Recent years have seen a dramatic increase in start-ups and investors developing psychedelic medicines. Simeon Schanpper is a founder and managing partner of JLS Fund, a venture capital fund investing in plant based and psychedelic medicines that aim to heal illness and enhance wellness. We talked about the tensions between philanthropic and for-profit investment, the challenges and opportunities of this explosive new sector, and his own fascinating personal journey which included running a medi...
Dec 30, 2021•56 min•Ep. 25
For decades, sports have been regulating drug use among athletes, but of course, anytime you make a rule, people break it, and today we are going to talk to one of the NBA's best-known rule breakers. Stephen Jackson played fourteen years in the NBA, and he was described by Larry Bird as one of the toughest competitors he ever knew. Yet, throughout his whole career, he was a regular marijuana user. I'll talk to him today about why he found marijuana beneficial, how he managed to evade the system,...
Dec 23, 2021•51 min•Ep. 24
Matt Culley was an early adopter of vaping and became a prominent vaping activist. He's also worked as a product designer, consultant, and is a board member of Consumer Advocates for Smoke-free Alternatives Association. In this episode, he explains how and why e-cigarettes emerged, how the products and industry have evolved, and why he thinks vape shops should be thought of as for-profit harm reduction centers. Listen to this episode and let me know what you think. Our number is 1-833-779-2460. ...
Dec 16, 2021•1 hr•Ep. 23
The first sentence to Dimitri’s Wikipedia entry describes him as “a harm reductionist, activist, musician, poet, writer, anarchist, and psychedelic practitioner.” He spent years using large amounts of heroin and cocaine, then put that all behind him with the help of ibogaine, which prompted him to start helping others with underground ibogaine sessions, which got him arrested, which lead him to become a leader in providing innovative wellness services for people in harm reduction programs, which...
Dec 09, 2021•43 min•Ep. 22
Maia Szalavitz is among the most brilliant thinkers and writers about psychoactive drug use, addiction, treatment, altered states of consciousness and neuroscience. Her book, Unbroken Brain: A Revolutionary New Way of Understanding Addiction, was widely acclaimed for its analysis of addiction as not a crime but a learning disorder. Her latest book, Undoing Drugs, gave us an opportunity to talk about the pioneers in the United States, England and elsewhere who challenged conventional thinking abo...
Dec 02, 2021•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 21
As a holiday bonus episode, here's an interview I did with the podcast Ephemeral. To listen to more Ephemeral go to https://www.ephemeral.show or subscribe to the Ephemeral podcast . Let me know what you think. Our number is 1-833-779-2460. Our email is [email protected] . Or tweet at me, @ethannadelmann . Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Nov 25, 2021•42 min
Fifty million Americans suffer from chronic pain. Most of us know what happened when pharmaceutical opioids were over-marketed and overprescribed in the United States but few people appreciate how far the pendulum has now swung in the opposite direction, with many doctors now refusing to prescribe opioids even to patients who have clearly benefited from them. Kate Nicholson served as a civil rights attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice for 18 years, during which time she developed intractab...
Nov 18, 2021•55 min•Ep. 20
Afghanistan has produced most of the world's opium and heroin since the 1990s. With the Taliban's recent return to power, I was eager to talk with the world's leading expert on this subject, David Mansfield. I wanted to know why Afghanistan has occupied this role for so long, and how the Taliban’s involvement in illicit production and trade has changed over the years. Why is it we never hear about the sorts of narco-lords who became infamous in Mexico, Colombia and Burma? Could a different US an...
Nov 11, 2021•47 min•Ep. 19
Few people can explain harm reduction therapy better than Patt Denning. She’s a clinical psychologist who has played a pioneering role in developing the field, teaching and training thousands of health professionals. I talked with Patt about her own evolution in embracing harm reduction and how she teaches those who had been committed to 12-step and abstinence-only approaches. I asked her how she deals with people who have lost control of their drug use – and why a therapeutic session sometimes ...
Nov 04, 2021•38 min•Ep. 18
Carl Hart is one of the bravest academics I know. His specialty is neuropsychopharmacology. He's the Ziff Professor of Psychology at Columbia University. He's published hundreds of scientific articles on psychoactive drugs, including many which challenge conventional thinking. And he wrote a book earlier this year in which he discussed his experience using heroin while serving as chairman of the Psychology Department. We talked about that, of course, but I also wanted his perspective on all sort...
Oct 28, 2021•54 min•Ep. 17
Professor Elias Dakwar at Columbia University has conducted research studies – supported by federal funding -- into the use of ketamine combined with mindfulness meditation to help people struggling with addiction and depression. I wanted to understand everything about this: Why is he among the very few researchers to receive funding from the National Institute on Drug Abuse for this sort of work? How does ketamine compare to psilocybin and other psychedelics? What is the experience of subjects ...
Oct 21, 2021•52 min•Ep. 16
I wanted to try something different with this episode: to team up with a brilliant friend and colleague to answer questions from PSYCHOACTIVE listeners. Dr. Julie Holland is a psychiatrist and psychopharmacologist who has written many outstanding books, including most recently Good Chemistry: The Science of Connection, from Soul to Psychedelics. Julie is a long-time believer in the potential of psychoactive experiences to open our worlds and heal our minds. And, as you'll hear in her answers, sh...
Oct 14, 2021•59 min•Ep. 14
The federal government claimed that Leonard Pickard was quite possibly the biggest producer of LSD in history. There’s no telling if that was true, but a judge sentenced him to two life sentences without parole in a high-security prison. Leonard thought he’d die there, but he was released late last year after serving twenty years. We talked about the Brotherhood of Underground Chemists who produced much of the world’s LSD in the late twentieth century – their motivations, beliefs and what distin...
Oct 07, 2021•1 hr 20 min•Ep. 14
If someone had suggested just five years ago that the day would soon come when the majority leader of the U.S. Senate would co-sponsor a comprehensive bill to legalize marijuana federally, most people would have asked what that person was smoking. But that day has come, with New York’s Senator Chuck Schumer joining with New Jersey Senator Cory Booker and Oregon Senator Ron Wyden in circulating a draft Cannabis Administration & Opportunity Act they say will soon be introduced. Senator Schumer...
Sep 30, 2021•25 min•Ep. 10
Patrick Radden Keefe is a brilliant journalist and staff writer for The New Yorker. His recent book, Empire of Pain, examines the ways in which the pharmaceutical company Purdue Pharma contributed to the opioid epidemic in the United States by aggressively marketing OxyContin to physicians and patients. His story is unique in its focus on the owners of that company – the Sacklers. Patrick's revelations about the ways in which Purdue and the Sacklers gained advantage and avoided responsibility th...
Sep 23, 2021•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 12
I first crossed paths with Larry Krasner almost thirty years ago, when he was a young activist attorney representing a needle exchange program in Philadelphia. Today he is district attorney of Philadelphia and one of the highest-profile progressive prosecutors in the United States. We talked about what it’s like to switch sides after decades of criminal defense and to occupy the single most powerful law enforcement position in city government. I asked about his support for local harm reduction p...
Sep 16, 2021•48 min•Ep. 11
In the early 2000s, Clive Bates was one of Britain's foremost advocates against cigarette smoking and Big Tobacco. Today he is one of the world's foremost proponents of e-cigarettes as a way to help people quit smoking and reduce the harms caused by combustible cigarettes. There's no better teacher about tobacco harm reduction than Clive, which is why I pressed him on the toughest questions: Aren't the risks of e-cigarettes still unknown? Shouldn't we be concerned about people developing a lifel...
Sep 10, 2021•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 10
Tim Ferriss is an entrepreneur, investor, podcast host and productivity guru who first gained fame as author of the "4-Hour" self-help book series. During the past few years, he has focused much of his attention on psychedelics and psychedelic-assisted therapy both to deal with his own trauma and to help others. He has invested in the nascent psychedelics industry and contributed millions of dollars to support research as a philanthropist and fundraiser. I’d never met Tim before. We talked about...
Sep 02, 2021•57 min•Ep. 9
Dr. Nora Volkow has headed the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), which funds a majority of the world’s research in the area, since the early years of George W. Bush’s administration. I was pleasantly surprised when she agreed to join me for an episode of PSYCHOACTIVE since I’ve been highly critical of the agency’s priorities and its failure to fund important domains of research for what appear to be political reasons. I pressed Dr. Volkow on a host of questions I’d long wanted to ask...
Aug 26, 2021•57 min•Ep. 8
Juan Manuel Santos was president of Colombia from 2010 to 2018, during which time he won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to negotiate a peace treaty to resolve the multi-decade conflict with the FARC guerrilla group. He also emerged as the outstanding political leader in Latin America, indeed the world, advocating for far-reaching reform of global drug policy while still in office. We discussed his interactions with Presidents Obama and Trump, as well as other Latin American presidents, du...
Aug 19, 2021•47 min•Ep. 7
Michael Pollan is an extraordinary journalist and thinker whose writing about food and drugs has educated and influenced tens of millions of readers. No book in recent history has done so much to enlighten people about the benefits of psychedelic-assisted therapy as his 2018 best-selling How to Change Your Mind. His latest book, This is Your Mind on Plants, examines three psychoactive drugs: opium, caffeine, and mescaline. But I first met Michael in 1997, when he wrote a prescient article about ...
Aug 12, 2021•48 min•Ep. 6
More people died last year from a drug overdose than from gun shootings, motor vehicle accidents, drownings and AIDS combined! Few people bring greater research and insight to this issue than Dan Ciccarone, a physician and professor at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), who has studied illicit drug markets, communities and consumers for two decades. We talked about the role of prescription opioids and street heroin, why the fentanyls are so deadly, and why COVID made the problem...
Aug 05, 2021•44 min•Ep. 5
When New York legalized marijuana in late March, it did so in a way that instantly became the new gold standard for how best to legally regulate marijuana. No one deserves more credit for this victory than Melissa Moore, director of New York State advocacy efforts at the Drug Policy Alliance, who spearheaded the campaign over the past two years. Melissa explains how the advocacy effort and ultimate legislation were profoundly shaped by prior struggles over gross racial disparities in marijuana a...
Jul 29, 2021•51 min•Ep. 4
Dan Savage is the famed podcaster and columnist on sex and relationships. We talked all about drugs and sex – what works, what doesn’t, how our brains are wired for risk, and how there’s no clear line between use and abuse when it comes to sex or drugs. We got personal, with Dan describing how MDMA (“Ecstasy”) saved his marriage. And we compared perspectives on the struggles for gay rights and for drug policy reform. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See om...
Jul 22, 2021•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 3
Yale Law Professor James Forman won the Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for his courageous and remarkably insightful book, Locking Up Our Own, in which he reflected on his experience as a public defender in Washington, DC in the 1990s. Many of James’ clients were young Black men getting arrested and often locked up for drug offenses and other drug-related crimes. He saw himself engaged in the unfinished work of the civil rights movement and needed to understand why so many Black citizens and even politic...
Jul 15, 2021•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 2
The pioneering physician explains why there are no good or bad drugs, just good or bad relationships with drugs. There’s no one who has shaped my own thinking about drugs so much as Andrew Weil. Andy is famous as the force behind integrative medicine – the synthesis of traditional and alternative medicine – but he first became known to me and many others for his writing on drugs and consciousness, with books like The Natural Mind, From Chocolate to Morphine and The Marriage of the Sun and the Mo...
Jul 15, 2021•48 min•Ep. 1
Rolling Stone called me “the Real Drug Czar.” I’m Ethan Nadelmann and this is Psychoactive, the show about all things drugs. We want to hear from you. Our number is 1-833-779-2460. Our email is [email protected] Or tweet at me, @ethannadelmann . Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Jul 15, 2021•8 min
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Jul 12, 2021•2 min
