol, please. | ||
| Because alcohol, what happens is that if you've been drinking for a long time in your life, it suppresses neural activity. | ||
| So it's really good at increasing this neurotransmitter called GABA, and GABA inhibits other Neurotransmitters. | ||
| And so your brain, it slows down the activity of these neurons, right? | ||
| So it suppresses these other, these neurons in the brain. | ||
| And now, if you abruptly discontinue alcohol use... | ||
| Now the neurons fire wildly. | ||
| And so what happens is that when the neurons fire wildly, you have a seizure. | ||
| And the seizure is the thing that kills you. | ||
| Interesting. | ||
| Yeah, so that's why you want to tell people, go see a physician and slowly titrate, take something like a benzodiazepine, and then it will slowly bring the neurons back around. | ||
| Interesting. | ||
| So did they have to wean off of it? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| So slowly. | ||
| Yeah, but you won't be weaning off of alcohol. | ||
| Instead, you'll be weaning off of a benzodiazepine, which has a similar effect of alcohol, at least on these neurons. | ||
| So you would stop alcohol, cold turkey, but go on the benzodiazepine and then slowly work your way off. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| My friend Jordan Peterson had a problem with benzodiazepine. | ||
| I don't know if you've heard that. | ||
| I have. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What did you think of that? | ||
| I understand why he would have a problem because he blew up, you know, just all of a sudden. | ||
| And then he had all of these people who hated him and loved him. | ||
| So I understand people having problems. | ||
| Psychologically. | ||
| Yeah, and I understand using benzos because benzos help some people to relax. | ||
| There are better drugs for that. | ||
| But I understand. | ||
| I get that. | ||
| So, yeah, I get it. | ||
| What are you asking? | ||
| He had a really hard time getting off of them and had some serious withdrawal problems getting off of benzodiazepines. | ||
| His body didn't react very well. | ||
| I don't want to speak on it because all I know is what I've read. | ||
| I haven't even talked to him personally about it. | ||
| Why is he getting off of them? | ||
| Why is he trying to get off of them? | ||
| That's the question that I want to know. | ||
| Do you not want to take them anymore? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I'm assuming there was some sort of a negative reaction. | ||
| Or maybe he decided he needed to be sober. | ||
| Yeah, this is the thing. | ||
| We have to ask that first question. | ||
| It's like, wait, you enjoy this and you're good, you're working and you're taking care of your family, so why do you want to stop? | ||
| What's going on? | ||
| That's the question. | ||
| If people are putting pressure on you, now that's a... | ||
| Sort of morality issue, maybe? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Could be. | ||
| We have to ask that question. | ||
| I mean, Jordan seemed to be productive in all the rest of those things. | ||
| He seemed to be doing what society would have people do. | ||
| Being prolific and working a lot. | ||
| What do benzos do? | ||
| Benzos, just think of them like alcohol. | ||
| A longer lasting alcohol. | ||
| Really? | ||
|
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Yeah. | |
| So it suppresses your anxiety? | ||
|
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Yeah. | |
| That's what they treat. | ||
| Relaxes you? | ||
| They use to treat anxiety. | ||
| That's their primary use. | ||
| And would it also act as a social lubricant the same way? | ||
| Oh, absolutely. | ||
| Yeah? | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| Is there withdrawal symptoms associated with getting off of benzos? | ||
|
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Yes. | |
| So just like alcohol, just think of benzos and the older barbiturates. | ||
| Remember the barbiturates? | ||
| And alcohol, you think of those as the same class of drugs. | ||
| And all three of those sort of classes, you can't abruptly discontinue because you might run the risk of killing yourself. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| That doesn't sound good. | ||
| That sounds like a reason to not do benzos, just to avoid killing yourself. | ||
| Well, you know, there are just better drugs, too, for those kind of things. | ||
| Like opioids, I'm telling you. | ||
| If people had a safe supply, not like Percocets or Vicodin, you know, you and I have talked about this in the past, about Percocets and Vicodin. | ||
| The concern that I have with them is that they have Tylenol or acetaminophen in them. | ||
| Large doses of acetaminophen are in Percocet and just a small amount of opioid. | ||
| The acetaminophen is the thing that's going to really harm you in that case. | ||
| So we need to take the acetaminophen out of that. | ||
| So if you're going to do an opioid, don't do that formulation. | ||
| Just do the opioid. | ||
| So ideally, if the world was a perfect place, you'd be able to get pure heroin. | ||
| Yeah, you will be able to get heroin, pure heroin, or even morphine. | ||
| They're essentially the same. | ||
| And you can do your thing. | ||
| You understand, just like with alcohol, These drugs are capable of producing dependence such that you might go through a withdrawal. | ||
| If you're taking large doses every day for several months, that may not be a good thing. | ||
| We have alcohol in this society, and most people don't do alcohol. | ||
| A large amount of alcohol every day. | ||
| So you would do an opioid in a similar way. | ||
| And when you say this, like, the dependence, what is the physical dependence? | ||
| Like, what is happening to someone when they get dependent upon opioids? | ||
| Like, what's the mechanism in the body? | ||
| Yeah, so one of the things that happens... | ||
| Opioids do a lot. | ||
| One of the things that they do, just to take one function, is that they slow down the motility of the gut. | ||
| So you don't pass things as quickly. | ||
| You get constipated, right? | ||
| They hear about that with pills. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So with heroin and all of these opioids, you get constipated because it slows down the motility. | ||
| So what the body does is try to counteract what's going on, because you have these compensatory mechanisms, these mechanisms that try to maintain homostasis. | ||
| Now, those forces are activated. | ||
| And when you've been taking these drugs for a long period of time, those forces are ramped up. | ||
| And now you just abruptly discontinue the use of these drugs. | ||
| Those forces are still ramped up. | ||
| And now the opioid is not there. | ||
| So you're going to get like this over effect, this super effect. | ||
| So you'll get this tremendous amount of diarrhea as a result because those forces are ramped up to get your stuff moving. | ||
| That's never a good statement. | ||
| We never hear tremendous amount of diarrhea. | ||
| Yeah, so that's what happens. | ||
| And that's one of the things that can happen, and that's not good. | ||
| So it's basically your body's compensation for the opioids, and that opioids are removed, so the compensation exists, but there's nothing to battle against. | ||
| That's right, so you get just overcompensation. | ||
| And so really you have to slowly wean it so your body comes to recognize that it doesn't need to compensate as much. | ||
| And then over time, you can sort of ease off, like step off the skateboard. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| And if people do that, shouldn't have any problems. | ||
| And this is something that you would... | ||
| I would think that if it was legal and we had legitimate professional places where a person could get these things, where people had an understanding of it, because most people... | ||
| Most people don't necessarily have a good understanding of the physical response to the body, to these opiates. | ||
| But if you had a place where you could get it from and they could explain it to you, this is why you have to be careful getting off of this. | ||
| This is what's going on in your body and this is how you avoid. | ||
| This is how you mitigate these real problems that can be associated with just stopping cold turkey. | ||
| Yeah, we should do this for all drugs. | ||
| Just in our regular... | ||
| General drug education. | ||
| But in our zeal to vilify these drugs, we only talk about the negative effects of it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| No, that's all you ever hear. | ||
| Especially when you're talking about heroin, meth, these kind of drugs. | ||
| You don't ever hear a person like you, educated, intelligent, good-looking guy, saying nice things. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, thank you for all of that, but... | ||
| You don't hear that though, right? | ||
| You don't? | ||
| No, absolutely, man. | ||
| It's really troubling because, you know, I have kids. | ||
| My kids, my youngest, just turned 20. And so my kids are in this sort of drug-using potential stage at this age, right? | ||
|
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Yeah. | |
| And so I was faced a long time ago with this issue. | ||
| My kids will be in a drug using age at some point. | ||
| So what do I want them to know? | ||
| And so that really drives me to be like, all right. | ||
| Let's get all this shit on the table. | ||
| Because if you're faced with this and you use, you will know how to stay safe and you'll know how to keep your friends safe. | ||
| So it's like, no moralism here. | ||
| All I care about is that you're a good person and that you're safe. | ||
| That's all I care about. | ||
| Well, that's a very unique environment, right? | ||
| You don't have the normal scare tactics or the normal fear that parents have of the kids getting hooked on drugs. | ||
| That's what all you hear. | ||
| Hooked. | ||
| And losing their lives. | ||
| Their lives fall apart because they got hooked on drugs. | ||
| Yeah, I'd see that you raise a really good point here, man. | ||
| I'm glad you brings this point because when we talk about why we have this narrative about drugs, because there are a number of constituencies who are benefiting from this narrative. | ||
| And parents are a constituency that are benefiting from this narrative. | ||
| Because if you just say, you don't do drugs, that's one less thing that the parents have to actually teach about to their children. | ||
| So they're in on this too. | ||
| I think they believe it though, for the most part. | ||
| Most of the parents that are saying, don't do drugs, you get hooked on drugs, they believe and they're worried. | ||
| Wait, wait. | ||
| Don't get me wrong. | ||
| Just because you believe it doesn't mean that you're not in on it and you're not benefiting from it. | ||
| I think they do believe it, but they need to understand that they're also in on it. | ||
| They are part of the problem and they have to and they they're benefiting because they think that it is making their job easier. | ||
| No, as a parent, you have to do your work and that's part of your work. | ||
| And so that's why we tell parents things like, well, you know, it can happen to anyone. | ||
| It can. | ||
| That's not really true. | ||
| There are things we can do, things you can do as a parent. | ||
| But we have let parents off the hook. | ||
| And I'm not putting this on parents. | ||
| I think a lot of us have played a role here. | ||
| But the parents have to understand that they too have a role that they played here. | ||
| Now, what do you think about rehab centers? | ||
| Put it this way. | ||
| If I had a loved one who had a drug problem, a drug problem, air quotes, I wouldn't know where to send them. | ||
| I would probably send them to Switzerland. | ||
| And I'm dead serious. | ||
| I would not because what we classify as drug problems in this country oftentimes are not drug problems. | ||
| There are other issues. | ||
| But we scapegoat drugs. | ||
| Do you remember Celebrity Rehab? | ||
| Dr. Drew? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Fucking idiot. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| Whoa. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What's your thoughts on that? | ||
| I don't think he knows anything about drugs. | ||
| Doesn't he run a drug addiction and treatment center? | ||
| I don't think he knows anything about drugs. | ||
| In terms of personal experiences? | ||
| I did Anderson Cooper with him one night and we were talking off camera and it was clear to me he knows nothing about drugs. | ||
| In what way? | ||
| What drugs do? | ||
| Why people do drugs? | ||
| Anything. | ||
| Those people are charlatans. | ||
| Again, I'm trying to be a better person. | ||
| And I'm trying to... | ||
| Be compassionate. | ||
| But I have little compassion for people who are benefiting off of other people's suffering. | ||
| And there are a number of them out here. | ||
| And they shouldn't be allowed to do that. | ||
| Well, they don't do that celebrity rehab show anymore. | ||
| but I remember watching it thinking this has got to be the worst environment for psychological health where you're on a reality show showing the world all your problems. | ||
| Like if I wanted someone to be psychologically healthy, the last thing I would do is put them on a reality show and say, hey, definitely read the comments. | ||
| Definitely go on Twitter afterwards and see all the shit that people are saying about you because that's definitely going to fuck your head up and that's what's good for you. | ||
| No, that's the last thing I would say. | ||
| I know. | ||
| I would say what you need is silence, you need some personal reflection, find out what your problem is, but you need also some productive things to distract yourself with. | ||
| Like maybe you should take up yoga, take up meditation, start exercising, do some Positive things for your health if you think your life is in a bad place and you're in a downward spiral, whether it's because of the drugs or because of behavior patterns you find yourself in or just because of the fact that you're avoiding something in your life that's disturbing you. | ||
| You need positive reinforcement. | ||
| You need good things in your life. | ||
| Let's think about this, just like you're saying. | ||
| These people are at a low point and they're having problems. | ||
| And then we say we're going to bring in cameras and exploit that for the drama. | ||
| There's no way that's good. | ||
| I know. | ||
| And that's why this is what I'm saying. | ||
| If you have a medical degree and you think that that's okay... | ||
| Something's very wrong there. | ||
| Very wrong. | ||
| It's exploitation. | ||
| Yeah, it is exploitation. | ||
| That's exactly it. | ||
| And it shows that you don't care about those people that you're supposedly treating. | ||
| And that's the thing that really, it really irritates me when we get these experts on TV with their patients on TV. That is not healthy for anybody involved. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Just not healthy. | ||
| But that guy, Dr. Drew, doesn't know anything about drugs. | ||
| Nothing about drugs. | ||
| That's crazy that... | ||
| Well, it doesn't exist anymore, right? | ||
| But it is crazy that they thought that was a good idea. | ||
| And it takes celebrities who are famous who have drug problems... | ||
| My favorite one was Dennis Rodman because all he did was work out. | ||
| He seemed fine. | ||
|
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He was on the treadmill running. | |
| I never saw the show, but I'm sure he probably was fine. | ||
| But they thought that it would increase the ratings. | ||
| You know how these things work. | ||
| Just a side story. | ||
| So when we were talking off camera, Anderson Cooper was asking a serious question of both of us, really me, about MDMA, considering using MDMA and was wanting to know like the real deal. | ||
| And I was trying to like help him understand, you know, all of the sort of...tried to give him a comprehensive understanding in a quick time period. | ||
| And this Dr. Drew idiot was chiming in and the way he was describing what MDMA does just let me know that he knew nothing about MDMA and that he was just an idiot. | ||
| Because, you know, if you don't know, when you're in the presence of an expert on something, most adults shut the fuck up because they might be able to learn something, right? | ||
| He didn't. | ||
| And then that really told me a lot about him as a person. | ||
| You know, like, if I'm in the presence, if... | ||
| If somebody's asking me about, how do I increase my subscriber base to my podcast, you know, and you're there or something, and then I would shut up. | ||
| I mean, or somebody asked me about being a comedian. | ||
| I mean, I would like to be funny, but I know I'm not a comedian. | ||
| I would shut up when I'm in the presence of an expert, of people who know. | ||
| But he didn't. | ||
| But he is a doctor, right? | ||
| I mean... | ||
| What is that? | ||
| Does he have... | ||
| Wait, wait, wait. | ||
| Hold up. | ||
| Let's be clear. | ||
| He has a medical degree, right? | ||
| And so he's taken a class of two in pharmacology with drugs, study of drugs. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| Whereas you are an actual expert. | ||
| Yeah, this is what I do, I study, and the literature that he's reading about how these things work is from the papers that I wrote, the papers that I, you know, so that's the difference. | ||
| And so, like, think of it like, in terms of, like, I'm producing, and he's the consumer. | ||
| So this is my product, and I know more about my product, and he's the consumer, and he's, And he's telling people as a marketing agent, if you will, about my product that I produced. | ||
| I understand. | ||
| And was his thoughts on it, is this common misconceptions? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| The shit was so stupid. | ||
| I was just like, I stopped listening and I told him that it was stupid. | ||
| And so I was trying to like really help Anderson because he asked a serious question. | ||
| I wanted to make sure he was good. | ||
| Anderson was trying to party safely. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| And I wanted to make sure he was good. | ||
| And I was just like, can you shut the fuck up, please? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You're such a nice guy. | ||
| When you get upset about something like this, I know it's real. | ||
| Yeah, because I'm really trying hard, man. | ||
| I'm trying to be a better person. | ||
| It's like I'm 54, and I'm trying to help other people live better too, man. | ||
| I don't want to be angry. | ||
| I don't like that. | ||
| It's just not good. | ||
| But I don't tolerate foods. | ||
| I don't do that. | ||
| Yeah, I understand what you're saying. | ||
| And it is unfortunate that someone like Anderson can't ask that on the air. | ||
| You know, he can't say, hey, listen. | ||
| Like, you and I are talking about cocaine. | ||
| Like, I've never done cocaine, but I do cocaine with you. | ||
| You know, like, okay, I've never done heroin other than the drip at the surgery center, but I'll do a little bit of... | ||
| I'd sniff a little heroin with you if you told me it's cool. | ||
| Don't worry about it, man. | ||
| When we get out of this pandemic... | ||
| We're gonna bring Afghanistan here and Colombian. | ||
| We'll be back. | ||
| Now, when you go to Colombia, you can just buy it in Colombia? | ||
| Is that how it works? | ||
| I don't buy drugs, man. | ||
| Do you give it to you? | ||
| Yeah, I don't... | ||
| You know, I'm out here, you know, me being a drug user. | ||
| I don't put myself in situations where people... | ||
| Could arrest you. | ||
| Yeah, don't do the compromising thing. | ||
| I don't do that. | ||
| Isn't that unfortunate? | ||
| It's very unfortunate, man, because I have to be paranoid about who's around me. | ||
| I hate that shit. | ||
| Do you have to be paranoid because of your public profile? | ||
| Because you're an ardent drug supporter? | ||
| Yeah, that's right, man. | ||
| Can you imagine it? | ||
| It's like, Columbia professor caught buying drugs. | ||
| I wouldn't do that to the university. | ||
| I would never do that. | ||
| Has that ever been a problem with the university, that you have this unusual stance on drugs, although very educated, and obviously you know what you're talking about? | ||
| I haven't felt it as a problem, so I don't know what the university feels about that, but check it out. | ||
| This is my perspective. | ||
| If anybody knows anything about the Declaration of Independence, it's a beautiful document. | ||
| It guarantees all of us at least three birthrights. | ||
| Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. | ||
| But we talk about those things in this jingoistic way. | ||
| As opposed to really unpacking it, it's like, life, liberty... | ||
| That means that I can live my life however I see fit, as long as I don't stop others from doing the same. | ||
| And I can pursue happiness as I see fit. | ||
| The Declaration guarantees me that. | ||
| It doesn't guarantee me happiness. | ||
| It guarantees me the pursuit of happiness. | ||
| And I use drugs in my pursuit of happiness. | ||
| And so if I get pushback and that sort of thing, I'm willing to deal with it. | ||
| I'm willing to go to jail for using drugs. | ||
| And that's the thing I had to think about for myself. | ||
| If you really believe this, Are you willing to go to jail for it? | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| I'm willing to risk these things. | ||
| Just like other people who reminded the country about its promise, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, And how the promise or the practice doesn't match the promise. | ||
| And so when I think of Rosa Parks sitting on that bus seat, she was doing that. | ||
| I think about all of these sort of people who we now revere. | ||
| Who I revere? | ||
| It's like, what kind of man am I if I can't live in the way that I know is right? | ||
| So when I think of the university and I think about pushback, what people say, I don't care. | ||
| As long as I am treating people well and I'm not abusing or mistreating people, I will worry if I'm mistreating people because that's not right. | ||
| But if I'm treating people well and people are bothering me about this issue, bring it on. | ||
| That's a very... | ||
| It's very confident and it's very admirable that you have that position because a lot of people, when faced with public scrutiny, there's a conventional idea of what drugs are and who drug users are, and they would immediately... | ||
| Most people are like, yeah, I feel differently, but I don't want the hassle. | ||
| I don't want to experience it. | ||
| I don't want to feel it. | ||
| I don't want the criticism. | ||
| I don't want to have to debate it. | ||
| I don't want to argue with people. | ||
| I'll just do my thing. | ||
| No, I know those people and many of them hang out with me or used to hang out with me and I've decided that there are so many people catching hell for being identified as a drug user that it's not right for us who are privileged and we can be in the closet when other people can't because they've been identified or whatever. | ||
| So I think that it is dishonoring those people. | ||
| And so I don't want to hang out with people who want to use drugs and be in the closet and not think about those other people who are catching hell. | ||
| So I decided only recently, you know, in writing this book, it's like, Yeah. | ||
| are catching hell. | ||
| This is wrong. | ||
| I mean, it's just fucking wrong that we are putting people in jail for what they put in their bodies. | ||
| It's just wrong. | ||
| It's just flat out wrong. | ||
| I couldn't agree more. | ||
| I think it is wrong. | ||
| It's one of the weirder aspects of modern society that we do make these distinctions between different types of drugs that are acceptable and not acceptable. | ||
| And oftentimes the ones that are, like cannabis, far safer than the acceptable ones. | ||
| Certainly can be far safer, but you know, it could be also dangerous for some people. | ||
| Sure, yeah. | ||
| Well, I had Alex Berenson on the podcast who used to write for the New York Times and he wrote a book called Tell Your Children. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And one of the conversations that we had were about people that have had bad reactions to high doses of marijuana and they have these schizophrenic breaks. | ||
| Well, Alex plays kind of fast and loose with the evidence, right? | ||
| Alex overinterprets that sort of thing. | ||
| There are people who use high doses of marijuana and get really paranoid and anxious and all of those things. | ||
| But they don't become schizophrenic. | ||
| So do you think the people that have these schizophrenic breaks were already schizophrenic? | ||
|
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Absolutely. | |
| That's what the evidence shows, right? | ||
| But Alex is saying, presented like marijuana is causing schizophrenia. | ||
| And that's the problem. | ||
| And the evidence is not with him there. | ||
| Now that's not to say that like novice, you don't, you know, you're new to marijuana and then you're smoking large doses or you're taking large oral doses. | ||
| Yeah, you might have some paranoia and that shit might last for a day or two, you know. | ||
| But the thing that you have to remember, those people, is that the drug will eventually float away from the receptor and you'll come back to your normal self. | ||
| And so the best therapy for people is to have others just simply talk them down, make sure that they're chill, they understand that, don't worry, this is temporary. | ||
| Because if they think that, oh shit, I'm going to be fucked up forever... | ||
| And that causes them even more anxiety and they do something dangerous. | ||
| The downward spiral. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| And so people like Alex are those people who are causing more harm in terms of how, I think, how he talks about this. | ||
| And so, yeah, he's always trying to goat me on Twitter to get into these conversations. | ||
| You know, it's like... | ||
| It's a real bitch move, you know? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But anyway. | ||
| Twitter's a weird place, man. | ||
| It's so not real life. | ||
| But yet it's human beings communicating with human beings. | ||
| But it's in a way that it's not... | ||
| It's all of the normal social contracts are abandoned. | ||
| All the normal protocol, the normal... | ||
| Compassion, the way people talk to a person in front. | ||
| The way people talk to people on Twitter, if they talk to people like that in real life, there would be brawls in the street. | ||
| Every day would be like an assault on Capitol Hill. | ||
| It would be madness. | ||
| It wouldn't be because those people, as you know, they're cowards and they wouldn't do that. | ||
| So that shit would just stop immediately. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| But it's just so strange that it's such a prominent form of communication with human beings. | ||
| This complete unnatural way of communicating in text and communicating in a very insulting way oftentimes. | ||
| I know. | ||
| I know. | ||
| And, you know, one-way communication, like you're typing at your computer, it's always so... | ||
| Fraught with potential misunderstanding. | ||
| Even when you're talking to a loved one. | ||
| So it'd be nice if people remember that. | ||
| Yeah, well, if we really reinforce that and make that like a Like a core tenant of behavior. | ||
| I've let people know. | ||
| I'd like talking to people like this. | ||
| This is the best way. | ||
| Sitting there face to face and you rarely have... | ||
| I mean, it rarely gets ugly. | ||
| I hope you continue to do this here show. | ||
| I know I've seen you talk to people like... | ||
| I was really interested in one show particularly. | ||
| You had the cat on. | ||
| He's a comedian. | ||
| He's from my generation. | ||
| He has a podcast. | ||
| He's Italian, New York kind of person. | ||
| He might be from Boston. | ||
| Nick DiPaolo? | ||
| Nick. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, like you were talking, and Nick is a Trump supporter, and you were asking him, I think, about, like, well, don't you think that Trump sometimes... | ||
| Gives misinformation. | ||
| You were saying something like that and he was basically saying he wouldn't go. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| It was some deflection. | ||
| It was some deflection. | ||
| I was really interested in that conversation. | ||
| I was glad that you were having that conversation with him. | ||
| Actually, because I only really... | ||
| He's from my generation as comics. | ||
| You know, I love comedy. | ||
| That's one of the few things that I go out and support live shows. | ||
| I went out and supported him. | ||
| My wife and I went out. | ||
| Just, you know, do try and support people. | ||
| And we stood up front always and he just attacked us, you know. | ||
|
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|
Really? | |
| And I'm always, you know, always there trying to cheer people on because I understand how hard it is. | ||
| And I never been so angry like at a comedian. | ||
| And I kind of hung around afterwards to like have a word with him, but he never came out. | ||
| And I don't know what the fuck was going on with him. | ||
| And I was there to support him, you know, just support people doing their craft. | ||
| And so like this sort of face to face conversation, that's what I wanted to have with him. | ||
| What was he attacking you about? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| We were an interracial couple and it was something like that. | ||
| It wasn't just poking fun and having a good time? | ||
| Nah, it was mean, man. | ||
| You know, we stood up in front always and comedians always poke fun at us and that's a good thing, you know? | ||
| This was like an attack. | ||
| This was mean. | ||
| Just really mean. | ||
| And so I wanted to have a conversation with him. | ||
| Like, yo, what the fuck is up? | ||
| But maybe he was having a bad night or something. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| The crowd was not laughing with him. | ||
| And he was like... | ||
| Where was this? | ||
| New York. | ||
| It was... | ||
| Caroline's? | ||
| No, it was one of the smaller places, and a lot of no-name comics were there, and the crowd was feeling them. | ||
| He came out. | ||
| They weren't really feeling him, so he just kind of turned on the crowd. | ||
| I think that's what happened. | ||
| That can happen. | ||
| Yeah, no. | ||
| I've seen it. | ||
| Trust me, I know. | ||
| And I know it's a tough gig. | ||
| And that's why, you know, I try to support comics because it's a fucking tough gig. | ||
| Yeah, it is a tough gig. | ||
| That's unfortunate, though. | ||
| I, uh, yeah. | ||
| I don't know what to say to that. | ||
| No, there's nothing to say. | ||
| I mean, I was just happy that you had him on the show and you were like talking to him. | ||
| I've known him forever. | ||
| Yeah, you were talking to him about this difficult conversation and I wanted to see how he dealt with it, you know, and he kind of avoided it or tried to avoid it. | ||
| Yeah, I don't exactly remember what we said. | ||
| You were talking about Trump being a spreader of disinformation or misinformation more so than other politicians. | ||
| And he wouldn't acknowledge that. | ||
| And he was just basically saying, all politicians do that. | ||
| And you were like, well, don't you think he does it more? | ||
| I wonder how people are going to feel about Trump after this is over. | ||
| Like, I wonder when the dust settles, what the perception is going to be. | ||
| You know, because perceptions change. | ||
| Like, when Bush was in office, initially, people hated him. | ||
| And then 9-11 came around, and people started to love him because he represented, like, he had a very high approval rating post-9-11 because it seemed like, Someone's going to take care of us and make us safe again. | ||
| And then towards the end of his administration, people hated him again. | ||
| They're like, you haven't done shit. | ||
| You've got to listen to these wars. | ||
| There was no weapons of mass destruction. | ||
| But now, as time has gone on, people go, well, I mean, that's one thing you could say about the difference between Bush and Trump, is that Bush, in hindsight, is a far more reasonable person. | ||
| And the way he looks at things is like... | ||
| Even the way he looks at people that have different opinions on things, the way he looks at Supreme Court rulings, the way he looked at all those things was much more presidential. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, well, so let's be clear. | |
| All presidents kind of get a bump after they went to war, right? | ||
| And so he enjoyed that bump. | ||
| That's cool. | ||
| And then people start to say, wait a second, you lied to us about going to war, and they start to see him for what he was. | ||
| But Through it all, through all these eight years, Bush is a decent human being. | ||
| And so I think now we have a person who's not a decent human being, who makes fun of other people, who bullies other people, who... | ||
| He incites other people to do bad things. | ||
| So when you compare Bush to that sort of thing, Bush is still a decent person. | ||
| Do you remember when they found, there was a famous photograph of him sitting there with a taco bowl. | ||
| He's eating a taco bowl and it was like, right after he said something about Mexicans being rapists and shit, he's like, I love Hispanics, like eating a taco bowl. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Well, behind him was a drawer. | ||
| And in that drawer, the drawer was open. | ||
| And there was a bunch of Sudafed. | ||
| But there was the European Sudafed. | ||
| With the real Sudafedrin in it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| But there was like a large supply of this shit. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| What does that stuff do for you? | ||
| So... | ||
| Do you remember the picture? | ||
| Did you see the picture? | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| Pull the picture up so you can see it. | ||
| But you asked what does Sudafep do for you. | ||
| Sudafep is like an amphetamine. | ||
| It's not... | ||
| It's one of the building blocks to this structure. | ||
| There it is. | ||
| So that box there... | ||
| Oh, wow. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Again, why would... | ||
| Is that the real one? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's like... | |
| People did the math to figure out what it was. | ||
| So that one there, that's not the real one. | ||
| It doesn't have Sudafed. | ||
| That one there has phenylephrine in it. | ||
| That's the replacement for Sudafed. | ||
| So that has Tylenol, caffeine, and Sudafed replacement. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Exactly. | |
| They said it's not the real one? | ||
| Yeah, that... | ||
| So there was incorrect speculation that it was the European version of it? | ||
| Is that what it was? | ||
| Because I remember reading that people had speculated that it was the European version of it, which was more potent, and they were saying it's... | ||
| Pseudo-fed is pseudo-ephedrine. | ||
| Pseudo-ephedrine is like a building block to the amphetamines. | ||
| I don't know why Donald Trump would need that when he can just get prescribed amphetamines like other presidents and like our military. | ||
| I suspect he does take a stimulant. | ||
| I suspect he also has a sedative to sleep at night and those sorts of things. | ||
| And that would be reasonable. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I think that has always been the case, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, that was Dr. Feelgood back in the Kennedy days, right? | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Absolutely. | ||
| I mean, I know if I have that job, I better have an ample supply of substances. | ||
| I mean, you have to. | ||
| I mean, you have to be up and you got to make sure you get sleep as well. | ||
| Yeah, the up part is interesting because he's obviously not fit, and he's 74 years old. | ||
| And meanwhile, the guy got COVID, and then after COVID, he had all this energy, and he's talking all this craziness on Twitter and law and order and all this... | ||
| But that is like... | ||
| And that's stimulant type of chatter, right? | ||
| Like many, many, many posts and tweets. | ||
| He can go on the campaign trail and have all this energy. | ||
| It could be, Joe. | ||
| I... You know, certainly, as a president, I suspect he has a stimulant. | ||
| And that would be normal. | ||
| But, you know, he probably has some cognitive stuff going on, too. | ||
| And he slurs sometimes. | ||
| And to me, that says stroke or something may have happened. | ||
| I think the slur, it seemed to me more like he was coming down off of something or he was on some sort of sedative that he over-prescribed or over-overdosed. | ||
| You know, you've seen that where he's like struggling. | ||
| It seems like he's exhausted. | ||
| That's not a sedative, man. | ||
| If you're really fucked up, though, if you take something and you're really kind of drowsy, but you're trying to keep it together for your speech, and God bless America, like you barely can get the words out because your mouth is failing you? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I'm only speculating here. | ||
| I don't really know, but that's how people talk when they're drunk. | ||
| Yeah, but why would he be on a sedative when he's doing a talk? | ||
| Maybe he got all ramped up and wanted to calm himself down, and maybe he's on this constant up and down sort of seesaw. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Could be. | |
| That's certainly possible. | ||
| That's certainly possible, but I don't know. | ||
| I thought maybe, given his physical condition, I thought maybe he might have had some minor sort of strokes or something going on. | ||
| While he was having a speech? | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| This is something that has happened. | ||
| And it shows up every now and then. | ||
| Just the blood flow to these certain regions maybe being obstructed or something. | ||
| Really? | ||
| I assumed it was a substance thing. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| This behavior is just so strange, man. | ||
| I think it's something else. | ||
| Yeah, drugs be like, yo, don't blame us for that shit. | ||
| I had an idea for a show. | ||
| It was kind of a joke, but like called Ex-Presidents on Mushrooms, where you just get ex-presidents and you make them do like a mushroom ceremony, like a real like four to five gram dose. | ||
| Do you know Rick Dublin? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Yeah, I've had Rick on a few times. | ||
| That's great, man, because Rick, this is what Rick got to, you know, like his, I think his Undergraduate thesis was to get all these leaders, world leaders, on MDMA, though. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Well, he's done a lot of research with MDMA with soldiers in particular to combat PTSD. Yeah. | ||
| He had the same idea. | ||
| Great man. | ||
| He really is. | ||
| And that's who I'm trying to be like, actually. | ||
| Because Rick is always so forgiving and generous. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But I guess if I had a supply of MDMA, I'd be okay, too. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But... | |
| That's the thing, right? | ||
| It's like you can't get it, even if you're a proponent of it and you're a responsible user. | ||
| Meanwhile, I've only had one MDMA experience. | ||
| It was very positive. | ||
| You've only had one MDMA experience? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| God damn, man. | ||
| No, I'm just starting to feel badly for you. | ||
| That's like a guy who's only been laid once. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, exactly. | |
| I got laid once. | ||
| It was great. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| No, I've only had one. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Fuck, man. | ||
| That's remarkable. | ||
| No, I mean, you're married, too, you know, so it's a great thing to do with your partner. | ||
| Oh, my God. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, it should be something that you can just get, right? | ||
| You know, especially like a pure form of it, so you know exactly what you're getting. | ||
| I got an idea, man. | ||
| You have an idea. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| We should take your show on the road. | ||
| To where? | ||
| Spain. | ||
| Oh, somewhere illegal. | ||
| Spain. | ||
| Colombia. | ||
| And all of these places where they test the substances. | ||
| And we'll do a tour of these substances. | ||
| Do a tour of substances. | ||
| That's something we could do. | ||
| We could do a different show. | ||
| Like a different kind of show. | ||
| Like do a specific series of these things. | ||
| Just to experience things that I haven't experienced before. | ||
| Yeah, because all of these people know you, and so it'll be a big fanfare that you're doing, but we should actually do that, man. | ||
| Well, we could do that post-pandemic, once everything sort of lightens up. | ||
| I've done a lot of shows high, obviously. | ||
| I've done a lot of shows drunk. | ||
| I've done a couple shows on mushrooms. | ||
| And you were cool? | ||
| Afterwards, I mean, you look at it and you'd be like, oh yeah, that's... | ||
| Yeah, me and Post Malone did one on Mushrooms. | ||
| That was fun. | ||
| We were silly. | ||
| But it just got really silly. | ||
| It was one of those shows. | ||
| It was very happy. | ||
| It was a very happy show. | ||
| But it was very, very silly. | ||
| And how were the viewers? | ||
| Were they like, cool? | ||
| Oh yeah, we had a good time. | ||
| I think we were honest about it on the show, too. | ||
| I think we talked about it. | ||
| Yeah, I think if we do it... | ||
| Don't tell anybody that what we're on or that we're on anything. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| And then you just see what people say. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Because we want to see if they even notice. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Maybe we can call the show Guess What We're On. | ||
| Yeah, and placebo is a possibility. | ||
| Sure, we could do some shows straight. | ||
| We'd do a tour of like six different places. | ||
| Man, that would be great. | ||
| It's not a bad idea. | ||
| And that would go a long way to alleviating misconceptions or preconceived notions that people have about what things do and what they don't do. | ||
| Yeah, that'll be a motherfucking community service. | ||
| That really would be. | ||
| It would be in a way, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What do you think about Iboga and Ibogaine? | ||
| Because that's something that a lot of people turn into. | ||
| Yeah, I really like the enthusiasm because they're trying to help people and it worked. | ||
| For a lot of the proponents. | ||
| And so I like that enthusiasm. | ||
| And so I'm all for it. | ||
| I support what they're trying to do on the one hand. | ||
| But on the other hand, I just don't believe, based on the evidence, that There's a magic bullet, because people use it to cure drug addiction. | ||
| And there's no simple magic bullet like that. | ||
| But if people think so, and they're not harming anybody, fine. | ||
| Why not? | ||
| I think it's ruthlessly introspective, right? | ||
| And I think that's one of the things about Ibogaine that people talk about. | ||
| And I think that when people get to examine their life and examine the whys, like as you were saying before, that maybe it's not really the substance. | ||
| Maybe it's something that they're trying to squash in their past or something they haven't really come to terms with. | ||
| I think you're right. | ||
| We think about ayahuasca from this perspective. | ||
| Some people feel that way. | ||
| Mushrooms as well. | ||
| Mushrooms, of course. | ||
| Of course, mushrooms. | ||
| And that's a good thing. | ||
| That's a good thing. | ||
| Some of us are just introspective anyway. | ||
| We live in our heads. | ||
| And other people need a little more help to get there. | ||
| But it's a good thing. | ||
| It's a good thing to do it. | ||
| So I'm for it. | ||
| Yeah, I think that is oftentimes the case with people that I've talked to that have used mushrooms to quit things. | ||
| Like I know people use mushrooms and quit cigarettes. | ||
| And when they smoked cigarettes their whole life and then they did mushrooms once and they're like, what am I doing with my body? | ||
| And why am I so distracted? | ||
| Why am I distracting myself with this? | ||
| Unhealthy stuff and like what is this about this behavior pattern that I've sort of fallen into grips with No, I mean I know people who have done MDMA to stop using alcohol, you know and that sort of thing and it's like Yeah, it helps people to have a different perspective It helps them to see sometimes the inferiority of the compound that they've been abusing Yeah, | ||
| I think it's all good man See, that's what I wanted to get to you about with rehab centers, because for people that talk about drugs, most of the discussion is about people where the drugs get away from them, or they find themselves in a situation where they find themselves addicted to these drugs. | ||
| And it is rare that we discuss the real root cause, psychologically, of what's leading them into these self-destructive behavior patterns. | ||
| And Ibogaine seems to help that, but there's no Ibogaine rehab centers in America. | ||
| It's illegal here. | ||
| Well, also the people now, the people who are proponents, they too are very important in this whole mix. | ||
| They wouldn't have cameras there doing that sort of stuff. | ||
| And they are trying to understand and help people understand what's really going on in their life. | ||
| So that's really important, the therapists. | ||
| Those therapists are really important. | ||
| Or guides or whatever people call them. | ||
| They're really important. | ||
| They can play a really important role. | ||
| Understanding that it's not just the drug that you are dealing with. | ||
| There are some other deeper issues. | ||
| And I think if people are starting from there, thinking about those deeper issues, then they have a chance. | ||
| But too often, our sort of treatment centers Man, they're in it for the loot, for the money. | ||
| And one shoe fits all. | ||
| And I don't think that's very helpful for many people. | ||
| Yeah, and it's just... | ||
| I've never been to rehab. | ||
| I've never needed to go to rehab. | ||
| But the people that I know... | ||
| That have been, they go, it takes a long time, they're often there for months, and they come out, and many of them start using again. | ||
| Yes, you probably know wealthy people if it takes a long time, so we want to keep them there, so make sure that we milk their insurance. | ||
| Is that what it is? | ||
| Well, I mean, I did some training in Hazelden. | ||
| You know Hazelden? | ||
| No. | ||
| It's like the treatment center. | ||
| It's in Minnesota. | ||
| It's Betty Ford kind of this. | ||
| You've heard of that. | ||
| So, yeah. | ||
| You have these long treatment stays. | ||
| Can't let you go. | ||
| You might start using again, Carl. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| All of that sort of stuff. | ||
| You're not ready to leave yet, Carl. | ||
| Don't know if you should be What's the science behind it? | ||
| I'm sure you've examined this. | ||
| When you go to a rehab center, what does it take to run a rehabilitation center? | ||
| How much knowledge do you have to have about these drugs and what to do and how to get someone clean? | ||
| That's a damn good question. | ||
| So typically they may have a psychiatrist or psychologist who are trained in substance use disorders. | ||
| And then the staff, they don't have much training typically. | ||
| And our training in substance use disorder at the medical, like physicians and psychologists, That training is not very good. | ||
| When you say not very good, in what way? | ||
| For example, we are not really trained to think about if somebody is smoking crack and they have a crack addiction. | ||
| So we focus a lot on crack. | ||
| As opposed to like, oh, this guy is from somewhere Ohio where they lost all of their jobs and his wife left him and his children no longer speaks to him. | ||
| So it's like crack is not the problem. | ||
| But... | ||
| We're getting paid because you have a crack use disorder. | ||
| And so it has to be the problem. | ||
| And my specialty is looking at crack, not looking at employment and what employment does to a male in modern American society who had been accustomed to being the number one breadwinner in his home. | ||
| None of that is in the training of these people who are providing therapy. | ||
| And so that's what I mean, they're not very well trained. | ||
| They're only focusing on the substance. | ||
| That's it, because that's all we're trained about. | ||
| If you ask them, like, what does dopamine, I mean, what does cocaine do to dopamine? | ||
| Oh, they can tell you that inside out, you know, but... | ||
| What are the impacts of a white male in his mid-40s losing his job that paid $150,000 and now the best job he can get pays about $12 an hour? | ||
| They don't know that. | ||
| And that's the far more important question. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| How do you manage to get your mind right without just drowning your sorrows? | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| Well, just if I'm going to provide treatment in that context with that person, The first thing I'm trying to do is how the hell do we help this guy get a job that he can feel like he's a productive member of our society again? | ||
| That's where we start. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So they have self-esteem again. | ||
| They feel like they're on the right path. | ||
| They don't feel the need to just try to escape. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| Just so they feel like they are human again. | ||
| I have a friend whose significant other had a substance abuse problem multiple times and she kept going into rehab and then getting out and cleaning up for a while and then going in again and eventually he couldn't take it anymore. | ||
| He had great things to say about her, she's a great girl, but she kept falling apart. | ||
| And he didn't know what to do. | ||
| He wasn't a guy who's had problems like that himself. | ||
| What do you say to a person like that who has a loved one who just keeps falling apart? | ||
| She would fall apart. | ||
| Apparently, I don't know her, but according to his description, she would fall apart and just start using like crazy and fuck up everything in her life. | ||
| Yeah, you know what relationships you and I both know. | ||
| You can be in a relationship with a person for a number of years and not really be honest with each other. | ||
| And so like that dynamic, I don't know. | ||
| But if I had this woman alone... | ||
| And try and figure out what's really going on. | ||
| That's different. | ||
| Because I don't know what kind of mistrust and how much damage has happened over the years in that relationship. | ||
| And I don't know how honest and open they are with each other. | ||
| Because people can be together for 30 years and not be open and honest. | ||
| It isn't also the issue that sometimes people aren't honest with themselves about why they're using. | ||
| They certainly... | ||
| I think people are honest with themselves. | ||
| They just don't share it with you. | ||
| You can't get away from yourself. | ||
| You really can't. | ||
| You can try and... | ||
| I see what you're saying. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| They're just not expressing themselves honestly to other people. | ||
| Yeah, and some are more convincing than others and Being a human a decent human it's a complicated thing and the thing is is that we sometimes fail and Right. | ||
| Yeah, but that's always the narrative, right? | ||
| Like, oh, he started doing coke, and then the relationship fell apart. | ||
| Oh, he started, oh, they got hooked on, like, that's how a lot of people view drugs. | ||
| Because society has allowed them to, right? | ||
| Like, if you have a problem that you can't explain, throw it into the drug waste bin. | ||
| That explains it away. | ||
| And then you get sympathy and people say, yeah, I understand. | ||
| You need to leave that motherfucker. | ||
| Yeah, I get it. | ||
| And then it's like, you're not a bad person. | ||
| Drugs have functioned in that role for our society. | ||
| And I'm trying to take it out of that waste bin. | ||
| Hmm. | ||
| Yeah, and that's but it's maybe a way that we can look at things more clearly is to say Look at all the people that use drugs and don't have a problem. | ||
| Yeah, how come they don't get that? | ||
| Yeah, because people are in the closet, man. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, you know like all of these successful people are in the closet and it allows this Caricature of drug users as being this irresponsible degenerate. | ||
| Because you're not looking at Barack Obama who used cocaine. | ||
| You're not looking at him as a cocaine user. | ||
| Instead, you're looking at some guy on the corner who's ruined his life. | ||
| And it's like, wait a second. | ||
| Drugs didn't ruin Barack Obama and he used cocaine. | ||
| When you write a book like this, how do you balance out these ideas, your perceptions, your thoughts on these ideas, versus the common narrative? | ||
| Are you trying to convince people? | ||
| Are you trying to just express yourself in a way that you know is going to be controversial, but let me just do my best to explain the way I think about things? | ||
| Are you actively trying to sort of persuade people? | ||
| I'm trying to persuade people, but this is one of the reasons, man, I have so much respect for comedians. | ||
| So you can tell people some really difficult shit. | ||
| If you have a punch line, then they're able to hear it. | ||
| So as a scientist, how can you do the same thing? | ||
| How can you tell narratives and stories and teach at the same time? | ||
| And that's what I'm trying to do. | ||
| And I learned that... | ||
| I only recently learned this, that... | ||
| You have to be an artist. | ||
| And that's what artists do. | ||
| And so I'm still learning how to do that. | ||
| So I'm trying to use other people's stories. | ||
| But in this book, I'm using my story. | ||
| I'm saying, this is what I do. | ||
| You know, I use heroin. | ||
| I also publish a lot of scientific articles, scientific papers in scientific journals. | ||
| I have more than 100 of those papers, and they're hard to publish. | ||
| I publish several books. | ||
| I lecture all around the world. | ||
| I do all of these kind of things, but I'm a drug user. | ||
| So I'm trying to use my own stories to show people that what you've been told about drugs is wrong and what you think of a drug user, the image of a drug user that you have is wrong. | ||
| The typical drug user looks like me, except they're white, but they look like me. | ||
| And so if I can do that with my book, I hope it goes a long way in changing people's views. | ||
| Do you feel like in academia you're on your own? | ||
| Are there other people like you that are out there that are so bold and open about it? | ||
| Like so completely out of the closet as it were? | ||
| No, in academia nobody's out of the closet. | ||
| Isn't that weird? | ||
| Academe is a weird-ass place. | ||
| I don't know if you know it very well, but it's a weird place. | ||
| You know, I don't feel at home in Academe in some areas, but in other areas I do. | ||
| I mean, I love, like, getting high and reading, you know, or that's what I do, or going through the literature in 1897 to find out what they were saying about this. | ||
| This is what I... So, in terms of academe, I feel at home, because there are a lot of people like that in academe. | ||
| And when you say getting high, like, what do you get high on when you do that? | ||
| Oh, uh... | ||
| Certainly amphetamines, or if I want to do heroin too, I can do that. | ||
| Or just anything. | ||
| If I'm alone and I have all these ideas, racing. | ||
| And so I have to go back and read things that other people said. | ||
| To see if somebody else was saying, and typically somebody else was saying it, and it's not an original thought, but it's nice to know who said it and who published it. | ||
| So in academia, I feel very much at home there. | ||
| But being in my skin and being who I am out front about these things and being direct, I don't feel at home in academe. | ||
| But it's okay. | ||
| It's a nice living and I get access to smart kids who are enthusiastic, who want to change the world. | ||
| And I get to help them and they teach me shit all the time. | ||
| So it's a great place in that respect. | ||
| But the people, like my colleagues, that's not so great a lot of times. | ||
| But you deal with it. | ||
| That's just how... | ||
| Did you have colleges that are curious, like that maybe don't have a lot of experiences with drugs, but they see you like, how is this guy keeping it together? | ||
| Maybe I do have a misconceived idea about what drugs do to people. | ||
| Did you get them, like, dancing around the idea? | ||
| Like, Anderson Cooper's asking you about MBMA. Do you have other colleagues that are pulling you aside? | ||
| Like, say it, Carl. | ||
| Yeah, it's a lot more indirect. | ||
| Keep on pouring a little bit of cocaine. | ||
| No, they don't say that. | ||
| They're not that direct, but they are beating around the bush to try and figure out what's what. | ||
| um and then there are other ones who are using drugs and they're in the closet um and um but even those folks who are in the closet and using they're not really my people either um they're not very courageous that's another thing that marks academe there's a lot of sort of cowardly squirmy behavior stab you in the back behavior that happens that's That's disturbing about academia that you hear from people that are | ||
| professors, that there is a lot of stab-you-in-the-back behavior. | ||
| You would think that also with an occupation that has tenure, which is one of the weirdest things ever, weirdest positions ever, you can't get fired unless you do something horrible. | ||
| You would think, boy, that would encourage people to be courageous. | ||
| No. | ||
| You have to think about the people who are attracted to academe. | ||
| A lot of these people were considered nerds. | ||
| I mean, not the sort of popular nerds where people put on a pair of glasses and say that they're a nerd. | ||
| These people were like really alone with their books and they weren't very popular and they got picked on. | ||
| And they learned how to fight in a different way. | ||
| They learn how to fight with their words or with some other sort of clever, indirect method that could not be identified with them, so their fingerprints are not on it. | ||
| You know, all of this, so it's what you would expect. | ||
| It's how they fight. | ||
| It's not like I'm accustomed to having grown up in the hood. | ||
| Like, if you have a beef, you deal with it straight on, you know? | ||
| You get in a fight, and then it's settled. | ||
| You lose sometimes, you win sometimes, but it's settled, and the beef is over. | ||
| Whereas in academe, you don't even know sometimes that people have a beef with you, and next thing you know, you're not getting this, or you're having this taken away, and you don't even know what happened. | ||
| So, it is what it is. | ||
| That's one of the really unfortunate aspects about not being socially accepted when you're younger, is that for a lot of those guys, it kind of sticks in their craw. | ||
| Yeah, that's the thing that's really harmful, where... | ||
| It's like, yeah, you were abused. | ||
| I mean, people picked on you as a child. | ||
| That was wrong. | ||
| But you can't undo it by doing it to somebody else. | ||
| Yes, that is a problem. | ||
| And that's one of the things that I find most distasteful about social media. | ||
| I see some people that I know personally on social media, and I know that they... | ||
| Did not have a good social upbringing. | ||
| I know that they were picked on. | ||
| I know they were abused and Even comedians and then I see them being mean and shitty and piling on and acting like bullies Yeah, and just diving I'm saying the most ruthless shit about people and I know that they're doing it because someone did it to them and they still feel like they haven't they haven't balanced their account and As it were, you know, in terms of like what the world did to them versus what they want to do to the people that they think represent what the world did to them. | ||
| No, absolutely. | ||
| And that's the thing that I find abhorrent as well. | ||
| And we have a lot of that in academe. | ||
| And I was recently the chair of my department. | ||
| And one of the reasons I took the job was Was so that I could maybe shape the environment and shape the ethos. | ||
| Boy, was I wrong. | ||
| They kicked my ass. | ||
| I mean, just straight up. | ||
| It's like they were just a lot more sophisticated than me in that game. | ||
| They were a lot more sophisticated. | ||
| Well, you weren't trying to play the game at all. | ||
| You were just being yourself, right? | ||
| Yeah, and I thought I had good motives. | ||
| I thought that I was a good guy, all that sort of thing. | ||
| No, but they kicked my ass. | ||
| What was it about? | ||
| What were the conflicts? | ||
| You know, trying to hire people, for example. | ||
| Trying to make our university more diverse, racially diverse. | ||
| I mean, we're in Harlem. | ||
| Columbia's in Harlem. | ||
| We have 4% black faculty in Harlem, Harlem Black USA. So just trying to bring in, for example, more black faculty. | ||
| And everybody's on board with this publicly. | ||
| Everybody's on your side. | ||
| And then you want to bring in people who are senior and independent and they have minds of their own. | ||
| And then they won't necessarily do what I want them to do because they can think for themselves. | ||
| That's a no-no. | ||
| That is a no-no. | ||
| You bring in people who are going to play along and who will keep the status quo. | ||
| Anyway, I thought I was doing what people wanted because they said that's what they wanted. | ||
| But again, that's my own stupidity. | ||
| That's on me. | ||
| That's really on me. | ||
| So it's the social game. | ||
| The social game was confusing to you because you come from a different place in terms of like, that's not how you approach people. | ||
| You know, I think about just an example about what happened in the country with the insurrection and Trump egging the people on. | ||
| So when I think about that in terms of academe, the people in academe, like people say Trump is like a gangster. | ||
| It's like, no, he's not. | ||
| The people in Academe are like gangsters because they do shit like that. | ||
| They have these people do these horrible acts and their fingerprints are nowhere on it. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| So you can't trace it back to them because... | ||
| They know how to do this sort of thing. | ||
| And that's where they beat me at that game. | ||
| It's like, that's some real gangster shit. | ||
| And they showed me that I wasn't a gangster either. | ||
| It's an interesting world in that a lot of people that enter into the world of academia go straight from school. | ||
| They go straight from college. | ||
| They go to the university, get their PhD. | ||
| They're already involved in working in the school. | ||
| And then their ultimate goal is to transition from being a student to being a teacher without any world experience. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| Without ever escaping the bubble of academia. | ||
| It's a weird place. | ||
| That's an astute observation, man. | ||
| Because if we think about just what I do as a drug scientist, right? | ||
| That's what I did. | ||
| Here it is. | ||
| I go and study to get a PhD in drugs. | ||
| I got my PhD in 96. And I thought I was going to solve the crack crises or whatever. | ||
| The only world experience I had was I did four years in the military. | ||
| And again, I was only 17 to 21. Not really any world experience because I had the cocoon of the military protecting me. | ||
| So no real world experience. | ||
| And now I'm this like big drug researcher. | ||
| And no real world experience about how these things work in the real world. | ||
| But I'm considered an expert. | ||
| And I've published all of these papers and I've done this sort of stuff in terms of the scientific community. | ||
| And then it took me... | ||
| I didn't realize I really didn't know anything about drugs until after I was 40 years old. | ||
| Although I had already published dozens of papers, gotten multi-million dollar grants, other types of awards, and I'm considered just expert. | ||
| But like you said, we go from college basically into the academy and And now you're this scientist or whatever. | ||
| No really, no world experience. | ||
| That's what we have in our sort of cadre of experts in many of our sort of spaces, certainly in the world of drug addiction. | ||
| Yeah, it seems to be a prerequisite. | ||
| Like, I just would think I would like, in a perfect world, people that are telling me about whatever it is. | ||
| Like, I have a joke where I say the people that hate marijuana the most need it the most. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And it's really true. | ||
| I mean, there's a lot of experts that really don't understand the effects. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Absolutely. | |
| If they did, they would go, like, what do you think happens? | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| What I want to say to people, what do you think happens when people smoke pot? | ||
| Do you think it makes you crazy? | ||
| It ruins your life? | ||
| Why do you think so many people enjoy it then? | ||
| What is going on? | ||
| And they can talk about it from a pharmacological perspective, from a biophysical perspective. | ||
| But they really don't have real world experience. | ||
| Right. | ||
| An experiential sort of perspective. | ||
| You're absolutely right. | ||
| One of the things that happened to me as a result of traveling all over the world is that I met this schizophrenia researcher. | ||
| His name is Paul Fletcher. | ||
| He's at Cambridge. | ||
| And he wanted to experience schizophrenia. | ||
| He's treating these people and he wanted to really know because of this critique that you just laid out. | ||
| And he's the only person who I know in that area who's done this. | ||
| He did like ketamine to try and reproduce the experience because he heard that that was like reproducing the, would reproduce the experience. | ||
| Of course it doesn't, but this is what people have said. | ||
| Our animal models use ketamine for that reason, but it doesn't. | ||
| But he was curious enough to try to figure out what schizophrenia, people who are diagnosed with schizophrenia, he tried to figure out what they were experiencing. | ||
| I don't know if he figured that out from this sort of experiential perspective. | ||
| But what I do know is that if I ever had a relative who had schizophrenia, I would send him to Paul Fletcher. | ||
| Because his perspective on it, it really respects the person who has this diagnosis. | ||
| And it offers them the greatest amount of hope that I have seen in that area. | ||
| And it would be good if other scientists in these areas, drugs, whatever it is, would also seek to try to figure out the experience that their patients are going through. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It'd be almost like learning martial arts without ever sparring. | ||
| Yeah, or coaching basketball without really playing. | ||
| Yeah, under pressure. | ||
| Is there anything that mimics schizophrenia? | ||
| Is there a commonly thought of substance that mimics schizophrenia? | ||
| They have suggested large doses of amphetamines over periods of time with sleep deprivation, paranoid schizophrenia, but I don't know if it really does. | ||
| I mean, all of this stuff... | ||
| I am now questioning, so I don't know. | ||
| I mean, at one time, if you would ask me that question maybe five years ago, I would have said amphetamines, but I don't know now. | ||
| Schizophrenia is an odd one, too, right? | ||
| Because doesn't it affect somewhere in the neighborhood of 1% of the population? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's a lot of people. | ||
| It's a lot of people, but I have a lot more hope about schizophrenia after having met Paul Fletcher, just in terms of... | ||
| I don't want to bastardize his sort of model of thinking about it, and so I may not have all the details right, but I would just say, simply try to explain about... | ||
| You and I, we go through the world, everybody, we have these theories about how the world works. | ||
| Like, you smile, I have a theory about what that means, right? | ||
| And so, oh, Joe likes me or he's happy today, whatever. | ||
| And then I'm right because you tell me that, whatever. | ||
| Somebody who's diagnosed with schizophrenia, they also have these models that they're testing out. | ||
| And so their model might be like, when you smile, they think that you're angry or whatever. | ||
| Or you're plotting against them. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And their model is just wrong. | ||
| I mean, it's just like they're bumping up against these wrong answers. | ||
| And then when they get more wrong answers, It causes even more stress. | ||
| And that's very anxiety-provoking. | ||
| And then all of that is playing into this. | ||
| It's like, first of all, your models are off, and now you're just getting this increased anxiety. | ||
| And so I think that's how his model sees it. | ||
| So that means that it's okay, as long as we let people understand that Don't worry if your motto is getting it wrong. | ||
| It doesn't mean that something's wrong with you. | ||
| It could be maybe we have it wrong in our society and you might have a better way of thinking about this. | ||
| As opposed to it being one way. | ||
| There might be multiple ways of thinking about solving these problems that humans solve throughout their day. | ||
| And I think that's how he thinks of it. | ||
| And it's a model of hope for me because... | ||
| You lessen the anxiety among the patients, and much of the problems deal with this anxiety of people telling them that they're incompetent. | ||
| And you know how that is, how that feels as an adult, somebody telling you that you're incompetent. | ||
| It's like, how can you tell me I'm incompetent? | ||
| So it exacerbates whatever problems they might initially have and makes them far worse. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Yeah, there's also a thing that seems to happen. | ||
| I've only known a few people that are schizophrenic, but it's a disturbing thing when they think that everybody's against them. | ||
| by virtue of everyone being against them, they feel isolated. | ||
| And then whatever paranoia they have, it's like throwing dry sticks on it. | ||
| It just rages into a fire. | ||
| And it gets even worse, 'cause they think that people are plotting against them and everyone's against them. | ||
| And they don't have anybody comforting them. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And we need that. | ||
| We all need that. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| And I think particularly people with a slippery version of reality probably need that more than most. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| When you say reality, it might be multiple realities. | ||
| And that's the thing that we need people to understand. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's okay. | ||
| Your reality just might be different from theirs, but not to the point where you have a different reality and that you're allowed to abuse people. | ||
| So I want to be clear because I know there are some people out here saying something about alternative facts. | ||
| I don't mean it like where you manipulate people. | ||
| I mean it for people who are struggling Like these people with schizophrenia, just to help lessen their anxiety. | ||
| Yeah, so in terms of marijuana, particularly high doses of marijuana, particularly edible marijuana, could really seriously exacerbate someone who has... | ||
| Who's kind of hanging on barely anyway and then boom you eat an edible. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| You're fucked. | ||
| So someone like Alex would say that person's schizophrenia was brought on by marijuana. | ||
| Whereas I think you and I would probably agree they were more likely inclined towards schizophrenia anyway. | ||
| And the high dose of marijuana pushed them over the air. | ||
| All the evidence says what you just said. | ||
| I mean, so when you look at the evidence where people have done all of these studies, folks who didn't have these predispositions, marijuana doesn't cause people to be schizophrenic or have a psychotic disorder. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But it certainly can precipitate or exacerbate psychosis in people who are predisposed. | ||
| So what I was going to get to was, do you think that maybe for people that have this predisposition towards schizophrenia, they should probably avoid psychoactive substances or avoid something that radically perturbs their version of reality? | ||
| They probably should avoid cannabis, right? | ||
| I don't want to say avoid everything because... | ||
| Is there anything that they could maybe use that maybe would help them? | ||
| Yeah, so I spent a little time working in a heroin clinic in Geneva. | ||
| And so they give out heroin to these patients twice a day, every day. | ||
| How do they give it to them? | ||
| Intravenous or oral, however the patient wants it. | ||
| But a lot of intravenous heroin users. | ||
| And it's all, you know, sanitized setting, hospital setting or clinic setting twice a day. | ||
| Many of these people have psychotic disorders like diagnosed with schizophrenia. | ||
| And heroin helps. | ||
| Calms them. | ||
| Yeah, with many of these symptoms, and they feel better, even more so in some cases than the antipsychotic. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah, I talk about this in the new book, in fact. | ||
| So I don't want to have this blanket statement that they should avoid psychoactive substances because... | ||
| Some might actually be helpful. | ||
| And some other people have tried other drugs. | ||
| One psychiatrist in the Netherlands gave his patients amphetamines, and he swears that it works. | ||
| But that has to be researched out. | ||
| But we'll see. | ||
| But I know cannabis for sure. | ||
| I wouldn't do that one. | ||
| You wouldn't do cannabis and perhaps maybe not high levels of amphetamines as well either, right? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| You know, I would have to slowly titrate and see whether or not it worked or whether or not people felt better. | ||
| So this really sort of highlights the need for not just like long-term study of drugs and drug use, but also a place where someone can go where they can get real expert advice. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And maybe even a real source, a pure source of these drugs. | ||
| And if that happened, do you think that the world would have just a totally different understanding of what drugs are and do and what their potentials are? | ||
| Yes, I do. | ||
| I think a lot of people around the world have a different understanding. | ||
| Outside of the United States. | ||
| Outside of the United States. | ||
| It's just that we have such a big microphone that we influence a lot of countries and their perspectives and their education of their physicians and psychiatrists. | ||
| But that's what I'm trying to do. | ||
| I'm trying to change it. | ||
| I'm trying to open up minds in my field and abroad. | ||
| Another problem with things being illegal is that it props up organized crime. | ||
| This is a giant problem with the fact that... | ||
| Look, that's what they had in Prohibition. | ||
| It propped up the mob. | ||
| I mean, that's really what brought up the Mafia is the fact that they made so much money off of selling booze. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And now we're dealing with a situation where it's really just organized crime. | ||
| It's bringing these drugs into the country. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| So I have a friend who was a big time dealer back in the 70s and the 80s and So he talks a lot about how the dealers had this sort of pride in their products. | ||
| And then when the sort of real gangsters got in the field, they didn't really care about the quality of their product. | ||
| They just wanted to move weight like a Walmart. | ||
| They just like cheap products. | ||
| The quality doesn't really matter. | ||
| Just move product. | ||
| And so... | ||
| For me, that's the bigger concern, that when the big guys get involved in this sort of field, the quality goes down. | ||
| And that means that the consumer is being put at greater risk. | ||
| I don't mind people making money illegally. | ||
| That's fine. | ||
| I mean, you do what you do to take care of your family, especially if you're making people happy with your product. | ||
| If you have some pride in the quality, that's fine. | ||
| So I'm not upset, per se, that we have these cartels controlling the market. | ||
| I'm more upset that they don't care about the quality. | ||
| I get it. | ||
| It's a funny perspective. | ||
| The problem with these cartels is not the violence and the murder and all the money and the fucking narco songs while they're holding gold-plated AK-47s. | ||
| The problem is they don't have any pride in their meth. | ||
| Well, Joe, you know you say it like that. | ||
| But you know the violence and the crime goes away when you take away the intensity of the law enforcement. | ||
| All that goes away. | ||
| And so we are the cause of the violence. | ||
| We certainly are in regards to Mexico. | ||
| It's us, the folks who are saying more law enforcement, more law enforcement. | ||
| All you're doing is putting law enforcement at risk and also other people at risk. | ||
| It's like Alright, let's control this market. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| There's a show called Trafficked. | ||
| And how do you say Maria's last name from Trafficked, Jamie? | ||
| What's the correct pronunciation? | ||
| Van Zeller. | ||
| Van Zeller. | ||
| She's brilliant. | ||
| And she runs a show where she went to Colombia, went with the people that were making the cocaine, like literally saw them make it, asked them about it, walked with them when they carried it on their back, walked with them. | ||
| And she's trying to like... | ||
| Find out like how all these things are made and where all these things come from and when you you see it from the source and you see like the dangers these people have to go through in order to get this stuff to America and you realize like how everything is being made And that all of this is just because it's illegal in the United States. | ||
| All of it. | ||
| All of it. | ||
| And if it was legal in the United States, there would be a legitimate business running it. | ||
| They would have standards and unions. | ||
| It would be just like a Budweiser plant. | ||
| Remember Laverne and Shirley used to work at the... | ||
| Milwaukee plant? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, that was a drug den. | ||
| Trust me, I know. | ||
| They were making drugs, but it was so wholesome and American. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| So normal. | ||
| Look at them there, just making a little beer. | ||
| No big deal. | ||
| They're getting people fucked up, and those guys are out there beating their wives. | ||
| I mean, that is... | ||
| Wait, wait, hold on. | ||
| I'm joking around. | ||
| I'm joking. | ||
| I enjoy beer, and I don't beat my wife. | ||
| But this is the way we have these preconceived notions about legality versus illegality. | ||
| Like, if something's legal, it must be good. | ||
| If something's illegal, it must be bad. | ||
| And the fact that the use and the demand has not gone down because of illegal... | ||
| illegalization. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| No, it's... | ||
| It's as high as it's ever been. | ||
| People are doing plenty of coke. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| And they're getting it in in weird, sneaky ways, and people putting their lives at risk. | ||
| And the people that are being victimized are the people that are so poor that they have to work as mules, and they have to put their lives in danger and try to sneak across the border with backpacks full of coke. | ||
| And it's really crazy. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| And the people who are getting caught are the low-level people, while the people who are really making the money, they're not... | ||
| Putting themselves at that kind of risk, so absolutely. | ||
| It's really, really fascinating how this problem has persisted for so many decades, and yet there's no real solutions, and there's no real progress. | ||
| Oh, there are solutions. | ||
| But I mean, solutions that are being implemented. | ||
| Yeah, I know because... | ||
| Too many people are benefiting. | ||
| And so when we think about this sort of drug war, if you will, law enforcement benefits, we spend $40 billion a year on this kind of thing. | ||
| Most of the money goes to law enforcement benefits. | ||
| The prison industry, the businesses that have been built up around that, like phone companies, all of them, they make a lot of money from this. | ||
| Politicians, they look like they are really serving their population because they're bringing law enforcement jobs or whatever. | ||
| They're all benefiting. | ||
| And then the big players in the drug game, they're benefiting because the more regulation, the less likely their competition will be able to get in the game, so they keep the game locked down. | ||
| There are a number of people who are benefiting. | ||
| Parents don't have to educate their kids about drugs. | ||
| That's one less thing they have to do, so they feel like they're benefiting. | ||
| Me, as a scientist, I have to think about my own role. | ||
| I got multi-million dollar grants to study the drug problem. | ||
| I benefited from this whole thing. | ||
| So a lot of people are benefiting. | ||
| That's why we continue it. | ||
| And we oftentimes don't talk about all of us who have benefited from this. | ||
| Yeah, it's a weird, weird conundrum that doesn't seem to have a way out. | ||
| There's a way out? | ||
| I know, but I'm saying no one's proposed this way out. | ||
| No one's implementing this way out. | ||
| It's just, you know, if you were in law enforcement, if you work for the DEA, and you're looking at this, you're like, Jesus Christ, this is not going away. | ||
| I'm not putting a dent in this thing. | ||
| Well, I don't think you're looking at it like this. | ||
| You're looking at it like, Jesus Christ, I got a lot of overtime this week. | ||
| That's how I think you're looking at it. | ||
| I don't want to believe that. | ||
| Well, I'm sorry. | ||
| Well, Santa Claus ain't really... | ||
| Listen, that show Traffic showed us to me. | ||
| One of the things she did was she found out that a lot of the guns that are coming in to Mexico from the United States were being supplied by Los Angeles Police Department. | ||
| There was a guy who worked for the Los Angeles Police Department, was selling guns to this guy who was trafficking them, bringing them across the border. | ||
| Because you can go to Mexico easily. | ||
| The show is fantastic. | ||
| It's called Trafficked. | ||
| It's on Science Channel. | ||
| You've got to pull up a page of it so we can see it. | ||
|
unidentified
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It's on regular TV? Yes. | |
| She's so... | ||
| Nat Geo. | ||
| I'll check it out because, you know, I have avoided these shows because they glorify police action too often in these things. | ||
| Mariana Van Zeller. | ||
| I don't know why I always fuck up her name. | ||
| It's too exotic for my stupid mouth. | ||
| But that lady right there is so badass. | ||
| I'll check it out. | ||
| Watching the show made my hands sweat. | ||
| I was like, Jesus Christ. | ||
| I will check it out. | ||
| She's so courageous. | ||
| They look into all sorts of things being trafficked, whether it's cocaine, steroids, guns, all these different things. | ||
| But the disturbing part of the guns thing was knowing how easy it is to bring something into Mexico, because there's no real border checks to go through. | ||
| You just go through. | ||
| They don't care if you're going into Mexico. | ||
| Just coming out. | ||
| They're just filling up their trunk with AK-47s and guns and all kinds of ammo, and they're just bringing it over to Mexico. | ||
| Yeah, see, I wasn't aware of this. | ||
| The show is nuts, but Mariana going to Colombia, like literally going to the actual labs in the jungle where they make the cocaine, watching them make the cocaine... | ||
| Seeing them process it with all these chemicals, and then put it in backpacks, and then she hikes out with them. | ||
| It takes like a day to hike it out. | ||
| She hiked out with them with a coke. | ||
| It put her life in danger to do this. | ||
| Yeah, that's quite courageous of her, but she's also doing it for her ratings, too. | ||
| Well, she's a journalist. | ||
| She's an investigative journalist. | ||
| You could be cynical and say she's doing it for her ratings. | ||
| And she certainly is but she's also doing it to tell a real story She's also she she exposed the Oxycontin business in Florida She had a show a long time ago called the Oxycontin Express where they show that they have these pain management centers that are connected to a pharmacy So there's a doctor in the pain management center that goes well, you know, you need Oxycontin Good thing for you. | ||
| There's an Oxycontin store right next door and And so they'd give them a prescription that's all they prescribed, and they would go right next door to the pain management center, and they would get their Oxys. | ||
| No, I get it. | ||
| And Florida was known for that. | ||
| I get it. | ||
| And what they have done, and they have made it difficult for people who are in legitimate pain to now get OxyContin or any other opioid-based pain medication, Based on the behavior, bad behavior of a few individuals. | ||
| And so, I mean, I get it. | ||
| I mean, I understand like, yep, those people were misbehaving. | ||
| My concern is that now they have ruined it for all of these people who are in legitimate pain. | ||
| Based on this sort of extreme outlier. | ||
| So that worries me. | ||
| But I will check it out. | ||
| I understand what you're saying. | ||
| There was a problem getting pills in Massachusetts. | ||
| And a lot of people were turning to straight heroin. | ||
| What they thought was straight heroin. | ||
| But a lot of the heroin was cut with fentanyl. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That seems to be a real problem. | ||
| Yeah, that's a real problem. | ||
| I mean, I worry about the heroin supply in the United States for that reason. | ||
| Like in New York, it's almost impossible to get heroin without fentanyl these days. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Is it because it's cheaper? | ||
| Is that what it is? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| Think about the bulk of bringing cannabis into the country versus bringing cocaine. | ||
| It's the same sort of thing. | ||
| Now you don't have to have as much product. | ||
| And it's a lot more potent. | ||
| So that's just, it's easier for the traffickers to do. | ||
| Has any politician ever brought you in for a legitimate discussion about the potential methods that they could legalize these drugs? | ||
| I have not really talked to any politicians about drugs in the United States. | ||
| But in Brazil and other countries, Absolutely. | ||
| What do they say when you tell them that things should be legal? | ||
| They agree. | ||
| And they talk about the difficulties of changing public opinion. | ||
| Because, as you know, politicians don't lead. | ||
| They just kind of follow. | ||
| So the work is really done on the ground, convincing the population. | ||
| Like with cannabis. | ||
| It's not the politicians who are leading with legalizing cannabis. | ||
| It's the people. | ||
| So we have to do the work with the constituents. | ||
| And so that's what I'm trying to do. | ||
| But not one American politician has talked to me about drugs. | ||
| Not one. | ||
| Not one. | ||
| I find that quite incredible. | ||
| Like when I go to other countries, former president of Switzerland, for example, she's a dear friend. | ||
| Talk to her about drug policies all the time. | ||
| She agrees with my drug policy. | ||
| In fact, she's been out front trying to change drug policy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Do you think it's just too radioactive politically in America right now? | ||
| Too many people have this preconceived notion of drugs being bad, addiction being a real problem, opiate scourge ruining the country that if you offer an alternative narrative, not enough people are going to buy it because too many people have already subscribed to what we just described. | ||
| And so it would be bad for you politically. | ||
| It certainly would be bad for you politically as a politician. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And so you don't have to necessarily be out there saying that as a politician. | ||
| What you do is just try to get the best answers privately. | ||
| And then you figure out Because you have staff and you know how to move the population. | ||
| You figure out how to do these things without potentially committing political suicide. | ||
| But they don't even do that. | ||
| Because it's really not in their best interest. | ||
| I mean, the opioid crisis is like a political wet dream to these people. | ||
| Because they can offer solutions. | ||
| They can talk about it. | ||
| It's earnest. | ||
| They really care. | ||
| We have to do something. | ||
| I'm here to help. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| And then they don't have to talk about the fact that all those factories that left Ohio, those factories that left Maine, those factories that left West Virginia, they don't have to talk about that. | ||
| They can talk about the opioids. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And that's the real problem. | ||
| All of those factories that left. | ||
| One thing I think you are doing, though, is because you're so brave about this and you're upfront and so honest about it and also, obviously, you have a deep knowledge of the subject, is you're getting this narrative out there and then more people are going to hear this and they're going to say to their friends, you know, I was listening to Dr. Carl Hart and he has a different perspective. | ||
| You should listen to this. | ||
| You know what he's saying? | ||
| He does heroin sometimes. | ||
| I'm like, what? | ||
| He does heroin? | ||
| You know, like, these conversations are going to happen. | ||
| Whereas, like, that used to be the thing with pot. | ||
| Like, people would say, you smoke pot, what are you, a loser? | ||
| Like, no, just because some loser smoked pot doesn't mean pot makes you a loser. | ||
| Yeah, that's good. | ||
| That's a good SAT question. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Does pot make you a loser? | ||
| Or do some losers smoke pot? | ||
| A or B? Yeah, I mean, there's not a lot of people like you out there. | ||
| I really appreciate you. | ||
| I appreciate your courage, you know? | ||
| I appreciate what you do, man. | ||
| And I really appreciate you, like, giving me a place to, like, come and find my people. | ||
| The first time I came on the podcast, Kaz, you said... | ||
| Yeah, you like one of us. | ||
| And then I was like, I really understand what that means after having traveled around the world. | ||
| And people come up to me and say, yeah, I heard you on the Joe Rogan podcast. | ||
| And it's like, okay, I'm at home. | ||
| I said, all right, I'm good. | ||
| I'm good. | ||
| You are a reasonable person that's willing to discuss things for what they are. | ||
| That's what I mean. | ||
| And even though you're an academic, you got these long dreads. | ||
| You're a cool guy. | ||
| I feel like I can hang out with you. | ||
| There's a lot of academics I have on the show. | ||
| I'm like, nice to talk to you. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Bye. | ||
| I mean, they're great to talk to, but they're in their world, and that's where they live. | ||
| I feel you, because I'm there. | ||
| I mean, at work. | ||
| That's my life. | ||
| Yeah, that is your life. | ||
| But you're doing a great thing. | ||
| You really are. | ||
| Because this could go on forever without someone like you. | ||
| It really could. | ||
| I mean, the narrative that we all have bought into, including me, someone who hasn't done coke, hasn't done heroin, You get it in your head that everyone who uses it must be ruining their life. | ||
| And then you talk to you and you're like, no, it's wonderful. | ||
| And they're like, wait a minute. | ||
| And everybody who's listening to this right now is probably, a lot of people are like me. | ||
| When you first exposed me to these thoughts, I was like, hmm, okay, I have to rethink heroin use, which I never really thought I had to do before. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| No, I'm glad you did, man. | ||
| I'm so happy you did. | ||
| And I hope other people do the same sort of thing. | ||
| And, you know, it's a lovely thing for me. | ||
| It's really good pressure because I'm out here as a heroin user and all other kinds of drug user. | ||
| So it means that I have to make sure that I am particularly responsible. | ||
| Because any negative thing that I do will be attributed to drugs. | ||
| And so I like that kind of pressure. | ||
| It makes me produce. | ||
| It makes sure I'm a better person. | ||
| All of those kinds of things. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Do you often have debates with people about these kind of things? | ||
| No, man. | ||
| I don't do that kind of shit. | ||
| I mean, I don't like that whole performance thing. | ||
| I mean, when I first came on this show, I remember I was talking really fast. | ||
| You were like, yo, this ain't like that five minute that you get on those shows. | ||
| Those CNN shows! | ||
| Yeah, you can chill, man. | ||
| Those are the worst. | ||
| Yeah, I know. | ||
| So that's how I feel about debates. | ||
| You know, so it's like, yeah, rather just like if I'm going to do something on drugs, I don't want to be there with some other idiot. | ||
| I don't want to do it. | ||
| If you give each of us 30 minutes to make a presentation or something, cool, but like us going back and forth, I'm not doing that kind of thing. | ||
| I understand. | ||
| I understand. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, you don't have to. | ||
| Just get your word out. | ||
| The marketplace of ideas will decide whether or not people appreciate what you're saying, but I do. | ||
| I do very much so. | ||
| And your book's available right now, ladies. | ||
| Did you do an audio version of it? | ||
| I did it, man. | ||
| I did it myself. | ||
| Beautiful. | ||
| I'm glad you did it. | ||
| I hate when people hire an actor or a voice actor to do an audio version of their book when someone has no connection to the material. | ||
| But I gotta tell you, man, I came away with a dramatically higher opinion of actors. | ||
| I mean, it's some difficult shit. | ||
| I wrote every word in there and it was really hard to get the feel and the mood because when I was writing, I always had music and that always gets me to the place or some psychoactive substance. | ||
| So it gets me to the place. | ||
| But reading, I was just reading. | ||
| And then a lot of the book, too, is emotional. | ||
| And then you're in the studio with somebody you don't know. | ||
| And I want to cry. | ||
| And I am crying because some of the material... | ||
| It's deeply personal. | ||
| And then you got this person in the studio who's like, okay, you did that one wrong, you know, and don't understand that this is like, you know, my dog died or this happened to my son, you know? | ||
| Right. | ||
| Yeah, that's gotta be weird, right? | ||
| Some producer guy. | ||
| Carl, can we do that one again, please? | ||
| Yeah, it's like... | ||
| Carl, you went off script a little bit. | ||
| You mispronounced some word, which I do, and it's like also I try to have a little flavor in my voice. | ||
| It's like, oh, I'm sorry you didn't say that word right or whatever. | ||
| It's like, well, that's how I pronounce it. | ||
| Well, that's the problem with the other person having the script. | ||
| What it really should be is you're the only one with the script. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, like if that person didn't have it, the producer, if you just said, hey, I'd like to get a copy of this, Carl, so I can read along. | ||
| No, no, no, no, no. | ||
| Sorry. | ||
| It's only one script. | ||
| Don't worry. | ||
| I'll check myself. | ||
| You just turn that recording button on and we're good. | ||
| But listen, the book's out now. | ||
| Drug Use for Grown Ups. | ||
| Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear. | ||
| Dr. Carl Hart. | ||
| Thank you, Joe. | ||
| Thank you, brother. | ||
| I appreciate you very much. | ||
|
unidentified
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Thank you. | |
| Thanks for being here. | ||
| Go get it, folks. | ||
| I'm sure it's awesome. |
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