Fentanyl is a new kind of pain killer that s been around for a long time, and it s been killing people all over the world. But what exactly is it? How did it come to be? And what role did it play in the deaths of so many people across the world? In this episode, Ben and Jon talk to Ben about how he stumbled upon the story of Fentanyl, and why he thinks it s one of the most dangerous new drugs out there. This episode was produced and edited by Ben Perla and Jonny LoQuasto. Our theme music was made by Micah Vellian and our ad music was written and performed by Mark Phillips. We were mixed and produced by Matthew Boll. Our editor was Matthew Boll and our editor was Patrick Muldowney. We were edited by Rachel Ward and Annie-Rose Strasser. The show was mixed by Haley Shaw. It was edited by Emily Blumberg. Special thanks to Rachel Ward. Music was written, produced, and mixed by John Rocha. Additional editing was done by Ben Bergman. Thanks to Ben Perlan and Sarah Abdurrahman and Sarah Kuchta. If you like what you hear, please tell us what you think about it in the comments section below. We'd like to hear your thoughts on the episode and we'll be listening to it on the next week's episode. Thank you for listening to this episode of Scary Talk with your favourite podcast! if you leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and/or sharing it on iTunes or wherever else you re listening to the podcast and/tweet us your thoughts about it on social media on your podcast/trending us your podcasting experience is a review/tweebay and we'd love to know what scares you're scared of this episode is scary? in the next episode we'd like us to send us what scared you most scared you enough about it? we'll get a review and what you re scared of it on your favorite podcast or your next episode is scared of something scary or you'll be spooky enough, we'll send us a song about it too scary or weirdest thing you've listened to it's scary enough, or what you're going to do that's scary, or you're not scared of that's scared of the podcast is scary enough and you'll get some of your response?
00:00:28.000But I was the LA Weekly music editor, and I started looking into this story about why people were always dying at raves.
00:00:36.000So like, I don't know if you remember a few years back, every time there was a rave, they were like, one person died, two people died, or more.
00:00:43.000And they always said it was from ecstasy.
00:00:45.000But I knew that ecstasy was really not that dangerous of a drug.
00:00:50.000You know, MDMA, pure MDMA, very few people died from that.
00:01:44.000Well, it does, but for things like, yeah, traditionally, people have gotten a lot of mileage out of morphine.
00:01:50.000But for things like open-heart surgery, he wanted something that came on really fast and it lasted a long time.
00:01:57.000And so he manipulated the chemical structure of morphine, came up with fentanyl, it was a blockbuster drug, you know, and still is used in hospitals all the time.
00:02:09.000It's used, you know, there's the fentanyl patch, people with cancer, chronic pain, and then when you get a, like a colonoscopy, They give you fentanyl before that.
00:02:19.000And then women who have epidurals during childbirth, that I believe is usually fentanyl.
00:02:25.000So it's still an important hospital drug.
00:02:28.000And so how did it come to be that this drug from the 1950s sort of re-emerges?
00:02:34.000And it re-emerged during the rave scene?
00:03:26.000And the only way they finally found out was that there was this scientist testing racing horses and apparently fentanyl was being used to dope horses.
00:03:51.000And he actually predicted what was going to happen.
00:03:54.000He's like, we are in trouble now because not only is there fentanyl, you can make a new – if you ban fentanyl, you can adjust the molecule, make another type of fentanyl.
00:04:04.000When they ban that, you can make another one.
00:04:33.000So, then the internet comes along, and through the internet, people started scouring the medical literature and scientific literature and chemical literature, and then they find fentanyl.
00:04:48.000Yeah, because back in the old days, scientists would publish a paper.
00:04:54.000They're trying to find a new drug that they can patent, say the drug isn't a hit, no one wants to buy it.
00:05:00.000It goes on some dusty university shelf, never is heard from again.
00:05:05.000But in the Internet age, all these papers start going online.
00:05:09.000And so these rogue chemists that I reference in the title of my book We're good to go.
00:05:35.000And so it's set in motion this sort of cat-and-mouse game between law enforcement and drug chemists, which really still persists to this day, although mostly in China now.
00:05:46.000Have you ever experienced any opiates personally?
00:05:49.000I've taken, yeah, like Tramadol and Tylenol-3 and stuff like that.
00:06:38.000And they gave me a little morphine drip.
00:06:40.000And every time I wanted, I could just hit this button and get a little bit more.
00:06:44.000I was just hammering that button, just lying in bed.
00:06:47.000Well, that's like the irony of the opioids.
00:06:50.000It can produce the greatest pleasure and the greatest pain.
00:06:54.000You know, I think Sam Quinonez said that.
00:06:57.000Like, how can one molecule give you the greatest pleasure imaginable and the worst pain imaginable?
00:07:04.000Yeah, Lenny Bruce had some crazy quote about it.
00:07:07.000Something about getting hugged by God.
00:07:11.000I forget what the quote was, but I've never had experience with heroin, but I've known people that were addicts, quite a few, and a couple of them that died.
00:07:24.000And one of them that I knew, there was this guy who was a pool hustler back in my pool playing days in New York, and his nickname was Waterdog.
00:08:12.000And then when it was over, when the half hour was over, he would just like...
00:08:18.000He couldn't miss and he was playing this guy this this dude that I knew named George was also a big-time gambler and he was just screaming and yelling that this motherfucker when he's on this stuff he can't miss he had no nerves like nothing bothered him you could scream in his face he would look at you like an alien like it didn't didn't bother him at all like like an insect would look at you and he had This incredible ability to play at the very best while he
00:12:23.000He was not a recreational drug user as we think about it.
00:12:28.000He wanted pain, and I'm sure for years his handler or whatever was buying him off the dark net or whatever, and they were fine for years.
00:12:37.000But then a drug dealer trying to save some money, increase profits, cut it with fentanyl, and that's how he died.
00:12:46.000And I heard Tom Petty actually suffered an injury or hurt himself at one of his concerts, and he just literally walked outside and asked the first sketchy guy he saw if he had any pain pills,
00:14:35.000And it was from getting my neck yanked on, you know, getting it cranked on and using it to, like, move people around when you're doing jiu-jitsu and grappling.
00:14:44.000But I found a thing called Regenikine.
00:14:46.000Regenikine is what Peyton Manning used.
00:14:49.000He actually went to Germany to go do it, but now you can do it here in America.
00:14:53.000Kobe Bryant went and got it done as well.
00:14:56.000It's great for people with back issues, disc issues, and with bulging discs in particular.
00:15:01.000It helps relax the area around the disc.
00:15:29.000And another thing they're doing is they're shooting stem cells directly into the discs, and they're having some really good results with that, where the stem cells...
00:16:13.000If you're a young kid and you're drinking, you're not going to make wise decisions.
00:16:16.000You don't even know what you're doing.
00:16:18.000If you're a young kid, you're 18, 19 years old, and you have three or four drinks in you, you don't even know what that experience is like.
00:16:24.000You don't have the wisdom and the knowledge and the history to go, okay, I've got three drinks.
00:16:33.000Yeah, and so I'm already, like, trying to think about how I'm going to talk to my kids who are younger.
00:16:38.000But, like, you know, I hate to say it, it seems like marijuana, if you can smell the buds, if you can see them, you know, there have been kind of some scaremongering on the internet and certain police departments saying that there's been marijuana cut with fentanyl.
00:16:55.000But if you go on Snopes.com, they sort of debunk all that.
00:17:25.000We had a guy named John Norris on the podcast and he wrote a book called Hidden War and he started off his career as a game warden, you know, investigating people that caught too much fish, things along those lines.
00:17:38.000And he thought, hey, what a great job this would be.
00:17:41.000I'm going to get a job in the great outdoors.
00:17:49.000Well, turns out, along the way, they started stumbling upon these public land Mexican cartel grow operations, where they would grow these marijuana plants, just giant plots of them, and they would use these extremely toxic pesticides.
00:18:16.000Yeah, my friend Amanda Chicago Lewis is this great journalist focused on marijuana.
00:18:22.000And yeah, she put the fear of God in me about those pesticides and carcinogens.
00:18:27.000And the other thing is just like these different oils that people are smoking— Some of them are marketed as like all natural, but they find synthetic cannabinoids in them.
00:18:40.000And basically, you know, synthetic cannabinoids like K2 and Spice are what they're known as sometimes.
00:18:47.000And those are, people call it synthetic marijuana, but the big difference is that THC is known as like a partial agonist.
00:18:58.000So it will, like, these receptors, it will activate them to an extent.
00:19:49.000I called myself – what did I call myself?
00:19:53.000I tried – I had this like Skype avatar picture where I looked like a bro, like a 23-year-old dude with like big hair, like kind of a stoner look.
00:20:02.000And they just – They said, yeah, come by.
00:20:06.000And so I went to Shanghai, and I met this guy at the train station.
00:20:48.000And so then he showed me – because they have the website.
00:20:50.000A lot of these companies in China, they make legitimate chemicals and recreational chemicals.
00:20:57.000And they specialize in drugs that are legal in China but banned in the West, so banned in the U.S. What is illegal in China?
00:21:06.000Well, in the U.S., we have this thing called the Federal Analog Act.
00:21:10.000And so that bans all these drugs even before they're invented.
00:21:14.000So anything that's similar to marijuana, structurally, or in effect, anything that's similar to opioids, is just automatically banned, automatically scheduled.
00:21:24.000But in China, they have to do it one by one by one by one.
00:21:28.000And so fentanyl itself was scheduled in China, was banned in China decades ago.
00:21:35.000But these chemists, like this one I met, specialize in this window when something is banned in the U.S., but it's still legal in China, but it's become popularized on the Internet.
00:21:47.000So there's all these websites, these web forums, where these drug nerds basically are like, you can't get fentanyl, but you can get this thing that's kind of like fentanyl.
00:21:57.000That's a hilarious term, by the way, drug nerds.
00:22:02.000And like psychonauts, I'm sure you've heard of psychonauts, right?
00:22:05.000They specialize in these new, usually psychedelics they tend to prefer, that have never been tested on human subjects.
00:22:13.000But this guy was entirely specialized in...
00:22:17.000Fentanyl analogs and synthetic cannabinoids.
00:22:20.000And so he took out, you know, he had his like fake list on his website of all the legitimate, you know, like Cialis and, you know, legitimate pharmaceuticals, things like that.
00:22:30.000But at his apartment he showed me the real list.
00:22:33.000And that had all these, you know, it was cannabinoids, fentanyl, it was like fake Valium, like different types of Xanax.
00:22:42.000And he showed me the prices and I was like, alright, looks good, can I go see your lab?
00:22:48.000And so finally he decided he trusted me.
00:23:37.000It was the middle of the winter, and it was kind of a strong chemical smell.
00:23:41.000But it looked kind of just like Breaking Bad, like industrial-sized glassware, beakers, Bunsen burners, all that stuff from high school chemistry.
00:23:57.000Basically, I had my recorder on my phone and I had it in my jacket pocket just on record.
00:24:05.000And so he told me I couldn't take pictures.
00:24:07.000And so to take notes, I would just say stuff aloud.
00:24:11.000I'd be like, oh, that's a light orange mixture that's being mixed up by a mechanical arm.
00:25:03.000So they try to make it look like pot, and, you know, you can smoke that stuff out of a pipe or even roll it into a joint, but if you look closely, though, it's very clearly not pot.
00:25:16.000You know, they also had like drying machines.
00:25:20.000It looked like, my editor didn't like it when I used this term, but you know when you go into Subway and there's the bread baking machines right there?
00:25:37.000But they had those and then they had like big buckets of one pound bags of these cannabinoids and these fentanyl analogs just ready for shipping.
00:25:46.000He said they were sending them to Russia, to Belgium, to the Netherlands.
00:25:51.000And then I think a lot of times it's repackaged there.
00:25:55.000And so I don't know if you knew that the cannabinoids like used to be sold legally in head shops like 10 years ago.
00:27:14.000But I grew up in Minnesota though and there's a big Somali population and so there was a big controversy in Minnesota whether or not to ban cat leaves from being sold in regular stores.
00:27:54.000And they also wrote, called them, like, incense, sometimes plant food.
00:28:00.000And on the back of all of them, it would say, not intended for human consumption.
00:28:05.000So that was like the way they got around.
00:28:07.000They thought they could get around the Federal Analog Act because part of the law says that something is automatically illegal if it's intended for human consumption.
00:28:17.000So these guys are like, not intended for human consumption.
00:30:27.000There's LSD. So you take LSD. It's like a wonder drug, right?
00:30:31.000No one has ever died of an LSD overdose.
00:30:34.000People may have thought they were a bird or whatever and jumped off a roof, but no one has ever overdosed on the drug itself.
00:30:41.000But once they started banning, once they started really cracking down on LSD, These Chinese chemists started manufacturing this new type of psychedelic that was sold as acid.
00:30:53.000And so if you went on the dark web, this was like 10 years ago or so.
00:30:59.000Five, ten years ago, you would search for acid and you would think you were buying LSD, but you were buying this new psychedelic that could kill you and did kill you.
00:32:16.000Yeah, well, the way to think about it, I think, is like decriminalization a lot of times is like a better alternative, in my opinion, in my research, than legalization, right?
00:32:30.000So like the presidential candidate, Andrew Yang, talks about decriminalizing opioids.
00:32:35.000And so when I first heard about that, I was like, what?
00:32:49.000And then the recidivism rate is like through the roof.
00:32:52.000People like get out and they start using again.
00:32:55.000They don't get the treatment they need, you know.
00:32:58.000And so the opioid, you know, like people don't realize that fentanyl is killing more people than any drug in in American history ever on an annual basis.
00:33:09.000More than heroin, more than pills, more than meth, more than crack.
00:33:14.000And so things just get worse and worse every year.
00:33:18.000People aren't talking about it that much.
00:33:20.000But how is decriminalization going to stop that?
00:33:23.000Because decriminalization will just make fentanyl more available.
00:33:27.000The point of legalizing all drugs, and again, this is a very, very messy subject, and I'm not a proponent of legalizing all drugs.
00:36:57.000And so studies have shown that if users know fentanyl is in their cocaine or their meth or their heroin or their pills, they will be much less likely to use it and overdose from it.
00:38:12.000And so if someone has overdosed on opioids, fentanyl, heroin pills, whatever, you know, get these sprays, it will bring them back to life, literally.
00:38:21.000And so, you know, it's available in some places.
00:39:33.000And isn't it the case that some fentanyl overdoses, the people actually have it on their skin, so these people that are helping them, whether they're police officers or firefighters, That's actually another thing that's kind of a Snopes.com thing.
00:39:47.000You can't get an overdose by touching fentanyl.
00:41:31.000Like when you were recording, like, oh, what is that orange vat of, you know, did you do that kind of same shit when you're talking to him?
00:41:38.000No, no, because he knew I was a journalist.
00:42:19.000And so he started selling fentanyl on the dark web because he didn't want his kids to have to live in poverty.
00:42:27.000He didn't want his drug addiction to interfere.
00:42:31.000And so not only that, but he claims that...
00:42:36.000He's helping addicted users more affordably maintain their habits.
00:42:41.000So he has this big, like, fuck, you know, Purdue Pharma, anti-government, anti-big pharma mentality.
00:42:48.000So he blames, like, Purdue Pharma made OxyContin pills and that's how the whole opioid epidemic began.
00:42:57.000So first it was the pills, then people switched to heroin, and now it's fentanyl is in all the heroin.
00:43:04.000And so this guy says that because he makes a nasal spray too...
00:43:10.000And he says that people can buy his fentanyl nasal spray on the dark web for like $60, take one spray, it's equivalent to one OxyContin pill, and that's enough to maintain their addiction.
00:43:24.000And so he says, you know, instead of paying money to the big pharmaceutical companies, people buy this, it's much cheaper.
00:43:31.000So he had a whole moral justification of how he did it.
00:44:26.000Yeah, I get it, but so many people who sell drugs and so many people who are involved in drugs, people who have fucked up lives like to paint the best version of what they're doing.
00:49:06.000Then more people were injured, ten people, a little kid, little girl was shot in the back, and she's in a hospital.
00:49:12.000It's like, they just gun these people down.
00:49:14.000And this is all just this inhuman violence from the cartels and the cartels that have rose to power and prominence because of the fact that there's an illegal drug trade.
00:49:29.000So instead of that money being made by pharmaceutical companies, that money is being made by these ruthless, murderous cartels.
00:49:35.000And this is exactly what happened during Prohibition in the United States.
00:49:40.000When they made alcohol illegal in the 1920s, when they made alcohol illegal, it didn't stop people from drinking, it just made people sell it illegally.
00:49:55.000And then Al Capone and all these different organized crime members, they made insane amounts of money and developed insane amounts of power.
00:50:03.000And we're seeing the exact same thing happening in Mexico.
00:51:26.000And there's every indication that if we do get China to stop this insane, like 90% or more of the illicit fentanyl comes from China, that if we do get them to crack down on it, the industry is going to go to India.
00:51:41.000And India is already starting to see these huge busts.
00:51:44.000There's these Mexican cartel members getting busted in India for buying fentanyl.
00:51:52.000The thing is, China and India have the two biggest...
00:51:57.000Chemical industries when it comes to generics, kind of lower level chemicals and pharmaceuticals.
00:52:04.000The U.S. has the most profitable pharmaceutical industry because we make like the brand name drugs, things like that.
00:52:12.000But when you're talking about generics and stuff like vitamin C, acetaminophen, which is the drug in Tylenol, these are all made in China, a place like India.
00:52:21.000And so they have this huge kind of brain trust Of chemists, people go to university, they learn how to be chemists, and then a certain amount of them get into the illicit industry, right?
00:53:02.000And so that was sort of the main investigation in my book.
00:53:07.000Almost like 80 pages of the book are dedicated to this one company.
00:53:12.000They're called Yuan Cheng, this Chinese company that makes more fentanyl precursors than any company in the world.
00:53:23.000And not only that, they sell them to the Mexican cartels.
00:53:29.000And they're totally sanctioned, not only sanctioned by the Chinese government, but they get tax breaks from the Chinese government.
00:53:36.000They get subsidies, they get their land subsidized, their staff training, things like that.
00:53:43.000And that was sort of the most jaw-dropping revelation that I had, was that the Chinese government is not only failing to crack down, but they're encouraging this industry.
00:54:05.000A lot of people ask me if they think this is a blatant conspiracy to try to, like, inflict harm upon the U.S., a subversive form of warfare.
00:54:17.000And so I think it didn't start out that way.
00:54:21.000I think that these benefits were given so that China could increase its exports, could grow its economy, particularly when it comes to chemical exports.
00:54:31.000So that's why these tax credits started.
00:54:34.000They're called value-added tax rebates.
00:54:36.000And so what that means is Any chemical that you use to—any ingredients you use to make a chemical for exports, you can write off the cost of those ingredients when you export it.
00:54:54.000So basically, it's like a 16% tax rebate.
00:54:57.000And so they originally did that just to try to, like, improve their economy, improve their exports.
00:55:03.000But what's crazy to me now is that last year, in the middle of the trade war, this was at the height of when you heard about the trade war every day.
00:55:13.000You know, Trump was raising tariffs and doing this and that.
00:55:17.000Right at the height of that, China increased the tax rebate for fentanyl from 9% to 10%.
00:55:24.000So it was almost like a, seemed like a thumb in the eye.
00:56:26.000You see in TV shows or whatever just this line of people and they go back out on the street and then they get back to whatever they were doing.
00:56:36.000But medication-assisted treatment combines that with traditional counseling and therapy.
00:56:44.000Because a lot of times it's not just chemical hooks.
00:58:10.000It's something of a miracle cure for opiate addiction with minimal withdrawal symptoms.
00:58:15.000There's something that happens with Ibogaine when you take it that it does something to rewire the areas of the brain that respond to opiates and that sort of are hardwired for addiction.
00:58:29.000It rewires them in a way that they have a very low recidivism rate, a very low repeat addiction rate.
00:58:38.000Yeah, like psychedelics seems to be so much potential.
00:58:43.000There's this professor that I write about, his name is David Nichols, and he basically spent his whole career studying psychedelics as a way to help people beat cocaine addictions, alcohol addictions,
00:58:58.000even fight things like PTSD. It was actually found that MDMA, ecstasy, is like this amazing drug for PTSD. Yeah, I've heard this.
00:59:30.000And I think it also changes the way people think about drugs because these are not escape drugs in the same sense as heroin is or fentanyl is or cocaine is.
00:59:42.000These are drugs that sort of just give you a refocused perspective on reality itself.
00:59:53.000But I mean, that's also, ayahuasca is also very successful for people to quit smoking, using it to quit alcohol, people that have real issues.
01:00:06.000It lets you understand, like, hey, we're going to take you on a little journey into the mind and show you through dimethyltryptamine, show you what's fucking with you.
01:00:15.000This is something that you've sort of stored away in the back of your brain.
01:03:58.000Even in its regular proper dose, Sasha Shulgin has those books called P-Cal and T-Cal, which are basically cookbooks and how to make all his psychedelics.
01:04:12.000But anyway, after all these people in Golden Gate Park started freaking out and Dow Chemical realized that it was their guy doing this, they're like, all right, all right, that's enough.
01:05:48.000What are you trying to do with this book besides let people know the history of fentanyl?
01:05:54.000Do you feel like with education you can do some good because people will be armed with facts and understanding and they can make better choices?
01:06:17.000Nobody knew anything about what China was doing and why.
01:06:22.000And so I'm, you know, like the left and the right are sort of like this book, which is a rare consensus because the right wing is really into like China is fucking with us and the left wing is really into this idea of harm reduction.
01:06:39.000And that's my big sort of talking point.
01:06:41.000It's like the war on drugs stuff is...
01:06:43.000I always compare it to sex education, right?
01:06:46.000I mean, we can teach abstinence, believe that kids aren't going to have sex, stick our heads in the sand, or we can understand kids are always going to have sex, kids are always going to take drugs.
01:06:57.000Let's try to help them do it more safely.
01:07:00.000And so, you know, I've been in rooms where it was like...
01:07:46.000I think it's, you know, the good news is like the optimistic thing is that that's slowly changing, you know, and a lot of people say, well, during the crack era, there's a lot of racism, people say, like, during the crack era, it was all about, like, lock these people up, you know, criminalize the users.
01:08:02.000But now that it's like the white politicians' kids who are dying from opioids, now all of a sudden this is a health problem and this is something we need to address as a disease.
01:08:14.000And so there's no doubt that that's true.
01:08:17.000But at the same time, the positive is that this is spilling into other realms, too.
01:08:22.000So I went to North Dakota, this small-town Grand Forks, where this 18-year-old kid overdosed and died on fentanyl.
01:08:34.000But it inspired all these new reforms.
01:08:37.000So now they have all these new laws in North Dakota, things like the Good Samaritan Law, where if someone is with you and they die from drugs, you can call the police and they won't arrest you.
01:08:51.000Because that happens in a lot of places still.
01:08:54.000They blame the person who they're with.
01:08:57.000And they have things like they can use Skype, like a Skype-type service when they live in these small rural towns to get a prescription from a doctor far away.
01:09:10.000And what they told me in Grand Forks is that This system is spilling over to other—even like alcoholism now, people are starting to think of that as a disease.
01:09:21.000And so I think there is slow progress being made.
01:09:28.000I mean, it just takes time, right, for people to understand that this is a real issue that's affecting everyone.
01:09:34.000I think you're right about the racism in terms of, like, the attitude about crack versus cocaine, and that could clearly be demonstrated by sentencing.
01:11:00.000And Eazy-E's first record label, his record label was called Ruthless, but they were going to call it Rock House Records for that reason.
01:11:12.000And so he was a crack dealer before he got in the music industry.
01:11:18.000Yeah, the Rick Ross story, the real Rick Ross story, I should say, Rick Ross, Freeway Ricky, which is what they used to call him, was making millions and millions of dollars, did not have any idea that he was involved in that whole Oliver North,
01:14:53.000I think he's the best writer in all of hip-hop.
01:14:56.000Yeah, well, you know, it's just his beats don't always hit me the right way, but he's got so many classics, he's earned, like, the right.
01:15:03.000But my big thing, because I did live in New York, and I was an East Coast, you know, like, music snob, and, like, Biggie is clearly the best ever.
01:16:15.000And now, like, I just don't hear Biggie the same way, you know, because so many of his songs are about, you know, partying and crime and stuff, and the bigger message of Tupac just really won me over in the end.
01:16:27.000Well, I don't think it's a competition, but I know what you're saying.
01:16:30.000I mean, Tupac definitely had a different vision, but Biggie, you also have to realize Biggie was like How old was he when he died?
01:17:58.000You know, I saw this early Tupac videos and heard early Tupac recordings, and his original style influence was actually Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.
01:18:57.000When you write a song that's as profitable as the Humpty Dance, I would imagine it kind of like saps your need to do too much else when you're that set.
01:20:19.000I mean, it's an untapped, like, it's a well that never runs dry, and that's what, I always go back to it.
01:20:25.000Well, it's interesting to me, too, that much of, I mean, it's weird when we talk about drugs, because drugs seem like a blanket expression that you can throw over things that are good and bad, things that are productive, like caffeine, and things that are terrible, like meth.
01:21:24.000I guess that dirt weed they were smoking probably affected them too.
01:21:28.000Well, they smoked so much of it, it became effective.
01:21:31.000But, you know, I've talked to some people and they said there was always some good weed back then.
01:21:35.000You know, they'd call it Acapulco gold or whatever.
01:21:38.000But there was no botanists, some fucking scientists that are working on like some of the weed that we have today, which is 40 plus percent THC, mind-numbing.
01:21:47.000You know, you can't feel your feet, you know, that kind of stuff.
01:21:49.000Like, I don't think they had any of that.
01:23:57.000I guess you and Nikki are talking about that a little bit.
01:23:59.000I mean, I feel like all these things that we're saying, all these moves towards positive lifestyle choices will also, in some way, sort of negate this move towards these drugs and the attractiveness of these drugs.
01:24:13.000If people are drawn towards being healthier and happier and cleaner and keeping your mind right, you'll be less likely to want to seek this sort of opiate escape.
01:25:02.000And that people are addicting in the right way, addictive in a positive way.
01:25:07.000You see someone living a good, healthy life and being happy and being nice to people and smiling a lot, laughing a lot and having your life go well, where you're making a good living and you're being productive and creative and all those good, positive things.
01:25:24.000And I think they see that and they go, oh, do I want to be like Mike over there who's doing well or Cindy who's doing well or do I want to be like those poor fools that are under the bridge that are living in tents because they have drug addicts, drug problems?
01:25:38.000Yeah, I've had kind of a debate with my wife because she, you know, all these drugs like naloxone and methadone, these are opioids too.
01:25:49.000So some people criticize it and they say, well, you're just advocating for someone to go off one drug onto another drug.
01:25:56.000And my wife in particular is like, you know, we should really be encouraging people to go off these drugs altogether.
01:26:02.000And like, you know, whether it's a spiritual approach, meditation, all that.
01:26:08.000You know, and she's not wrong, but it's just like...
01:26:38.000He detailed like all the various ways that he tried to get off and all the different things that he did and nothing worked other than this last time he just kind of hit that rock bottom thing and had slowly but surely worked his way out of being addicted into this place of sobriety and then two days led to twenty days led to three months led to where we are now and you know he's so happy.
01:27:04.000And, you know, he's still getting his piss tested like five times a week.
01:27:09.000I mean, he's under, it's crazy because he's under this program where if he fucks up, he goes to jail.
01:27:17.000I think he goes to jail for a long time.
01:27:18.000He's not a dealer and he didn't do any violent crime or anything like that.
01:28:12.000And even, like, there's so much, like, I'm no, you know, I'm not, like, a teetotaler, but there's so much part of the culture is drinking, you know what I mean?
01:28:22.000And it's, there's so many, like, I'm drinking beer for breakfast, like, this is amazing.
01:28:26.000And people get caught up in that, and it doesn't agree.
01:28:28.000Drinking is not for everybody, you know, but they, it becomes part of their identity.
01:28:34.000And so, My wife and I do this thing called kundalini yoga.
01:28:56.000I'm like the world's least flexible person, so it's not like hard yoga, but it's just that you have to, it's mind over matter stuff.
01:29:05.000And so you do things like, you know, we had to do this one where you put your arms above your head and hold it in this position and do this mantra for like 11 minutes and And you're constantly correcting your posture.
01:29:16.000You're trying to like, you know, look in your third eye.
01:29:19.000And your brain doesn't have time to wander around and think those negative thoughts and how terrible you are.
01:29:26.000And at the same time, it's like a physically demanding thing to do.
01:29:30.000I mean, it doesn't look like much, but you're like sweating.
01:29:34.000And, you know, my wife like Got us into that.
01:29:57.000That thing like you think about being a terrible person or you hate yourself, that is so common with people.
01:30:05.000And so many people just live with those thoughts bouncing around their head and they don't have an outlet.
01:30:11.000And that's another reason why they turn to alcohol or turn to drugs.
01:30:17.000But that's one of the things that I really love about yoga is no matter what's going on in my life, it's business stuff, personal stuff, creative stuff, whatever it is that's bothering me, I can do yoga and the difficulty of those poses makes me concentrate almost entirely on them.
01:30:35.000And I take a concerted effort to just think about my breathing.
01:30:40.000And like meditation, you'll go off track and you start thinking about things.
01:32:46.000No, but someone came in with a sword, and he had a comb stuck in there, and it was, like, I think a metal comb, and that was the only thing that saved his life from this, like, sword attack from the back.
01:32:57.000That sounds like a great story, but probably bullshit.
01:33:01.000This sword bounced off my comb, and I am here to teach yoga!
01:33:05.000Yeah, something happens when people become like a leader of something that, especially something that's so spiritually oriented and also sexual.
01:33:17.000There's something about yoga class, everybody's in their underwear, everybody's sweaty, and you're all like sort of releasing and it's like, it's very sexual in a lot of ways.
01:33:25.000That's why people think yoga teachers are like the hottest teachers.
01:33:28.000Like if a girl's like a yoga teacher, your friend goes, dude, I'm dating a yoga teacher.
01:35:19.000And I agree with you, what you said also, about a lot of times when people use drugs or drink or whatever it is that's their vice, they become a prisoner to that thought, like that this is their identity.
01:37:02.000I mean, as lame as that sounds, like, not having a brand is, like, your brand, kind of.
01:37:05.000Well, fortunately, I developed, uh, fuck you money at a time where I, like, during the Fear Factor days, I got fuck you money, and I used it to say fuck you.
01:38:46.000And that act is, say the things that these people would like you to say so that you can continue to work, so that you can get picked.
01:38:55.000Because if there's two people that are up for a role, and one of them is like this staunch libertarian who's like this pull yourself up by your bootstrap thing that, you know, doesn't believe in white privilege, and the other one is like super progressive, I call myself a male feminist,
01:39:11.000I want a woman president, like, that guy gets the role.
01:39:15.000The ironic thing, too, though, is a lot of real liberals see Hollywood as this reactionary...
01:40:10.000What happens to so many people where they have that position where they're taking people and they're hiring them and then putting them in these magical positions?
01:40:29.000That guy just ran through that business with impunity.
01:40:33.000I mean, he was just doing it that way forever.
01:40:36.000Yeah, I think, I don't know, like when you look at Hollywood movies, like what it is and what the formula became, I always wonder if this is like something that developed organically or if it's like we're hardwired to want to see this kind of,
01:40:54.000like take the three-act structure, right?
01:40:56.000Like every movie has to have a three-act structure, whether it's the most independent or the biggest Hollywood.
01:42:36.000And he was drinking at the same time, but then what actually literally killed him was when he was sleeping with his face in the pillow and it just cut off his breathing.
01:42:51.000So that's why they think these number of deaths actually might be undercounted because his death was listed, I believe, as cardiac arrest or something.
01:42:59.000So that doesn't even show up as a fentanyl death, for example.
01:43:04.000But just that one story means so much more to me than 30,000 people I don't know, for example.
01:44:03.000Yeah, people, a lot of times, I've tried to, you know, many people have successfully killed themselves with Tylenol because it's got such a narrow therapeutic window.
01:44:10.000Like, the amount that makes you feel better versus the amount that will kill you is not that far apart.
01:48:00.000You're obviously aware of the endorphins that you get from running.
01:48:03.000I never really experienced that the way I did during that Sober October thing because one of the things that me and my friends talked about was how when you do do cardio for like five, six hours a day, you don't give a fuck.
01:50:29.000And it's like the most amazing full day workout we would get up at...
01:50:34.000Dawn and like we'd be canoeing and portaging all day and I had no idea my body could handle it.
01:50:40.000I get my like 30 minutes of exercise in every other day and I'm like I'm good but now we're exercising hardcore like eight hours a day and my body just loved it and by the end of it it was like oh we have to go back to the city life again and it's not looking forward to it.
01:50:56.000Yeah, if you get your body used to that, like I imagine if you worked on a ranch or something like that and you're throwing bales of hay every day and doing chores and walking around, your body's just going to become accustomed to it.
01:51:09.000Your body becomes accustomed to the demands that you require of it.
01:51:13.000But most people just don't use their body enough.
01:51:16.000And it's a really disappointing thing that we're really intelligent people.
01:51:22.000Connect exercise with being a superficial thing.
01:51:26.000And there's less of that now than there was when I was younger.
01:51:29.000But that if you exercised and you were into your appearance and you were trying to look good by working out, you were somehow or another shallow and immediate.
01:51:39.000You weren't concerned with books and intellectual pursuits.
01:51:42.000But those things are not mutually exclusive.
01:51:45.000And in fact, if you're really smart, you realize that this is the only fucking body you have.
01:52:31.000And just this idea that you want to see exercise and physical activity as your friend because that's a lesson you're going to use your whole life.
01:52:42.000And again, to bring it back to fentanyl and drugs and drugs of escape, the more you can emphasize, the more we all can emphasize healthy choices with your life, the less attractive those escapes will be.
01:54:32.000And so we're still facing the repercussions from the first one, and that's what all these lawsuits that you hear about in the news are all about.
01:54:40.000And Another scary thing is that up until now, people hadn't been asking for fentanyl by name.
01:54:50.000Like we said, it's just put in other drugs.
01:54:53.000But now in places like San Francisco, even St. Louis, fentanyl is starting to acquire a reputation as a street drug because long-time heroin addicts don't get high anymore.