Kind: captions
Language: en
the following is a conversation with
carl hart department chair and professor
of psychology at columbia university
he's the author of several books on the
topic of drugs including his most recent
called drug use for grown-ups that
challenges us to quote use empirical
evidence to guide public policy even if
it makes us uncomfortable
his research on drugs including hard
drugs like heroin and cocaine challenges
much of what we think we know about
drugs and their role in society
his main thesis is that drug addiction
has less to do with the drugs themselves
and more to do with co-occurring
psychiatric disorders such as depression
and schizophrenia and socioeconomic
factors such as unemployment
underemployment and resource deprivation
within the community
in addition he believes that we should
legalize all drugs so if people choose
to use them they could do so responsibly
and openly and get help if needed in a
controlled safe environment
his ideas are controversial but are
fundamentally grounded in empirical data
and rigorous scientific studies
i don't know if his conclusions are
right but they are at least worth
thinking about
so i ask that you consider these ideas
with an open mind and as always make
sure you exercise your critical thinking
skills in making decisions about
substances you put in your body
you are a free thinking being
the main character if you will the hero
in a story that's being written by you
so at the end of the day you are
responsible for the choices you make so
choose wisely
this is the lex friedman podcast to
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in the description and now here's my
conversation with carl hart
i think it is bold and powerful to admit
to using in your private life the drugs
that you study in your research
including heroin and cocaine so let me
ask
what is the experience of taking heroin
like what happens to the body what
happens to the mind when you take it
well you know i take mdma cannabis and
all the rest of these drugs too i've
tried those drugs um the experience in
the body and the mind i i don't really
know what people want to know and in
that regard it's like saying what is the
experience of having an orgasm
in the body in the mind or or some other
sort of event that you really enjoy
um so i don't really know what people
say what poetry is for for describing
these kinds of experiences i mean i
guess
uh given mdma given psilocybin
in the full context of that maybe it's
more useful to say
what are the
differences in experiences that your
mind goes through uh like chemically
biologically
uh so it's like keeping it strictly to
the sort of the
the the biology of it versus the full
environmental human experience yeah see
this is a mistake that people make all
the time they try to act as if biology
is the only determinant of drug effects
and that's just not how it works uh you
need the environment you need the cage
as they say if you don't have the cage
you don't get the full extent of the
effects and so like you can take mdma
and have an awful time you can have a
time in which uh which you get paranoid
and so forth and then
you can take it that drug under the
right conditions and it'd just be like
one of the best moments you've ever had
it certainly enhanced
um a number of my relationships but i've
also had some times with mdma that
haven't been so lovely when the people
who you are hanging out with
you don't know them you're distrustful
and all of those kind of things so
it's important to put context in it now
we can talk about drugs at a biochemical
level at a biological level and we kind
of do that in this country with this
fascination with neuroscience
and um
that's an inappropriate kind of
fascination the way in the way we talk
about it so we can talk about opioids
and then we can talk about
endogenous opioid system in the brain we
can talk about dopamine and other sort
of
monoamine transmitters and and what uh
opioids are doing to them and we can do
the same thing with mdma um and
we won't be any closer to understanding
the sort of uh
experience that is induced by these
drugs certainly the experience that we
all seek you know what i'm saying so
getting a positive experience or getting
a negative experience is strongly
defined by the environment strongly
dependent upon that but the environment
is a very
it's a short word that can describe a
lot of things
so
would you say the environment is
important are the people
where you are currently in your life
or is it also dependent on the full
trajectory of your psychology of your
life experiences of your parents or the
people you came up with of the trauma
you've experienced of the hopes and
dreams that were crushed or or or not or
the opposite or the success levels or
all those things like what
what are the interesting sort of uh
landscape of experiences that contribute
to how you actually
feel when you take a drug right on
so all of those things are important but
you know like if someone had trauma in
childhood and they did the work and they
dealt with it that's not so important in
this case but if they didn't deal with
it and that trauma is being triggered in
that event
in that moment
then it's important but let's just take
somebody like me
i'm 54 years old i'll be 55 this month
actually and um
you know i've done a lot of work in
terms of figuring out who i am and i'm
comfortable with myself
and i know how to set limits for
whatever it is i'm doing
um and so
i know i need to work out i know i need
to eat well i know i need to sleep well
i know i need to be in an environment
with people within my trust
and then if all of those things are met
oh it's likely to be a good time you
know what i'm saying but if i haven't
slept if i haven't worked out if i don't
feel good
it won't be a good time but
i try and be responsible and take care
of my
eating habits sleeping habits make sure
my responsibilities are taken care of
and so when i'm in that moment
i just
enjoy that moment i'm there i'm not
thinking about a bill that i didn't paid
i'm not thinking about
oh i forgot to do this for my kid i'm
not thinking about that because all of
those things are taken care of if
they're not taken care of it will impact
the experience and it may negatively
impact the experience
well that is the counterintuitive even
controversial finding from your recent
book so we should kind of
i know it seems obvious to you but i
think a lot of people hearing this would
think it's quite non-obvious so um
in your new book uh drug use for
grown-ups you write
for the findings section i discovered
that the predominant effects produced by
the drugs discussed in this book are
positive
i it didn't matter whether the drug in
question was cannabis cocaine heroin
methamphetamine or psilocybin
overwhelmingly consumers express feeling
more altruistic empathetic euphoric
focused grateful and tranquil
they also experience enhanced social
interactions a great sense of purpose
and meaning and increased sexual
intimacy and performance this console
this constellation of findings
challenged my original beliefs about
drugs and their effects
i had been indoctrinated to be biased
toward the negative effects of drug use
but over the past two plus decades i had
gained a deeper more nuanced
understanding
these words are very counterintuitive to
a lot of people
um
i think like you also mentioned in the
book and elsewhere you know people have
come around to maybe psilocybin
uh being one such drug maybe cannabis
being once this drug but you also
mention other drugs like cocaine heroin
methamphetamine
um can you just linger on this point
how
do we get the positive effects of those
drugs and why in the media and the
general conception we have of these
drugs is that they were going to
make a bad life worse or ruin a good
life
well so your first question was how do
we
harness the positive effects how do we
increase the likelihood of getting the
positive effects again like i said we
want to make sure that people are
responsible and they've handled their
responsibilities make sure they eat well
sleep will exercise all of those sorts
of things play an important point role
and also if they know exactly what
they're getting and then they're not
paranoid about oh it's something
contaminated in some adulterant
in my drug um so you want to make sure
you know exactly what you have once you
satisfy those kind of things you
understand the dose and potency you
understand all those things to decrease
any sort of anxiety you might have about
the substance itself
it increases the likelihood that you
will have a better time so anxiety is
the big one you need to remove the
anxiety anxiety is critical
it's huge
many of the negative effects that we see
with drugs have to do with anxiety and
not necessarily anxiety because the drug
induced it it's the anxiety that the
situation induced a lot of times
and then you ask like well why does this
sound counter-intuitive why
does the media
report uh differently
well because it's money in reporting the
negative effects almost exclusively
think about
writing a newspaper article
it's really easy to get the population
all genned up about something like an
opioid crisis overdoses and you don't
even have to tell people
how to keep people safe if you're
talking about overdose you don't even
have to say why people are dying from
overdoses like overdoses in our country
happen largely because people get
contaminated drug because people are
combining sedatives and they don't know
that this enhances the respiratory
depressing effects of drugs they don't
know but when you read these newspaper
articles they don't say this they don't
say how to keep people safe all they do
is frighten the population
there's money in that and then we think
about people who write tv shows um the
people who write movies uh most of the
stuff written by drugs is just bullshit
um i think about i love going to watch
comedians and the comedians when they
talk about drugs again most of the
things that they say about drugs
is bullshit i mean you can say the
stupidest things about drugs and be
believed you can
write a movie and you don't even have to
develop your characters if you throw
drugs into the mix you say oh he's a
drug dealer you don't have to say
anything about that person's background
or about that person being developed as
a character uh because the population
think they know and when and and the
writer uh is lazy and does not do any
sort of development just just think
about any
oh let's think about the sopranos for
example uh you know they they have a new
program coming out so let's think about
them for a second
the sopranos is a show in which um the
league character tony kills people for a
living that's what he does right
this character actually made a
sympathetic for him
when he is
besmirching and
denigrating his nephew christopher for
using a drug and we feel
sympathy for tony the character
who just killed somebody
who is a horrible person but
being a drug user is a worse person
that's what the show wants us to believe
tony's a racist
uh murderer all of these things but we
feel sympathy for him but we don't feel
sympathy for anyone who uses drugs
that's some crazy shit i mean and the
american public buys into it that is
that's wild to me and that we all bought
into this crap and that's what we do in
damnit everything
that's in film on television and it's
like what's wrong with you people
so
why aren't there not more stories of
grown-ups using drugs
the full spectrum of drugs that we're
talking about why isn't there so we
talked offline about joe rogan he's
somebody who started smoking weed later
in life which is an interesting story
like when he's already very successful
and he has a very interesting way of
describing his experience with weed that
it was like enhancing this productivity
it actually i think he says like it
increases anxiety a little bit in a way
that
was productive like paranoia and not
anxiety
and so that's an interesting story of an
adult talking about the use of weed for
for but for productivity purposes
but you don't get those stories very
often why
um i think fear people are afraid that
they will be uh belittled uh dismissed
all of these things that's a drug addict
or some negative thing but cannabis is
lightweight come on uh you can you can
admit cannabis these days and the fact
that
i don't know when joe started but if he
did start later in life that's cool i
mean you are mature developed um you
have developed some
responsibility skills all of these kind
of things this is a good thing um you
don't want people to
engage in any kind of behaviors
when they're young and immature that
might put them in harm's way and so we
want people to be
developed at least
i mean whether it's
being in a relationship with a a partner
uh or whether it's driving an automobile
all of these things that can be
potentially harmful but
uh extremely beneficial if you are
responsible enough to handle them um you
want people to be mature so that's a
good thing so
how are you supposed to like somebody
like me somebody like joe how are you
supposed to understand what the dangers
are what the negative effects are so you
said automobile
relationships
i think i have uh
a reasonably it's crappy but
reasonable understanding of all the
troubles i can get with in relationships
and what things to avoid same thing with
driving a car i have no idea i'm in the
dark in terms of what
are the things to be careful about what
to avoid with drucke with drug use
when we're talking about the heavy drugs
have you ever drank alcohol yes
i know i drink a lot but i understand
that because culturally i came up
i was taught a lot of like this is what
you don't do and this is what you do
yeah this is when you drink a lot i mean
you see the effects you see the there's
a lot of negative examples there's
positive examples of social stimulant
there's examples of great artists using
uh
alcohol to sort of
i don't know
to help be the catalyst for that magic
moment for you know all of that i don't
i have some examples now
especially in america the same with weed
more and more you're starting to get a
lot of stories on uh sec of the
psychedelics of different kinds there's
um
psilocybin where you have
uh mushrooms or even mdma used
sort of positively there's kind of like
negative
stories from the past about acid about
lsd being used
ultimately for productive like
uh for productive ends but it destroyed
the person that's kind of how the story
goes it was like a trade-off you take uh
it's like uh what is it robert johnson
sold his soul to the devil to learn
guitar like it's a trade-off you could
take the drug you're going to create
some good stuff but you have to pay for
it those are the stories that's some
bullshit we tell children come on
that's exactly right you're exactly
right these fairy tales these cautionary
tales that we tell people
we have to grow up that's what the book
is about drug use drug use for grown-ups
um you know we tell people
pinocchio
if you lie your nose grow
who believes that who believes that
there are fairy tales but that's exactly
what these stories are they're in the
same vein as those kind of stories as
pinocchio um
you know like you said when you were
learning about alcohol you were told
what to do what not to do so forth the
same can be true with mdma with cocaine
with heroin the same is true because
there are some times when you there are
some potential dangers that you should
avoid and um i wrote about some of them
um
certainly in my work just throughout all
of my writings we i talk about those
kind of things and other people talk
about these things
the problem is
is that we're getting our education
from bullshit sources from people who
believe in this kind of pinocchio thing
and it just does not fit with the
evidence and the evidence
we all publish in the scientific
literature all these things that i'm
saying
it's there in the literature i mean at a
place like columbia we give these drugs
thousands of doses
every year
do you think
we would be doing this and we do this
with research grants that's public
that's funded by the public taxpayers
dollars do you think we would be allowed
to do this if these drugs were so
dangerous
it's just nonsense i mean and the drugs
we're talking about
they are all
approved for medical use somewhere in
the world
and the studies you conduct are
basically asking what kinds of questions
so you take
uh the full range of drugs you're
talking about uh from from marijuana to
cell cybin to mdma to cocaine and heroin
what is the study looking at like what
the actual experience with the positive
and negative effects of the experience
on the drug are
in uh controlled conditions yeah so we
did these kind of experiments with
alcohol
nicotine all these drugs in order to
have an empirical database
to tell people um
exactly what these drugs do and what
they don't do the conditions under which
the drugs will produce positive effects
the conditions under which the drugs
were more likely to produce negative
effects
all of this information is important for
a society to know
and we do know and and that's why we're
collecting the data we're collecting the
data it to help us
with treatment if someone is having
problems with these data
hopefully we'll uh understand
more about the
how to
help them deal with their problems based
on some of the research that we're doing
so what kind of negative effects are we
looking out for like what what are the
properties of drugs we should be careful
about is it addictive properties how
addictive it is how
how uh destructive or painful whatever
the uh
the
withdrawal processes
what kind of things are we looking out
for yeah those are certain kind of
questions we certainly have asked
because like uh something like cry
cocaine versus alcohol or
heroin when it comes to uh withdrawal of
physical dependence like cocaine has a
very limited sort of uh withdrawal
symptoms i mean it's hard to see uh same
is true with methamphetamine but uh with
heroin you certainly can see a
withdrawal syndrome that's displeasing
that's unpleasant
but with alcohol that would draw
can actually kill you so heroin is
unpleasant and not lovely but with
alcohol withdrawal that's the one that's
the most dangerous i mean all of these
kind of questions we want to know um
answers to uh and and so when we think
about uh heroin or some other drugs and
you say like what kind of negative
effects negative effects we don't talk
about much in the society the main thing
that really concerns me about like
heroin use really is constipation so if
people uh are using uh heroin on a
regular basis and then they have a sort
of slowing of their gut motility they're
in they're likely to increase
constipation and that's not good i mean
for your general health but we never
talk about that in this society and
that's probably the most important thing
aside from the fact that people get
contaminated street drugs and that sort
of stuff and increase the likelihood of
maybe dying from some contaminant or
people who are inexperienced and they're
mixing heroin with other sedatives
that's not good but the constipation
is a huge one um and then other sort of
drugs negative effects um like the
amphetamines all of the amphetamines
they differ they disrupt sleep food
intake all of these things are so
critical for sustaining human life
but we never talk about that because
it's not as sexy as this nonsense that
people write about like addiction
addiction has almost nothing to do with
the drugs themselves and i make that
comment because um the vast majority
abuser for users for any drug
never become addicted and so if the vast
majority of users don't become addicted
then you have to move beyond the drug
when you're talking about the phenomena
interest in this case addiction and and
so when we think about addiction it has
much more to do with our psychosocial
environment than the drug itself
but that's not sexy
so addiction is even the property of the
environment not a property um a result
of the environment it certainly can be
there are people who are
suffering from uh uh co-occurring mental
illness like uh depression anxiety i
mean that's within the person of course
and that increases the likelihood for
addiction so that could that's um
not so much the environment but there
are people who
for example they have chronic
unrealistic expectations heaped on them
and those people are more likely to have
some problems with drugs
there are people who are just immature
not
develop having developed responsibility
skills they are likely to have some
problems if they
engage in some of these behaviors there
are people who lost their jobs covert
factories went away a wide range of
things and those people used to have
standing in their community now they
have none um those people might be
susceptible to having a drug related
problem if they indulge
all of these kind of issues are far more
important than the drug itself
so they could seek escape in a
particular drug i mean there is a
biochemical thing to each of these drugs
and some more some pull you in harder
than others when you need the escape
right when you're not doing well in life
what evidence you have for that belief i
don't i yeah because there is none there
is absolutely none i mean people say
stuff like that and um
that's the problem that's precisely the
problem see i'm operating from limited
personal evidence
well this is a problem though but we
have a scientific database yeah we don't
need personal evidence for this we have
in my book i try to go through some of
the science so people could unders
understand it's like
uh when you have a math problem you
don't want people saying well you know i
feel like this fuck what you feel what
does the data say
so
one of the problems with the data so one
day it is the the there's the studies
that you're doing this is excellent
research work but there's some of the
drugs are illegal yes and some are legal
um so you have just
it's unfortunate that some of the drugs
are illegal or how whatever you believe
but there's not enough of a data set of
uh public in the open use that's like
you in the wild data set it'd be nice to
do you know thousands of people and see
from all the different kinds of
environments and all that kind of stuff
to get an understanding i think we have
a substantial a substantial database but
people just ignore it got it
that said
let me ask you the question of
legalization
so
should in your view all drugs be
legalized
the drugs that people seek certainly
should be legally
regulated and available to adults so
when i say the drugs people seek like
cannabis mdma cocaine heroin um
those drugs certainly should be
available and some of the psychedelics
that people seek um now the thing about
it is that
some people uh
think that oh we'll be a free fall these
drugs are available to everyone that's
not true i mean it will be there will be
age requirements and maybe other
requirements but they should be
available and
we should also do like what we do with
alcohol we can put enough alcohol in a
bottle to kill you but we don't so we
regulate it such that the amount that's
in the bottle uh enhances the safety and
minimizes the potential harms
we can do the same thing with these
other drugs and we can also say okay we
won't be selling intravenous
preparations of any of these drugs these
the drugs that the routes of
administration will be oral and i don't
know let's say uh
uh intranasal
again routes of administration the dose
that you have in each unit um
all can minimize harm based on how you
do these things and we can do that we
have the technology we have the know-how
so you're actually making me think about
alcohol a little bit so if i were say
the drugs become legalized in the way
you're describing and me
lex wanted to
as an adult explore some of these drugs
what are some procedures do you think
for sort of safe
positive exploration of those drugs
the reason i say i'm thinking about
alcohol because i don't think
besides not putting enough alcohol in a
bottle to kill you
i don't think anyone ever gave me
specific instructions i think it's kind
of word of mouth and examples of people
doing the wrong thing you kind of get it
through osmosis that way yeah is that
basically what we would do this kind of
free exploration of use no we have to
change our education about these things
i mean
um let's just take a drug like cocaine
cocaine is a stimulant
and you want to make sure people
understand that they shouldn't be taking
cocaine their bedtime and you know they
need to get a certain amount of
hours of sleep
and um they need to get up in the
morning cocaine probably isn't a drug
for you at night certainly not
um certainly not amphetamines at night
for most people and also if you want to
make sure that you they need to
understand that cocaine
can also disrupt your food intake not as
much as the amphetamines but all of
these kind of things people need to know
so they can have
proper nutrition and they can
time their drug use around these other
important functions that's the same
human night so we have to make sure that
we um educate people we can't just uh
throw people in a while that's stupid
i gotta tell you i mean for me
and even given your book and for people
listening to this it's still
it's still tough to hear that the thing
we should be concerned about with
cocaine
is the same as with caffeine
don't take it before bed and the thing
we should be concerned with heroin
is constipation yeah
okay
but
the questions i keep wanting to ask you
i should be asking the same things of
alcohol
but when you're not doing well
psychologically in the ways you describe
when the environment is not right
there's some aspect in which saying that
drugs can be used responsibly and
effectively and mostly positive
can uh give those folks a pass
to use it instead of working on
themselves and fixing their environment
first
i i don't know what what do you want me
to say to that i mean they have access
to alcohol they have access to them
you know we live in this country called
the united states where our declaration
of independence says that
we are free to live like we want to live
so long as we don't uh disrupt other
people from doing the same
um but it's remarkable to me how we try
to control the behaviors of other people
that's just
remarkable
yeah
and uh that's partially what your book
is about i mean it's not just about
drugs it's about freedom that's the
bigger issue that we can't get to it's
like
this issue of
freedom and freedom comes with a
tremendous amount of responsibility i am
responsible for my neighbors my brothers
i mean
i can't
impede their freedoms like some people
think that their freedom supersedes
everybody else's freedoms no and that's
what i'm trying to remind people in this
book
i am
uh responsible to you um as a citizen um
and
we're in this together
and i tried to make that point in the
book and people
have conveniently ignored things like
that
do you think the war on drugs
has done more positive or negative for
the world
depends on which world you live in the
war on drugs has been hugely beneficial
to law enforcement
to the media
to people who make bullshit tv shows um
uh the sopranos the what the wire all of
those shows they benefit from this kind
of nonsense um
um
who else have benefited people who
provide treatment many of them benefit
from the war on drugs the folks who do
urine testing for drugs they've all
benefited they're making mad money
people who run prisons
the phone companies who charge the
prisoners on the people who run the
hotels that are around the prisons where
people's family have to come and stay
the restaurants they they're making out
like bandits
but many of us are getting screwed as a
society
we
in general we're getting screwed but
there are people who are just benefiting
handsomely that's why it continues
politicians benefit i mean whether
you're democrat or republican you have
the same stance on drugs anyway so you
they all benefit from this
so many questions i want to ask you
because you're challenging a lot of
beliefs that people have
about drugs about society in general so
it's difficult for me to ask the right
questions here but
if you could if you were uh with a
sort of uh snap of a finger change the
world
what from a policy perspective
would you and from just a i don't know a
human to human perspective what would
you like to see in the united states of
america
in terms of that fixes some of the
problems we're discussing here first of
all i would not we wouldn't be arresting
anybody for drugs anymore that would go
away
um the folks who are imprisoned for
drugs that would go away their records
would be a sponge that would just go
away
and then we work on a system
to make sure that uh responsible adults
can
legally attain obtain these substances
and we will have a corresponding
educational system to teach people how
to do this um
that's where i would start initially
yeah the the arresting for drug use
or anything drug related is absurd
especially in the context of how
destructive alcohol is and tobacco
alcohol can be destructive to some
people but alcohol also is a
hugely beneficial drug to be honest
which i couldn't have gotten through
uh many of the sort of receptions and
functions i had to go through as the
chair of the department um without
alcohol yeah you have a line i really
liked um the vast amount of predictably
favorable favorable drug effects
intrigued me so much so that i expanded
my own drug use to take advantage of the
wide array of beneficial outcomes
specific drugs can offer the the part
that entertained me was this to put this
in personal terms my position as
department chairman from 2016 to 2019
was far more detrimental to my health
than my drug use ever was i mean there
is there is a standard we're treating
drugs certain kinds of drugs that's
completely different understand we're
treating everything else in our lives
yeah i mean
it's it's almost difficult to snap out
of it as i'm listening to you and and
reading your work um
it's it's uh
it's difficult because it's like
why is everybody living this
idea that certain drugs
are so horribly destructive and others
are not
and we just kind of fix that idea and
then there's this narrative
um
i hate to be so cynical to think that
there is just like a system that just
propagates narratives
i always kind of think that uh truth
wins out
truth is the best narrative i believe
that too obviously that's why i'm out
here and putting subjecting myself to
this sort of criticism and so forth but
because i believe that truth
ultimately wins out but i might be wrong
but uh i have to live my life
like it's true otherwise then i have no
hope then why be here well kind of if
you can steal man or at least show
respect to a criticism you've i'm sure
received
uh quite a bit of criticism for your
work i i've heard quite a bit of bs
criticism sort of ignorance
stuff that don't actually pay attention
to your work
but is there some serious like is there
some pushback that makes you think
uh twice
people say like i'm presenting a too
rosy picture of drugs you know like um i
don't want to do that or i don't want
people to think that i'm not aware of
the potential negative effects of any
activity including drug use um and so
i do acknowledge that uh there are
potential harms associated with drugs i
acknowledge that in the book
but the fact remains the beneficial
effects far outweigh the potential
harmful effects and we have technology
information to help people to minimize
the likelihood of the negative effects
but
this sort of approach that we have where
we
say we're only exclusively presenting
the harmful effects and that should make
people keep people safe i just have a
problem with that but i i certainly i
i take the point that um people say
there are negative effects absolutely i
absolutely agree
what do you if i can just talk about
specific drugs um what's the difference
between opioids and
benzos for example
specifically
i mean these are drugs
that you often read about being misused
at scale i mean the misuse is the
problem right yeah
no matter what the drug is yes
and that's actually what you're pushing
for is education and it should be it
should be legal and should be good so
people should know what's the difference
between um
proper use
positive use and misuse
i mean one public figure who has been
going through this is uh jordan peterson
he's been public about his struggle of
getting off benzos the withdrawal he's
going through i mean what are your
thoughts about
um
the misuse of benzos or opioids and so
on the epic epidemic that people talk
about
yeah i don't know
jordan's specific case but certainly
with benzodiazepines in general we
talked about withdrawal earlier when i
said that with alcohol withdrawal you
can die so benzos and alcohol they're
closely related so benzoyl withdrawal
too can kill you
just like alcohol so when we think about
the effects that
benzodiazepines produce think about the
effects that alcohol produce they're
comparable or similar and so i know
that it's a difficult one to
wean yourself off if you develop the
dependence but we we have uh protocols
for that
and i hope he's okay
it's interesting to say we have
protocols for that but from my
understanding was that
like the protocols aren't standardized
it feels like
a lot of doctors aren't as helpful as
they could be in this process like it's
a bit of a mess
certainly with withdrawal they're more
uh standardized than anything so
uh like if someone is going through
alcohol withdrawal there is a standard
protocol that most physicians in this
business they follow and the same is
true with uh
benzo withdrawal but the thing where it
gets murky is when they're treating
addiction itself so when you're thinking
about the substance use disorder in the
dsm not just withdrawal but the entire
addiction that's where you have this
sort of uh
divergence or
diversity diversity in terms of
approaches and many of those approaches
are rubbish
what uh can you just elaborate
like technically what the term addiction
means that you're referring to when i
use the term addiction i'm referring to
the diagnostics this statistical manual
of the american psychiatric association
number five now the dsm-5 that's never
been wrong right oh
no
i'm just kidding oh you're right
that's that point is well taken and your
point is that um um
their definition of substance use
disorder that's addiction that's what
i'm talking about but that definition
continues to evolve and so you're right
they still
are working it out we're getting new
information from scientific studies and
so forth and so it's supposed to be
incorporated into the dsm but uh there
are some problems with the dsm like for
example um they also have this sort of
once an addict always an addict thing
and there's no evidence to support that
um but it's evolving and it's the
definition
that people in science and medicine use
and so we all know we're talking about
the same language when we call someone a
substance use disorder patient or
someone who meets criteria for addiction
we all are speaking the same language
we're not saying that simply because
this person used heroin they are an
addict that's not what we're saying you
have to meet these criteria where you
have
disruptions in your psychosocial
functioning that's one and two uh you
the person are distressed by this these
dis these uh disruptions so people have
to meet those two basic criteria before
we say they are addicted
so once an addict owes an addict this
idea
uh so i've
i mean some of it is always mapped to
the person all right but i've just
the people i've interacted with who have
struggled with alcohol addiction i i
don't know if what the proper term is it
seems like with alcohol anonymous
the process of
putting that addiction behind you
is a very very long process it's
surprisingly long to me that almost
seems like a whole life like he's not
always an addict but it takes decades
it seems like uh
what is that
what
can you maybe just
from your understanding as a scientist
from your understanding is a human who
studies human nature why does it take so
long to treat
to
to to deal with that
uh addiction well you you cited alcohol
anonymous right and so
i don't think of alcohol anonymous as
like a
a a treatment that i would send any
relative to you know like for a
drug-related problem you know i think
alcohol anonymous a-a is really good for
social interactions um making sure
people um
have a social group and they have peers
i mean that's a good thing we all need
that social interaction
but i don't think they know much about
drugs that's not that's uh it's like
saying uh
well you know my uncle broke his knee
and uh he he has his support group and
they said this
um
and then we follow that uh that doesn't
make any sense but in our society
judges even sentence people to go to a.a
uh are you kidding me uh but but that's
the kind of thing that has been allowed
to happen in this society because we
think of drugs
as this moral failing or drug drug
addiction as it's moral failing
and any idiot can provide treatment and
no disrespect to aaa because i think
what they do
is a lot more than what some people do
because at least they have the social
these social interactions you have a
social group um that's better than what
a lot of these other idiots out here do
well in that social support group
unrelated to the drug it helps cure some
of the environment issues you might be
in that's the whole point absolutely so
we kind of coupled the drug to the
environment but the reality is as as you
argue
most the problems come from the
environment certainly with people who
are experiencing drug related problems
with most of the people not all but most
there are differences
like that psychedelics
and uh like psilocybin has versus
alcohol yeah i personally think
uh you know i've enjoyed both
experiences in different ways i
is it possible or is this are we getting
into the realm of poetry
to describe the benefits like how it
alters the how the different drugs alter
the mind
and the places it can take you that
produce a positive experience yeah
no it's very real you know like
some drugs uh take people in places that
other drugs can't and that's that's very
real
i have friends uh some of them you know
they um
they for example say that they've never
had an experience like the one they had
with ayahuasca and they've done a number
of sort of things
but they did the ayahuasca in a setting
with
a shaman and
this group and
they felt like
they actually began to heal or solve
some problems that they were trying to
solve for some years and that's that's
great that's great for them
and nothing else does it for them like
that and that's absolutely fantastic um
all i
argue is that um
if that kind of thing happens for you
with ayahuasca facili with psilocybin
with some other
psychedelic
why isn't it possible
that heroin does that for someone or
cocaine does that for someone else or
mdma does it for someone that that's it
that's interesting to imagine like a
shaman for heroin
like why not
and or cocaine you said creating an
environment for yourself for use of
these different substances and that
environment has a
has a very
uh
strong impact on the actual experience
that you have
but i mean so um
cocaine is an upper
and then
yeah the way we define drugs like uppers
and down downers that's uh
that's a really uh
kind of inappropriate way but it's a
quick way but so we certainly say
cocaine is an upper or stimulant yes but
um
you know it depends on the activity of
the person before they take the drug say
like if you're like really active before
taking a drug like cocaine it might
actually calm you you know so it all
depends on the activity of the person
before they take the drug i remember uh
i don't know if you know matthew johnson
is of course
he did all these studies on or
i remember just reading a paper i didn't
get a chance to talk with him much about
it but it was about condom use
and cocaine
and then you know what like the doses
and whether people are more less likely
like the unsafe thing there
is the
using or not using or not using i guess
uh condoms during
sexual intercourse i don't know i just i
love that these drugs that have um
connotation probably because of
hollywood negative connotations are
actually being studied by science and
then they actual impact they have and
what are the negative effects again in
those studies often
the positive effects are difficult to
quantify i think maybe i guess you can
from self-report and so on
but positive effects are not difficult
to quantify
you ask people about their euphoria
uh you can see how well people are
getting along like in our studies that
we have people
uh sometimes in groups and you see how
well they get along um on the various
drug conditions or placebo conditions uh
it's really
it's not that difficult then you can see
these uh amazing studies with uh like
rick goblin like the looking at mdma and
combined with therapy
like how you can overcome certain ptsd
things or depression and so on
yeah it's really interesting it's uh
it's really interesting
i gotta ask you because you mentioned
the wire
do you think the wire using movies like
transporting do you think they're
ultimately destruct because okay
yes they celebrate murder right the
godfather a little bit
yeah but another one i mean it's like
these racist ass motherfuckers
and they also are killing people but yet
they say we don't do drugs what kind of
shit is that yeah i mean people who are
doing drugs
psilocybin or whatever
the thing is we're trying to be better
people and trying to make our society
better and you're killing people and you
are
denigrating
people for using are you fucking kidding
me and we let them get away with that as
a society do you see those movies i
apologize if i'm not sufficiently
informed you see them as denigrating
drugs of course i mean the godfather
yes that's right that's a good example
and the godfather sopranos is all about
that i mean christopher is using heroin
in the sopranos
and
they have an intervention at that one in
one one season and
they are
they are denigrating him it's are you
kidding me you just cut somebody's head
off yeah but they're to be fair they
were denigrating i think all drugs
and then they're drinking alcohol in the
butter bean
yeah yeah
first of all they're killing people yeah
they don't have any space
none to denigrate somebody who's just
trying to
alter their consciousness are you
kidding me and not bothering anyone else
but you know there's a lot of other mob
movies that you know scarface celebrates
the murder and the drugs equally
so i i mean it it doesn't
it celebrates all of the
just uh not just drugs or so on it's
those movies
you know i loved all those movies i'm
from miami i loved scarface i even liked
the sopranos that i started looking at
that shit with a critical eye and see
what it's doing yeah um
but scarface is dependent upon the
american viewer
having a certain view of people who deal
in drugs and that view is that these
people are animals basically and in the
end uh the animal kills himself with too
much cocaine and he was high and that's
what they show and so it's like
what the fuck
so it's leveraging is playing into
not the better angels of our nature
the question don't take away these great
movies for me but it's true you have to
think about them critically in the
continent wait wait wait wait wait wait
i like these movies it's not a matter of
taking away it's a matter of making the
writers
uh be more honest to the reality that's
that's it that's true that's really true
and the the writers the people the
culture all of it i mean they write
these things you you know i just think
about some some hip-hop artists they say
like this is real this is my experience
and so forth
and that's how these movie writers they
write this bullshit and then say well
this is real um
anyway i i i get so upset talking about
it because i know the harm is doing and
i know those kind of movies are the
reason that we have this war on drugs um
and all of these people are going to
jail because of those kind of movies
in the epilogue of your book you quote
james baldwin you cannot know you will
discover on the journey what you will do
with what you find or
what you find will do to you
so let me ask how has drug use or the
study of drugs change you as a human
being uh it just helped me think about
other people's experience right so
how other how we're all connected like
going to northern ireland i don't know
if you know much about the situation
with the troubles and
what those people went through
and so i see people there
northern ireland by the way is all white
and you see those people there suffering
for the same reasons that people in
appalachian are suffering for um
neglected by politicians who told them
lies about drugs and not dealing with
the real problems like west virginia for
example
their water is polluted the factories
have gone away people are desperate and
they're blaming drugs are you kidding me
so
the politicians don't have to bring back
the jobs so we don't have to
really make sure they have clean
drinking water things of that nature and
so those people are connected to the
people in northern ireland they're
connected to the people in brownsville
they're connected to the people in other
places in the united states for the same
reason they're connected to the people
in
sao paulo uh brazil
same thing people are catching hell for
the same reason in the philippines for
the same reason and and that's why i
feel so strongly about this thing
because i know
there are people getting paid and their
paycheck is predicated on subjugating
and the suffering of those other people
so when we hear about
the destructive effects of drugs
it's essentially
a scapegoat
for the failures of leaders and
politicians to help alleviate the
suffering of people in those communities
absolutely it's so easy to say
i'm going to rid your community of drugs
i'm going to put more cops on the street
if you want a problem
not to be solved
just give it to the military or the cops
you had a tough childhood growing up in
miami like you said
one memory's
memory stands out in particular that was
formative
and helping make you the man you are
that's so hard to you know
say
you know my grandmother was really
important
so maybe just her
trying to make sure that i think
critically that was i guess that's the
biggest one
so you moved in with her your parents
split
six seven yeah what have you learned
about life from her
be self-sufficient
be critical and keep your eyes open and
watch out for the okie doke you know and
that's what
this whole drug thing is about it's the
okie doke people
um
it really boils down to
just simple thing we're all similar in
that we're all just trying to live our
life trying to take care of our kids we
want the best for our kids all of us but
yet
somehow
um we are being we've been made to
believe that we are different in in that
way but fundamentally we're all the same
so when people are
seeking to feel pleasure to feel better
uh why don't we celebrate that instead
we denigrate people for that i mean if i
feel better i'm more likely to treat you
well
i gotta say still though you're going
against the grain
and uh you're a colombia
it takes a lot of guts to sort of speak
out about these ideas so boldly
um i don't know how to ask this question
where do you find the guts
what uh
because it's also perhaps inspirational
to others in different disciplines that
are sort of taking on the conventional
wisdom of the day
and challenging it what does it take to
do that what advice would you give to
others
like you kind of a little bit afraid to
do so once you know you cannot not know
as they say and so i have to look in the
mirror and then looking in the mirror i
have to face myself
have i lived honestly
and if i can't face myself then
uh what am i doing here um
you know that's how i i see it
one of the things that people don't
really talk about
with drugs and people who die from some
drug related death and
i've been thinking about this a whole
lot over the past couple years it's like
some of these drugs can take you to a
place where you feel so optimistic and
positive about
humans our fellow humans
and you want to
do your best to contribute
and because you know the possibilities
of what we can be as a society
and then
you come up with resistance and you like
you say there are a lot there's a lot of
resistance and people just have a hard
time
and and so if you know
humans can be better
and they refuse to be better
why be here
as someone who knows that they we can do
this better i certainly don't want to do
it the way we're doing it
so you kind of see drugs
as
mechanisms for potentially elevating the
human spirit sort of
making people feel better so you want to
communicate that message so it's that
plus
the fact that drugs are used as
scapegoat to uh
to not alleviate the suffering of
certain communities so those two those
two things come up one one of the sort
of main points of the book two was to
try and get people to understand
um possibilities that we could have
if we embraced um uh certain drug use uh
if we allowed adults to do this sort of
thing uh
relationships uh can be better um a wide
range of beneficial effects people would
be
or can learn to be more magnanimous um
all of these pro-social things that we
say we value
in your previous book high price you
talk about rap and djing chapter five
there's a nice picture of you djing from
1983.
so uh let me ask
who in your view this is the toughest
question of this interview uh is the
greatest hip-hop artist of all time
maybe give some candidates oh wow who is
the greatest hip-hop artist so
you know i don't know if i'm qualified
to make that back because you you know
um
uh
when i
i have to go back to like gil scott
herron you know like people think of him
as one of the fathers of hip-hop um
that's my all-time favorite you know um
and people like chuck d from public
enemy some of the things that they were
doing i was really digging but even
though
i was digging like public enemy um but
even they got it wrong on drugs even gil
scott herron got it wrong on drugs um
but
they were doing so much other good stuff
uh it helped me to develop as a person
and so
um
i think uh
like my son is a hip-hop artist now i
think those those folks who are in the
game now they might be they are a lot
more qualified to talk about who's the
greatest hip-hop artist i i'm not
qualified the evolution i mean have you
tracked the evolution from sort of the
90s with uh wu-tang and tupac and biggie
and then to uh what we have today so
there's there's just been a crazy amount
of progress that's like almost difficult
to track yeah i mean i really love what
they're doing i like what they accept
the part where
they get over 40 and they become fucking
cops on tv i mean other than that i dig
what's that about
yeah i don't understand that you know
but that's what they do again those
uh this sort of glorious glorification
of cops
that's dangerous for a society
and and those cats who do that kind of
thing you know i have a problem with
that is it all sort of to push back a
little bit because i come from the
soviet union where there's a huge amount
of corruption and when i see what's
going on with cops in this country
there's a lot of proper criticism you
can apply but like relative to other
places
this is well on in on so many ways this
country is incredible
uh is your criticism towards
cops or towards what cops are asked to
do yeah towards what cops are asked to
do
cops provide the shield for politician
and those in power uh absolutely because
i was in the military i spent four years
in the military and i did what i was
told to do and i was ignorant and
and thought i was doing the right thing
and i
did what i was told to do and so just
like these guys are doing what they're
told to do
but no i my real beef is with the power
structure the folks who are telling them
what to do um and
also those those the the folks who go
play cops on on television um that
imagery that sort of um
glorifying cops that's a problem in a
democracy
yeah all sides of the glorification of
the drug war is a problem yeah
if i can just linger in a little longer
in terms of the effects of drugs
on the the positive like mind expanding
uh components of it
um
what
have uh mind altering drugs teach you
about the human mind sort of from a
neuroscience not even like a
biochemical
but just like the human mind is amazing
right yeah the places it can go
have
like are there some insights you've
learned yeah from studying drugs about
the mind
yeah
can i start from a neurochemical
perspective first and then we'll go
larger just from a neurochemical
perspective i mean everything i know
about the brain i learned through drugs
you know because of my interest in drugs
so i learned a lot about dopamine
neurons in certain regions of the brain
about neuropathy neurons and
a wide range of other sort of how neural
transmission happens because of drugs
and so that's a really
valuable tool lessons for me uh but then
when we think that we
uh move out a bit and we think more
globally what have i learned in terms of
the mind
from drugs
i have really learned
how to be more forgiving of people
and myself
and
um
tolerant and more tolerant of people
and
certainly learned a lot more about
empathy as a result of
drug use
uh and like i said earlier
i'm
learning what we can be as a species and
it's quite incredible uh but because of
drugs
yeah there's a certain property of drugs
in different ways they take you out of
your body like
they help you evaluate yourself from
like a third person perspective it's
almost like you have a consciousness in
here and you get to step outside of it a
little bit
i mean that's kind of what meditation
does too all of these processes that's
what a hell of a good workout does too
it makes you evaluate yourself and that
somehow
that allows you to
um be forgiving to yourself and
forgiving to others
sort of empathize he trains that part of
your brain so stepping outside of
yourself not taking yourself too
seriously yeah that that process and
different drugs do that
in different ways obviously i don't know
from personal experience than some of
them but
i'm i'm now curious you know it it um
it's unfortunate that the the
hollywood and different stories we have
uh demonize certain drugs and sort of
basically
i don't know make it difficult for
people like me to explore those ideas
but then
i'm really thankful for people like you
who are pushing the science forward and
are unafraid to talk about this kind of
stuff
because i'm really fascinated with
consciousness on the engineering side i
really want to build robots that are
that have elements of intelligence
emotion even consciousness and for that
we need to understand ourselves and
drugs is
all the different kinds of drugs if you
safely seems like an incredible tool to
understand ourselves and if we're
limiting ourselves from certain drugs
because of certain political games that
being played
it's sad
and people know this
a lot of middle to upper class people
know this the illicit drug trade
business
is a multi-million dollar industry
multi-billion dollar industry
that could not be supported by people
who are poor
and so and that and that has to be
supported by a lot of customers
and a lot of people around the world
know this
they're in the closet and in the book i
call for them to get out of the closet
so
we can start being more honest and we
can take the pressure off of those
people
who are not as privileged
like i said you're brave you're bold i
gotta ask you for some advice what
advice would you give to a young person
today high school
maybe undergrad and college
thinking about their career
thinking about how to live a life they
can be proud of
yeah whatever career they choose
just make sure
that they dedicate themselves to and be
the best at what they do first that's
what you have to do first uh like people
see me
um advocating for this position
30 years of science is in
these opinion this view um and trust me
i would be dismissed if i didn't know my
shit if i was not yeah you did the work
you proved yourself you're legit and by
by the people in the eyes of the people
who know absolutely so that's the main
thing that i would encourage people to
do really know your craft if you know
your craft um and then maybe you will be
a service to
your fellow citizens
there are so many people out here faking
the funk and they don't know their craft
and they're not a service to the people
that they claim to serve and that's a
problem and when you have
a fair number of people like that in
positions of power
your society is going to crumble
what about the scientific path
you recommend people get a phd
not necessarily you know
like my own children i don't recommend
that
so um
uh science came certainly my science can
be a bit very petty sort of space to be
in um
but it was the only sort of path that i
had
and so i i had to do it uh but uh no i
um i would really encourage people to
just
do something that they enjoy
and something that makes them happy
because the greater number of happy
people in our society
the better off we all are
all right since you mentioned happiness
gotta ask you about the pursuit of
happiness and the
the ridiculous question about meaning
do you think this life has meaning
what do you think is the meaning of life
i'm sorry i certainly hope it has
meaning i mean i'm i'm certainly trying
to live mind like it has meaning you
know um i really love my life now i just
got back from geneva um i
spent the summer abroad in europe and
trying to be in a more civilized place
where you can
enjoy yourself as a responsible adult
and then it allowed me to decompress and
then come back here um the thing about
coming back here is that you have to be
ready to fight and i don't want to fight
anymore you know i just want to be able
to help a society and people
and so i'll have to like keep a place in
europe to go and decompress and then
come back to be able to tolerate the
situation so
life for me has a lot of meaning i'm i'm
enjoying life
this is like um the the greatest the
best part of my life ever right now at
this moment it's just a joy
but you also enjoy the fight a little
bit or no i don't really i'm tired of
that you know it's like uh
why you
you're trying to i'm trying to help
people to see
how they can be happy
and then people are fighting me on that
i don't want to be happy i want to be
ignorant leave me alone that's what
people are saying
well so what is the source of joy for
you when you decompress
mdma is a source um you know in a place
where you don't have to worry about laws
that's like europe you can feel really
free yeah heroin can even be a nice uh
space if i'm in my own head
but with others mdma is great um
so uh but good friends good food um
yeah yeah
family love yeah that's right carl
you're an incredible human being you
really make me think everyone listens to
this um
you're i mean uh i'm really glad you
exist um i know you say you don't like
the fight but i'm really glad you're
fighting the fight because it's gonna
help a lot of people it's gonna help at
the very least
help a lot of people think and challenge
the conventions of the day
and maybe challenge them to find joy
i really appreciate you spending your
valuable time with me this was an
awesome conversation thank you so much
for talking thank you for having me man
thanks for listening to this
conversation with carl hart
to support this podcast please check out
our sponsors in the description and now
let me leave you with some words from
frank zappa
a drug is not bad a drug is a chemical
compound the problem comes in when
people who take drugs treat them like a
license to behave like an asshole
thank you for listening and hope to see
you next time
you