Netflix released a new documentary series last week, How to Change Your Mind , based on Michael Pollan’s book by the same name about psychedelics and medicine. The next episode of PSYCHOACTIVE, out Thursday, is my interview with Rick Doblin, who has played a pioneering role in psychedelics research and advocacy for four decades. He is featured in episode 3 of the 4-part Netflix series. Today, however, we’re reposting the PSYCHOACTIVE episode from last year in which I talked with Michael Pollan a...
Jul 18, 2022•48 min
Dr. Julie Holland is a psychiatrist and psychopharmacologist who has written and edited many outstanding books about drugs, including most recently Good Chemistry: The Science of Connection, from Soul to Psychedelics. Julie and I teamed up last year to answer questions submitted by Psychoactive listeners. We enjoyed it so much, and the feedback was so positive, that we decided to do it again. This time the questions involved the safety of GHB, marijuana dependence, the relationship between drugs...
Jul 14, 2022•1 hr 3 min•Season 2Ep. 53
What is microdosing? Why do so many people swear by it? But does it really work? Dr. Sophia Korb is a therapist and researcher who worked for the Fadiman Group on the largest microdosing study in the world. We talked about the findings from that study, including perceived benefits and downsides, why people start or stop microdosing, and patterns of consumption including combining tiny doses of psychedelics with chocolate, lion’s mane mushrooms or niacin. I was curious about similarities and diff...
Jul 07, 2022•1 hr 15 min•Season 2Ep. 52
Marijuana was integral to the evolving culture wars of the 1970s, with long criminal sentences meted out to some while others flouted the law with alacrity. No one was more central to the battles over marijuana policy than Keith Stroup, who founded the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) in 1970 and directed the organization for most of the decade. His allies spanned the spectrum of respectability from Harvard professors and former high level government officials to Go...
Jun 30, 2022•1 hr 19 min•Season 2Ep. 51
How does marijuana affect driving? Can one learn to drive safely while high? Are there reliable tests for detecting marijuana-impaired driving? How accurate are simulator tests of people driving under the influence of marijuana? Why do marijuana users tend to think they’re driving worse than they actually are? Has marijuana legalization resulted in more motor vehicle accidents and deaths? How are laws changing in this area? No one is more knowledgeable or thoughtful about these questions than Pa...
Jun 23, 2022•1 hr 17 min•Season 2Ep. 50
Is it possible that MDMA and psychedelics offer a master key for reopening the “critical periods” in our infancy when the brain’s development and maturation is strongly dependent on experience or environmental influences? Gul Dolen, a brilliant neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins University, has approached this crucial question by administering these drugs not just to humans but also mice and octopuses. Her research suggests that these drugs are proving so valuable therapeutically ...
Jun 16, 2022•1 hr 15 min•Season 2Ep. 49
Vancouver’s drug policies are among the most progressive in North America but the city still suffers from high rates of fatal overdose, mostly involving fentanyl. Garth Mullins has been part of the drug scene in Vancouver for many years: as a former heroin consumer who now takes a daily dose of methadone; as a journalist who joined with other drug user activists in launching an award winning podcast, Crackdown, about the overdose crisis; and as a forceful advocate for allowing illicit drug...
Jun 09, 2022•1 hr 13 min•Season 2Ep. 48
In spite of a massive spike in overdose death, BC’s government still refuses to offer a genuinely safe supply of drugs. Eris Nyx and Jeremy Kalicum tell the story of how the Drug User Liberation Front has stepped up to do what the policy makers refuse to do themselves: offer people a safe version of the drugs they already use. Then, Crackdown’s science advisor, Professor Ryan McNeil talks about his recently published work on BC’s “risk mitigation guidelines.” W...
Jun 06, 2022•49 min•Season 2Ep. 48
I first met Amanda Feilding in the late 1990s, when she was launching the Beckley Foundation to conduct and support research on psychedelics. I must admit that I failed to anticipate how successful and influential she would become, with Amanda described in the media as “the queen of consciousness” and her Beckley Foundation playing a leading role in psychedelics research and advocacy not just in Britain but globally. We talked about her life and loves, her theories about the power of...
Jun 02, 2022•54 min•Season 2Ep. 47
David Simon is the co-creator and head writer of the HBO series “The Wire” (2002-08) and “We Own This City” (2022) as well as other outstanding TV series on policing, drug dealing, music, porn and the potential for fascism in the United States. We discussed the ways in which the war on drugs has undermined, distorted and corrupted effective policing; how issues of race and class manifest, or not, in policing and drug policies; and the extent to which Baltimore’s pro...
May 26, 2022•1 hr 13 min•Season 2Ep. 46
Adam Strauss is an actor and comedian who created a play, The Mushroom Cure, about his own struggles with OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) and his attempts to cure, or at least ameliorate the symptoms, with psychedelics. Critics have described his show as “a hilarious ride through OCD,” “a fabulous, perceptive trip,” and “hugely intelligent and incredibly engaging.” Adam and I discussed his life with OCD, how OCD compares to other addictions and forms of me...
May 19, 2022•1 hr 15 min•Season 2Ep. 45
Drug policy in Russia is -– no surprise -- highly repressive. But that was not entirely the case in the early 2000s, when dozens of harm reduction programs operated around the country and a drug liberalization law resulted in fifty thousand people being released from prison. Anya Sarang is probably Russia’s best known harm reduction advocate. We discussed the evolution of illicit drug use, markets and policies in her country, including the transformative impact of the rapid shift to ...
May 12, 2022•1 hr 11 min•Season 2Ep. 44
When Rodrigo Duterte became president of The Philippines in 2016, he launched a drug war that was distinguished by his encouragement and approval of extra-judicial killings by police officials and their associates. Although widely condemned by foreign governments, this drug war, which has killed between ten and twenty thousand people, appears to retain the support of most Filipinos. Gideon Lasco is a brave scholar who has researched both illicit drug use and the drug war in his country. We talke...
May 05, 2022•1 hr 3 min•Season 2Ep. 43
Until it was supplanted by LSD in the 1950’s and 60’s, mescaline was the best known and most popular psychedelic in the world. It’s the key psychoactive ingredient in peyote, which has been used for millennia among indigenous people in the Americas and often demonized and prohibited by civil and religious authorities who feared it. Mike Jay, whose latest book is entitled Mescaline: A Global History of the First Psychedelic, is broadly regarded as the outstanding historian of ps...
Apr 28, 2022•1 hr 19 min•Season 2Ep. 42
Chef Nikki Steward is one of the most famous and talented of chefs who cook and bake with cannabis. She describes her brand “The High End Affair” as a traveling “infused culinary experience" and has curated large dinner parties for Snoop Dog, Dave Chapelle, DJ Khaled and many other celebrities. I’m an eager consumer but an inexperienced chef so I peppered her with questions: Is there something different about cooking for people who are high on cannabis and how does she st...
Apr 20, 2022•1 hr 7 min
Sam Quinones is a distinguished journalist and author who has reported on America's opioid crisis for over a decade. His 2015 book, Dreamland, examined the spread of prescription opioids and then heroin across the country. His new book, The Least of Us, focuses on the spread of fentanyl and P2P methamphetamine, and their devastating impact on people and communities. We discussed all of this, including the evolution in illicit drug networks, racial differences in drug use, Sam’s skepticism ...
Apr 14, 2022•2 hr 32 min•Season 1Ep. 40
Few countries have suffered the consequences of ineffective prohibitionist policies for so long or severely as Mexico. Professors Alejandro Madrazo and Catalina Perez are among the world’s leading experts on this subject. I wanted to know: How did the criminal organizations that traffic in drugs get so powerful? Why is it a misnomer to call them “cartels”? What explains the extreme violence? How pervasive is not just the corruption but the fe...
Apr 07, 2022•1 hr 3 min•Season 1Ep. 39
I took a short subway ride from my home on Manhattan’s Upper West Side to East Harlem to visit OnPoint NYC – the first overdose prevention center, a.k.a. safe injection site or supervised injection facility, to operate openly in my country with the permission of the mayor and other top officials. Executive director Sam Rivera, senior director of programs Kailin See, and other OnPoint staff and clients showed me around and answered my questions: Why did it take so long and how have pe...
Mar 31, 2022•55 min•Season 1Ep. 38
Philippe Bourgois, along with his co-author Jeffrey Schonberg, spent over a decade getting to know a group of homeless people in San Francisco whose lives revolved around their injection drug use. The result of their research was one of the greatest of all drug ethnographies, a book called Righteous Dopefiends. It's a remarkably intimate book, full of detailed descriptions of people's lives and the community that forms around injection drug use. He describes the different rituals that go into pr...
Mar 24, 2022•1 hr 3 min•Season 1Ep. 37
Do you ever wonder about the actual lives of people who sell illicit drugs – their fears and aspirations, their family lives, their business models and moral codes, and their fates once their drug dealing days are behind them? Philippe Bourgois is a distinguished anthropologist, currently teaching and directing the Center for Social Medicine and Humanities at UCLA. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, he befriended and gained the trust of street-level drugs dealers in East Harlem, New York and wro...
Mar 17, 2022•1 hr 5 min•Season 1Ep. 36
Whom do you call when you’re having a “bad trip,” or just need to process a psychedelic experience that’s now behind you? The Fireside Project is a psychedelic peer support line, co-founded by Hanifa Nayo Washington and Joshua White, that has been well received in the rapidly growing psychedelic community. I was curious to learn how and why it emerged, how’s it going, why Hanifa thinks there are no “bad trips," and the role of psychedelics in the Black community. Learn more about your ad-choices...
Mar 10, 2022•53 min•Season 1Ep. 35
Almost every Democratic member of Congress has voted to legalize marijuana but Republican support has remained scarce. Nancy Mace, a first term member of Congress from South Carolina, wants to change that. She recently introduced a legalization bill that has attracted strong support from the marijuana industry and begun to re-shape the debate within Congress over how best the federal government should deal with marijuana. I was curious why she did this, how both Democrats and her fellow Republic...
Mar 03, 2022•40 min•Season 1Ep. 34
Mycologists study mushrooms, and very few mycologists are household names, let alone have a Star Trek character named after them. But Paul Stamets is a truly exceptional character who has played an extraordinary role in researching, discovering and popularizing the potentially revolutionary contributions of mushrooms and other fungi to medicine, environmental repair and human consciousness. We talked about all of this as well as his unique career, his discoveries and patents, and the “stoned ape...
Feb 24, 2022•50 min•Season 1Ep. 33
Among the eighteen states that have legalized marijuana to date, no state has faced greatest challenges in trying to suppress the illicit market and regulate the legal one than California – and nowhere within the state have the challenges been greater than Los Angeles. I met Cat Packer in 2016, when she moved from Ohio to California to work on the Drug Policy Alliance’s successful campaign to legalize marijuana statewide. One year later, at age 26, Cat was chosen as the founding director of Los ...
Feb 17, 2022•1 hr 17 min•Season 1Ep. 32
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Feb 10, 2022•1 hr 17 min•Season 1Ep. 31
One of the outstanding figures in the current Psychedelic Renaissance is Matt Johnson, who recently became the first researcher to be appointed to an endowed chair in psychedelic studies. He is the Susan Hill Ward Professor in Psychedelics and Consciousness at Johns Hopkins University, a university which has played a pioneering role in renewing psychedelic research. Matt and I talked about the politics of psychedelic research, the relative merits of psilocybin versus other psychedelics, the sign...
Feb 03, 2022•1 hr 13 min•Season 1Ep. 30
George Soros' Open Society Foundations has been the outstanding funder of harm reduction initiatives around the world since the mid-1990s. The brilliant individual directing that work until just a few months ago is Daniel Wolfe. We discussed the challenges and frustrations of trying to advance harm reduction in often hostile environments from Central and East Asia to Mexico and Ohio and how a traditional public health approach can prove not just insufficient but even counter productive. Daniel a...
Jan 27, 2022•1 hr 2 min•Season 1Ep. 29
Hamilton Morris has been writing and making documentaries about drugs and the people who make them for over a decade, delving into the relationships between chemicals, people and society. We discussed his outstanding TV series - Hamilton’s Pharmacopeia - including his objectives and creative process, his efforts to challenge popular myths and misconceptions, and the chemists and filmmakers whom he most admires. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystud...
Jan 20, 2022•2 hr 37 min•Season 1Ep. 28
Ketamine-assisted psychotherapy is growing rapidly in popularity in the United States and abroad, both because ketamine is the only psychedelic that can be legally prescribed and because its unique properties open up opportunities for profound insight and personal growth. Dr. Gita Vaid is among the outstanding practitioners and teachers in this area. She is a lead instructor at The Ketamine Training Center and recently co-founded the Center for Natural Intelligence, a multidisciplinary laborator...
Jan 13, 2022•54 min•Ep. 27
Kratom, an herbal extract from the leaves of a tree indigenous to Southeast Asia, is now used by millions to enhance mood, relieve pain and reduce the symptoms of opioid withdrawal. Dr. Kirsten Smith is a post-doc fellow at the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIH) who is playing a central role in researching this fascinating substance. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Jan 06, 2022•55 min•Ep. 26
