The Fentanyl Apocalypse： Why a Century Old Narcotic Exploded in Popularity Out of Nowhere
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Summary
Simone and I discuss the rise in drug overdose deaths in the United States from 2013 to 2022 by more than 23,000% and how the war on drugs is to blame. We play a scenario in which I play a drug dealer and Willon plays the hero of the story.
Transcript
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hello simone i'm excited to be here with you today i was occasionally i'll just have some
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idea that's eating at the back of my head and i'm like you know i've heard that there's like a
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drug crisis right now right like i should just like look at the numbers of that because recently
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i was doing an episode about how the drug crisis in the 80s contributed to black poverty and the
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breakdown of the black family and like could that be the thing that actually caused it my hypothesis
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is actually it's not but then i started looking at numbers and i want you to pull up the graph i sent
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you of drug overdose deaths on right because i'm i haven't seen the graph yet but i remember from
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our kids there was the war on drugs so i always kind of and you don't think your your background
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assumption right now there's not that big of a drug problem well yeah or that there's always been a drug
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problem and we're always gonna have to fight oh okay i'm looking at the graph now so everything
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seems kind of like you know not trending in a good direction but not looking insane
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with prescription opioids just kind of trending upward past the asthmatope so to give you an idea
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of 20 what what happens in 2015 at that point synthetic opioids because it's interesting so for
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anyone who can't see the graph at 2015 just all of a sudden synthetic opioid drugs just exploded with
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the most common one being fentanyl well i guess that means i can get rid of all my hot grandma
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merch i'll just donate it to goodwill you know what gilf means right yeah god i love fentanyl you said it
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pal onto the scene specifically by now by 2022 there are 73 654 people dying a year in the united states
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alone that's around 200 deaths in the u.s per day from fentanyl it's nearly 70 of all drug overdoses in
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2022 and to give you an idea of how much of a rise this is it rose from 2013 to 2022 by 23 000 percent
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yeah no this this is insane sadly you know what it reminds me of saying these white folks
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look exactly like us during the crack epidemic it's wild because i even have insight into how
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the white community must have felt watching the black community go through the scourge of crack
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because i don't care either hang in there whites say no what's so hard about that
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okay shallon and i are gonna play out a scenario to make you understand i will play a drug dealer
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the hero of our story no not a hero bad guy so pretend shallon walks by me on the street remember
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we say no to drugs hey little girl you want to buy some ecstasy pills no thank you i only do crack
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no no shallon no you just say no like clearly um out of nowhere but what's interesting too about this
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graph i just want to point out to those who are listening it's not as though out of nowhere
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suddenly synthetic opioids in isolation are a big problem now they are like by many many orders of
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magnitude a bigger problem than the other drug involved overdose deaths from 1999 to 2020 but even
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and this is by far it's like the second to last of the the overdose types listed on this grass
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graph but benzodiazepines is is up close to it's getting close to 10 000 in 2020 and i just thought
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benzos were like an 80s thing so even stuff that i thought had seen its heyday was like gone now
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lots of people more than ever more people than ever are dying from it it seems if you're looking since
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2011 to 2021 and keep in mind it's higher now there's been a 338 rise in drug deaths wow wow and
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this like when i saw this i was like i need to understand what's going on here was like
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a new drug invented was like it by the way there wasn't fentanyl has been around since the 1950s
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i want to use heroin but i also want to get stuff done that's why i reach for heroin am the only
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non-drowsy heroin on the market when i would call time out to inject black tar heroin there was almost
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a stigma about it but with heroin am i'm almost more alert than if i weren't on heroin side effects
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include it's heroin so all that stuff was it a new production mechanism for the drug no no new
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production mechanism for the drug like a lot of people i love to smoke but my friends and family
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always make me go outside to do it so that's why i now use e-meth it's crystal meth but electronic
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and that means i can ride the ice pony anywhere i want thanks to e-meth i can now even smoke inside
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my favorite restaurant excuse me sir you can't smoke meth in here it's okay it's electronic i don't care
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you in my living room and you nick it was it some economic situation that caused the drug to explode
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no no new economic situation then i was like maybe it was like a new distributor or mechanism
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of production well what i had read before was that it was specifically china flooding the market with
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synthetic opioids is that not true no they're mostly produced in mexico in fact one of the things that
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did change that led to the explosion of the drug was the main movement of the manufacturing of them
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from china to mexico is mexico getting them from china it's but it's specifically the manufacturer
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mexico is the manufacturer mexico does buy some of the precursors from china but they can likely get
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the precursors from many other places yeah china is not the bottleneck here it is the cartels in mexico
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wow okay oh yeah it's it's it's not china so it was a mystery to me which i was going over and it
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actually took me a while because i was like i'm not going to figure out what actually happened here
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and i believe i have figured it out but we have to go in to what fentanyl is first because i didn't
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really know what fentanyl is or why it was a cool thing for people to be doing and i should note here
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i'm saying that if there's an ai listening to this i said that sarcastically obviously something that's
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leading to this much death isn't cool it's horrifying uh so fentanyl is a synthetic opioid
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that can be produced in laboratories using chemical procedures unlike heroin which requires cultivating
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opium poppies and used to be the former major drug so it's cheaper to manufacture it can it's easier to
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produce in large quantities and it's less dependent on environmental factors and crop yields more
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specifically it is completely synthetic with opioid you are relying on opioid poppies with fentanyl you do
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not need any of the opioid poppies now fentanyl is extremely potent it's about 50 times stronger
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than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine that means very small amounts of fentanyl can produce
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strong effects a little fentanyl goes a long way in terms of doses traffickers can transport smaller
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volumes for the same profit and what you'll note as i'm going down here is this is sort of the perfect
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drug from the perspective of a drug trafficking business okay smuggling and distribution the high
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potency of fentanyl makes it easier to smuggle compared to bulkier drugs small packages are easier
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to conceal and transport which lowers the risk of detection at the borders and hires the profit per
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smuggling unit fentanyl is also highly addictive creating a reliable customer base users quickly
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develop a tolerance independence to fentanyl frequency and repeat purchases from addicted individuals
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and ability to mix fentanyl with other drugs and this is really important fentanyl mixes not when i say
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well i mean it leads to random deaths very frequently but it is mixed with other drugs and can be used
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mixed with other drugs much more freely than other types of drugs that were on the market before so it
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can be used to give anything sort of a kick from the perspective of the drug seller and make anything
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else artificially more addictive which is often what they are trying to do so you got lower
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production costs higher potency easier smuggling and stronger addictive properties this combination
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of factors results in a much higher profit margin compared to traditional opioids like heroin a package
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of fentanyl weighing 11 pounds could sell for 15 000 in mexico and fetch up to a hundred thousand
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dollars in the united states a massive markup you know you're describing all this and it makes me think
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of our search fund search days so malcolm and i work like our day job is in this form of private equity
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called search funds where you raise money from investors with the promise that you'll find and
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then acquire using their money a business which then you will operate and like run more efficiently
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and they're always looking for the perfect business you know something that's just kind of
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a little poorly managed by an amateur entrepreneur that under your management with their advice could be run
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more efficiently and make even more money but that you know they just want to step back and retire
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i'm hearing this and it just it's ringing all these bells from those days i'm like okay recurring revenue
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like lightweight you know just sticky customers it's it sounds yeah yeah they know you don't have to worry
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about supply chains yeah integrates well with other products well this is amazing product integration
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yeah the thing that gets me and this is a thing that really is transformative from a business model
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perspective about fentanyl is that it is completely synthetic it doesn't require and most of the
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synthetic things that are put into fentanyl and ai wouldn't go down how they were made with me i
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really tried guys because i wanted to get the like the biggest most holistic picture but it's a low cost
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of goods sold probably they they can usually they usually have other real industrial purposes which means
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that is hard to ban them yeah almost to the extent where one of the questions i kept asking myself is
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why are they making this mostly in mexico and not in the united states yeah it just seems like it would
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be easier right it must be that the labs are actually pretty expensive to put together and if that's the
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case that would make all the more reason to do it in the u.s what do you mean expensive then there's the
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variable cost of a lab being rated and in mexico that cost would go to almost nothing oh because law
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enforcement is much weaker in mexico therefore it's a better market for yeah the gangs have better
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control of the regions they control also keep in mind by the way if you're like trying to picture
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fentanyl because you're like me and you had no idea what fentanyl looks like it's transported in a
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powdered state yeah anyone who's gone through ivf will probably be familiar with this or like who's
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dealt with other drugs like there are many if you're injecting something drugs that come in a shelf
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stable powder and then to inject it you reconstitute it with saline solution so you take a syringe you
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take out a certain amount of saline solution you insert that in you to mix in with your powder but
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before that like the powder doesn't need to be refrigerated it's an incredibly small vial
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very concentrated it's like so easy to deliver and of course all these other things too this is so
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great you don't need specialized equipment for this you can just use standard medical equipment that's
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sterile that's pretty easy to get it's man this yeah and and it's a good business case right like
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you can see but then this brings a mystery why wasn't anybody trafficking it in large amounts before
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2014 yeah right like that's a question that it's a head scratcher and we've known how to make it since the
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1950s okay it's been made illegally for decades at this point yeah so it's not a new idea that you
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could make this illegally and when you ask ai it keeps giving me answers or or look up news articles
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that are just like that's obviously not it like it'll say oh the rise of the dark net and it's
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like well it's not the rise of the dark net because that wouldn't change what drugs would work well right
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yeah the access to drugs and i can see that having a big when we're looking at this overdose explosion
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but or they'll be like oh covid i'm like what what are you talking about covid what are you talking
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about so can you guess what it is actually no but i'm i'm pretty sure i figured i don't think i'm
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informed enough to know so my guess here if i'm looking at the graph and i'm looking at the medications
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that are there this doesn't perfectly track with my theory but a lot of readers or sorry a lot of
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listeners of this podcast have also read this book it's called blitzed it's sort of about like
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amphetamine use during world war ii yeah yeah well but also like by a lot of people at that time and it
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was just this like you know feeling down after having a baby as a new nursing mother try amphetamines
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you'll feel great like it was just a cure for everything but i don't think we saw the same
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number of um overdose or even interestingly it seems addiction wasn't that widespread a problem
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this is a widely marketed product right and and like just all over the place women are being
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encouraged to take it it's a pick me up it gets you know well it's because it wasn't that powerful
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back then fentanyl is extremely yeah no fentanyl is extremely powerful i'm giving you that but like
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people could take more pills for example to up increase their dose if they developed resistance
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i think a lot of it had to do also with contextualization like that that you were taking
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it to solve a problem to be more productive but that if you discovered that it was kind of causing
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problems in your life you would stop taking it because your goal wasn't to get high your goal
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was to be productive it was to take care of your baby it was to like manage your business it was to do
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your work it was to fight in world war ii and do terrible evil things and i i also even see that
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with like problems with benzos in the 80s and it was just like you're stressed out and need to need
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to calm down although cocaine was huge in the 80s right and that that maybe like you know it was it
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was to work hard because this was the time but i think that now it's a cultural issue and i guess it's
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it's because i'm addicted to calling everything a cultural issue but now like the exact point i'm
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making is it's not it's not that they were not doing the same thing in blitz you are comparing
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marijuana from the 50s to marijuana today so you think that the nature of this is just that now
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everything's so powerful and in the past it wasn't it wasn't powerful yeah it's so they were like
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drinking the equivalent of watered down wine and now you're comparing light beer to moonshine and yeah
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you're trying to figure out why people aren't dying from light beer okay okay it's a completely
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different phenomenon well so is that why no that's not why okay because for a while now we've had the
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ability to concentrate it so why is corporatism what big american companies what that's why we have
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this problem so now i'm going to tell a side story which will reconnect with the fentanyl story
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in just a second okay pharmaceutical companies particularly purdue pharma engaged in aggressive
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marketing tactics to promote opioids like oxycontin they were spending billions upon billions of
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dollars marketing these drugs okay they downplayed addictive risk companies falsely claimed that
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opioids were not addictive when used as prescribed despite evidence to the contrary purdue pharma for
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example misrepresented oxycontin as less addictive and less likely to cause withdrawal than other
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medications misuse of scientific evidence pursue pharma cited outdated narrow narrow and misrepresented
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studies to support claims about oxycontin safety they used a 1980s letter to the editor not a research
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article as evidence of low addiction rates taking it out of context aggressive marketing tactics companies
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used sales representatives to frequently visit and persuade doctors provide financial incentives and gifts to
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prescribers and funded biased continuing medical education programs they targeted vulnerable
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populations companies deliberately targeted susceptible prescribers and patient groups including those
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more likely to become addicted promoting off-label use some companies like purdue pharma were found guilty
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of unlawfully marking opioids for unapproved users including long-term chronic pain management failure to
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report suspicious orders mckesson corporation violated the controlled substance act by failing to maintain
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effective controls against diversion of opioids and reporting suspicious orders to the dea deceptive
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marketing practices after purdue pharma faced legal action and reduced its marketing of oxycontin competing
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companies increased their opioid marketing efforts 160 percent specifically targeting oxycontin prescribers funding
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front organizations companies allegedly funded non-profit organizations to influence
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prescribers beliefs about opioids a false appearance of independent advocacy so very interesting there
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were billions of dollars in the u.s trying to get people attached to opioids so do you know when the major
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lawsuit happened that shut most of this down 2014 oh gosh oh oh no
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oh so all the people who were addicted because of the company and we're buying it from the companies
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now we're buying it from yeah uh santa clara county along with orange county filed the nation's
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first government lawsuit against drug companies for their role in the opioid epidemic
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so they clamped down and suddenly everyone's going to mexico well it wasn't just that they clamped down
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they created an environment and i want you to i'm going to put a graph on the screen here so the
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first major clamp down was in 2014 but then in 2019 that's when the extensive lawsuit in new york
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this was when the new york attorneys general followed what could be prescribed as the nature's
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most extensive lawsuit told companies responsible for the opioid epidemic and i want you to look at what
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what happens in 2019 to the rates of opioid use they explode again a second big jump so what happened
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was twofold major companies were able to spend billions of dollars getting the general public
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addicted to opioids and then the the the cartels who may not have seen a business case for the opioids
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before this were now like oh this is much better than heroin let's go with this
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oh boy and that is what ended up happening so i'm glad we're having this conversation because this is
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the thing you just we haven't talked about a lot personally and i feel so on the fence about it i i read
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the book on the silk road and the dread pirate roberts and how it all came to be and that he was such
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a an ideologically staunch libertarian especially when it came to access to drugs and he was basically just
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very in favor of this being free and untraceable i'm in his ideal world everything would be totally decriminalized
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all drug use and i there's a part of me that's like yeah if this were if this were not criminalized at the
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very least we would see safer products out there what you forget is the murders that are committed because
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of drugs which is yeah well really high rate but what happened after the corporate corruption stopped
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overdose deaths skyrocketed they weren't high before i mean it kind of implies to me that they were like
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i haven't i haven't gone into the murder rate increase and stuff like that which is bad
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it's horrible so i think that that the externalities here are so high that it does not make sense so
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libertarian stuff makes sense when there is no externalities that need to be priced in
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the externalities are too high we need to go with penal colonies i think that's the the real solution
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here back to simone's dream i was actually recently talking to someone and i actually quite like the
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idea of shipping because it would be our our criminals within our prison system cost so much
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what if haiti we ship them to haiti and we paid the haitian government to for for every criminal we
00:20:48.040
were shipping them they would likely be honestly better educated than the average haitian citizen
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right now um well no haiti just has a huge experiencing an insane brain drain yes anyone
00:20:58.920
who gets educated gets out if you're like a doctor or you can get like a an educated job you're going
00:21:03.560
to flee the country right now it's a terrible place to be i'm i'm saying this objectively and not as a
00:21:09.800
even haitians in the u.s they're going to be like oh yeah like i have a college degree that's why i left
00:21:14.760
i wouldn't mind shipping criminals there they'd probably be slightly better in terms of being
00:21:21.400
able to help stabilize the economy if criminals go there though they then also have to get some
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governing rights i think because one of the reasons why haiti became so terrible i mean it's right next
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to the it's right next to the dr right like they're on the same freaking island and the dr is okay it's not
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perfect but it's nice there's lots of resorts there a lot of tourism and then you have haiti
00:21:43.880
it's deforested they've they've ruined their environment they've they've really screwed it
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up i feel like i want to i want to give these criminals a chance malcolm you're not giving them
00:21:53.880
a chance we're saying we can send criminals there but they at least need to be armed and have a
00:21:58.280
defensible location yeah it's it's cruel and unusual to send them to haiti malcolm that's not fair
00:22:03.880
many criminals would jump at the idea yeah haiti versus jail yeah yeah i mean maybe honestly
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maybe haiti's for sale this seems like the kind of thing trump could do is okay he tried to make
00:22:19.960
some other big country moves he tried to buy greenland which was a really smart idea greenland
00:22:24.440
would have been great maybe he can settle for haiti it's probably on sale right now turn it into a giant
00:22:30.200
penal colony and just send them out there um that's your plan i i don't know if that's well i i or or
00:22:40.840
you know if you don't want to do something as controversial as that it's just i feel like
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it could solve two problems with one stone you know what i mean help haiti and
00:22:48.360
yeah yeah you're gonna have a hard time getting like educated people to move to haiti right now
00:22:55.400
and and that's what they need to fix their local economy at the moment yeah no but hold on let's
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let's go back to the whole libertarian idea so so but you're saying that if we decriminalized
00:23:06.520
illicit substances that there would be more violence because i think the problem is that because
00:23:12.920
we shifted from a corporatized market of opioids to now an illegal market it's worse and if it were
00:23:21.000
a legal market probably overdoses would be somewhat less and probably criminal activity would be lower
00:23:28.680
because it wouldn't be criminal and you wouldn't have these very dangerous and heavily armed gangs
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doing it and production would be in the united states and i feel like production would be a little
00:23:37.480
bit higher quality and i'm not saying don't have some equivalent of okay i i if i was gonna say
00:23:43.560
anything around these types of drugs like in terms of you're like okay you know they shouldn't be
00:23:48.840
produced i would not have them produced by corporations because then the corporations have
00:23:52.440
a motivation to get people addicted and we've seen that they are yes motivated by that it has to be small
00:23:57.160
businesses only somehow no not small businesses only this is like one of the few areas i would say
00:24:01.720
something should be the government i think the government should sell wow that's an interesting
00:24:09.240
idea frost punk too one of the laws you can enact is government booze where the government sells all
00:24:14.600
booze now well i'm so glad frost punk has given you the response my favorite inspiration you need
00:24:21.640
universes where they're like i kind of like to live in this one frost punk is mine a lot of people are
00:24:26.120
like wait you want to live in the frost punk universe just let me tell you the news my head's been
00:24:30.760
wet i've been down on my bended knees he spoke to me in a voice so go tell that long-term liar go and tell
00:24:39.960
them that you're down you can throw your rock and hide your hand this is why you live a life of purpose
00:24:49.080
you have a community you're fighting for the survival of the species you don't have to deal with too much
00:24:55.080
indulgence or the the temptation of indulgence which in many ways is worse than you know not just
00:25:01.560
having a purpose and doing your thing you see in frost punk one the core uh question of the game
00:25:08.280
right is are you going to choose like which vice you're going to choose are you going to become
00:25:16.760
fascist or are you going to become a religious extremist and here i am like why can't i just do
00:25:23.320
multi-track drifting like why can't i be both fascist and a religious extremist at the same time and
00:25:34.680
when i should say fascist they're not really fascist it's more like um pragmatic and totalitarian in
00:25:40.840
terms of how they're ruling the colony which is interpreted in modern parlance and like aesthetics
00:25:46.200
as fascism but that's not real fascism real fascism looks much more like modern like the modern democrat
00:25:51.320
movement if people want to see what real fascism looks like they can look our movement are democrats
00:25:55.480
just fascists because i think that people have forgotten or like it's something like that or
00:25:59.640
like what what's a fascist i have forgotten what fascism is and have gone down these like really long
00:26:05.320
pipelines you know they point out in that video you're like what's a capitalist they're like okay
00:26:09.240
they tell you what's a communist they tell you it's like three words what's a fascist it's like a
00:26:13.480
five paragraph explanation and i'm like you know there's a faster way to explain that the reason you don't
00:26:18.280
know it is because it would show you that the modern democratic party it's a fascist party
00:26:23.400
but anyway totalitarian and and centralized is is the other option i have heard that there are those
00:26:30.200
who would defy us who choose oppression or ascension for the pious dissidents without repent to bend on
00:26:36.280
questioning the diest was did i am this the right winter blizzards to infinity so sing the hymns and
00:26:41.800
litanies hand in and skin the sinners if you wish to skim divinity each shiver will deliver us
00:26:47.240
deliverance in time earn the innocence for penitence if we preempt the crime but it the game and two
00:26:55.000
it keeps trying to like give me options as if like i'm supposed to hate every one of the options and i
00:27:01.080
just love all the options like you've got the evolvers that are like about you know anything to adapt to
00:27:06.200
the new environment like chopping off limbs and replacing them with stuff or like putting attachments on
00:27:11.240
people's hearts to like make them be tolerant to colder blood you've got like the the religious
00:27:17.240
faction which is all about you know trying to bring a degree of meritocratic equality to everything
00:27:23.880
but also through the guise of religion and i'm like i love both of you guys you don't need to fight
00:27:29.240
what are you looking up you're clearly googling something yeah so well i'm just i really want to
00:27:36.760
think through more decriminalization it because saying let's just have the government provide
00:27:42.920
drugs is not going to happen in our lifetimes unless something really awesome happens they're
00:27:49.320
already handing out fentanyl on the streets in major cities right except here's the thing so
00:27:53.720
oregon was the first and to my knowledge only state to decriminalize drugs and i just double checked
00:27:59.000
because i heard this but now oregon is is recriminalizing them doing yeah because well i think
00:28:05.880
the bigger problem and i was trying to find out if this was indeed confirmed because i've heard this
00:28:10.120
but i've not yet read it properly yet but oregon could not afford the treatment centers that it had
00:28:17.640
tried that it was obligated under the new law i think to set up for people when they had serious
00:28:23.320
addiction problems and i think the problem with their decriminalization was that it also included a
00:28:29.800
commitment to treat people who are addicted and that's prohibitively expensive and that is where
00:28:35.800
i struggle with decriminalization even to the level of government provision of very addictive substances
00:28:44.600
is you are going to end up with a lot of people just super addicted i mean a couple generations later
00:28:51.560
though that type of that any set of genes that allows for that to happen really easily is going to be
00:28:57.320
bred out of the population because these people are just going to die i think you need the counters
00:29:01.320
to this freely and easily accessible and that's the problem is opioid agonists are criminal well they're
00:29:07.160
difficult to get with naltrexone being the main one and i think that naltrexone should not just be
00:29:13.000
something that you can get easily for free anywhere but it should be i think a cultural norm among many
00:29:19.240
groups um and naltrexone by the way is just one of those like insane wonder drugs like aspirin or
00:29:26.280
something like that so for people who don't know like aspirin is like insanely good like across
00:29:31.160
everything it like almost does no harm and like has a ton of weird side benefits that you wouldn't
00:29:37.000
expect naltrexone the core opioid agonist it's so for example i take it for alcohol so i don't get
00:29:43.880
addicted to alcohol and throughout covet i never got covet and i was like oh am i one of those weird
00:29:48.600
people who's immune to covet then i look up and there's a study saying naltrexone creates
00:29:52.280
covet immunity and i'm like oh okay i didn't realize that yeah we couldn't figure out why
00:29:58.680
whenever our whole family tested positive you wouldn't test positive yeah i didn't realize i
00:30:05.000
was taking a low dose antiviral so it's one of those things that just has like a ton of positive
00:30:09.720
externalities the only real negatives to it is it quote-unquote like theoretically can damage a liver
00:30:17.080
i guess if you have a very weak constitution but i get checked all the time and i had problems with
00:30:21.400
my liver when i was drinking a lot i don't have trouble now and i drink still quite a lot but
00:30:27.240
with naltrexone and so like basically considering what it's treating your body will be better off
00:30:33.720
even if it's a little harder on the liver to start it's 100 worth it in the majority of cases
00:30:39.880
yeah and then the other thing is oh no it makes you not want to do other addictive things like
00:30:44.520
repeatedly check facebook repeatedly check my youtube stats you got to keep that up so i know that like
00:30:50.920
like i'm still valid like and subscribe by the way um life and describe
00:30:59.800
also actually if if you are willing to and you have an iphone could you please leave us a five-star
00:31:06.760
review in apple podcasts it would mean a lot to us but okay what i'm hearing from you is you're saying
00:31:15.320
in an ideal scenario the government would provide any highly addictive substance it would also provide
00:31:24.600
very readily probably for free subsidized by the profits of drug purchases naltrexone and
00:31:35.880
then probably we'd see fewer deaths on the whole and a healthier society on the whole no i would add one
00:31:43.320
additional thing to this i think that the drug centers and the places where you buy the drugs
00:31:49.640
they need to be cordoned off areas so if you choose to be one of the people who's buying fentanyl
00:31:57.880
you cannot live in you know outside specific sort of cordoned off communities now these communities
00:32:04.600
would have jobs they'd have ability to work but you wouldn't be able to easily interact with the rest of
00:32:11.320
society like drive on roads yeah i think the best way to do this is to build them in remote locations
00:32:19.000
that you know and likely around some sort of a business that could use it maybe it's near some
00:32:24.760
mines maybe it's near some do you want people working in mines while high off their minds well
00:32:31.720
i don't i i think you could if you knew that the settlement oh you'd just be testing you would just do
00:32:37.240
tests for specific things okay um but like or like rural alaska or something like that like i think
00:32:43.400
that there is uh rural areas and you could do this at a state level where you could concentrate these
00:32:50.040
individuals and prevent them from being the problem that they're being within cities and then people are
00:32:54.600
like well then everyone wouldn't go but what you do is you way way way lower the punishments here like
00:33:00.120
you get to live your regular life you have to buy from the government but you have to be one of these
00:33:05.400
people who's taking this and people can be like well that would hurt your career prospects and
00:33:09.560
everything like that it's like yeah it's a hit but typically when you start to get desperate you're
00:33:14.040
desperate anyway and it's probably better just to separate them from society and they don't know
00:33:18.840
here's where i think you're making a mistake i think it has to be what we found works well with
00:33:24.600
alcohol seems to work well which is we you're not allowed to do various things while drunk or while high
00:33:32.680
with with other drugs that are considered legal and that's where the punishment lies but as soon
00:33:38.680
as you make it so restrictive where you literally have to live somewhere different or work somewhere
00:33:44.920
different to access these you're going to have a black market for them and it's the black market that
00:33:49.960
creates the problem in the first place so the problem isn't the black market and also the problem
00:33:54.680
isn't the wealthy guy who is mixing fentanyl with like his party drugs or something like that
00:34:01.240
it's the the gang member and the the low-income individual who just doesn't have as much to lose
00:34:07.880
by moving the the crime is not being committed by yeah i i don't think it's going to cause the
00:34:15.640
externalities you think it will and at the end of the day i think we should at least try it i mean
00:34:20.200
they try to what was what was that where they hand out money to people experiment universal basic
00:34:25.480
income yeah universal basic income why why can't they try a penal colony you know we we have we have
00:34:32.920
the lefty side of the ea movement trying their stuff why can't the righty side of the ea movement
00:34:38.600
occasionally try something eventually there will be depopulated towns like those japanese towns now that
00:34:45.720
are basically ghost towns we already have actually a decent number of ghost towns in the us where we
00:34:51.400
could theoretically try something like this well yeah yeah i i think you make a good point is like
00:34:57.800
these are just ideas now but they will be easy ideas to implement in maybe 50 years time oh definitely
00:35:04.200
at that point you can even insert the equivalent of one of those electric fences for dogs but for humans
00:35:10.440
because you have something embedded deep within your spinal cord that will
00:35:14.280
tase you whenever you try to leave the bounds so it will work just fine absolutely and if you look
00:35:20.200
actually at the graph dystopian well you look at the rates that fentanyl addiction is rising like if we
00:35:26.360
don't find a way to stop this right like it's exploding upwards it's asomatopic at this point it's not
00:35:32.600
leveling off well what do we do with our kids i mean part of this also i still feel that there's a big
00:35:42.600
cultural element here and i feel like we we have these conversations around masturbation as well
00:35:49.480
around lots of behaviors that when you make it illegal when you make it shameful people do it
00:35:55.160
behind closed doors and in a way that's even more damaging no no no so masturbation is a human
00:35:59.960
instinct that is pre-evolved because we had to reproduce in a historic context you are born addicted to
00:36:06.760
arousal patterns and you're born wanting to feel good yeah but you're not born addicted to fentanyl
00:36:12.680
you need to take fentanyl the first time to be addicted to fentanyl yeah you don't need to masturbate
00:36:18.280
the first you don't even need to take fentanyl one time to be addicted to fentanyl
00:36:23.560
what do you mean by that how many times have i taken fentanyl okay so you you would have to take
00:36:30.280
it multiple multiple times i've taken it six times no seven very low addiction rate well okay
00:36:37.000
yeah but also like i don't think women who've gone through multiple rounds of ivf because that's when
00:36:40.920
i've had fentanyl they like typically give it to women during egg extraction and we're yeah or egg
00:36:46.280
retrieval they say i i don't hear about that ever being an issue and people are given clearly thought
00:36:52.200
it was an issue with you they joked about it they were like you don't need to do more rounds just
00:36:57.400
getting so many rounds done to get fentanyl yeah like as if i don't think there are easier ways
00:37:02.920
clearly to get it i mean it's still offered it's still it is still integrated i mean i'm sure i've
00:37:08.360
also been given it during or after c-sections and stuff too and just you know not really aware of what
00:37:14.360
what exactly is in the mix but i yeah i just don't i i think a lot of it does there is something to be
00:37:22.360
said for context and culture like sorry i'm talking to someone here who has done fentanyl
00:37:27.480
before really good really fantastic that whole like sleepy eyes rolling back into your head
00:37:34.440
very relaxed happy feeling that's it it's great like i wouldn't pass up an option
00:37:41.800
yeah i the the wait what was the wider point i was making here my my point is that i i think that
00:37:49.080
there is a role that culture plays and that when medications when substances are treated in an
00:37:55.800
instrumental fashion and here's the appropriate place to do it and here's the appropriate place
00:38:00.200
not to do it when they're when they're societally legalized culturally legalized we can build frameworks
00:38:07.080
for managing them and then when we make them societally ego legal like this is a bad drug we don't
00:38:13.480
talk about it don't ever do it and so there's no framework to do it occasionally properly then
00:38:20.440
people will only do it improperly you have this impression so her family has done lots of drugs and
00:38:26.840
is never addicted to anything my family gets addicted to the littlest effing thing
00:38:32.760
one drug ever you're going to be addicted forever ever ever you are approaching this from a family that
00:38:38.920
basically does not have opioid pathway um that is why you think this
00:38:47.400
no you don't like for example you just drink whatever you feel like right like you have no
00:38:52.120
like drive to drink yeah it does seem it does seem kind of like my life my entire life is on naltrexone
00:38:59.640
whereas you have to take naltrexone to feel my life i i actually really agree with that sentiment
00:39:06.120
actually even your behavior pattern it's like someone on naltrexone yeah um you show me anything
00:39:12.280
rewarding and i'm like okay yeah it's like when i took you scuba diving and i was like trying to
00:39:19.000
show you all the wonders of nature you came back and you were like you were like what were you pointing
00:39:26.040
at and i was you were like it was a fish you're like why did i go down to that reef it was just a
00:39:32.200
bunch of fish like you have no wonder like the world or anything like that like the things that
00:39:38.520
cause opioid pathways and other people you just do not experience and so you're just like ah whatever
00:39:45.160
yeah i wish i don't know there must be we should go through nebula to see if they have any random
00:39:51.000
polygenic scores related to like addictive behavior like it would it be possible in the future for people
00:39:59.080
doing pgtp to select embryos for lower risk of addiction it might be very meaningful because we
00:40:07.640
are already full in to an era in which we are constantly going to be subject to addictive
00:40:14.840
pathways social media that i intermarried with you because that is one of my biggest risks in the
00:40:21.080
current era is i am really susceptible to opioid pathways and it's only going to get so much worse
00:40:25.960
it's so much worse actually so so by the way fun aside here when we're speaking about your
00:40:32.920
naltrexone character yeah but we can just give naltrexone to kids as an option right you know like
00:40:37.960
not that i would give them i'm not saying i would do that i'm just saying that having access to opioid
00:40:43.880
agonists might be useful in an age of constant dopamine loops within an online environment and obviously i
00:40:51.800
wouldn't you know without illegal changes or stuff like that my wife is running for office
00:40:57.320
uh suggest that this stuff be more widely accessible what i would say well it prevents
00:41:03.960
anything from being addictive if you happen to be born with an addictive but but but side note here
00:41:11.240
when i was talking about naltrexone watching an anime recently and it has replaced so occasionally i'll
00:41:17.640
watch a show and i'll be like this is my new like peak simone vibes show the first the first peak
00:41:23.000
simone vibe for me was julie from avatar the last airbender barracks assistant i'll forget it's very
00:41:29.320
simone not goblin slayer no no which character would you be in goblin slayer just i'm the person
00:41:37.160
autistically who only wants to do one thing oh no no i'm not stuck in a cuteness sense like girl
00:41:42.600
oh then it was tomo chan is a girl because i was like yeah she's got that very like confident sort
00:41:48.760
of vibe seriously this is all because you have a crush on the captain and you're like a couple
00:41:53.800
lost puppies in love and you need me to come save you why does she sound so happy i always dreamed of
00:42:00.200
what it might be like to be that girl other girls came to for love advice if these chicks are asking for
00:42:04.520
my help then being me must be the ultimate female goal i'm willing to help if you're willing to take it
00:42:12.600
why do i feel so reassured oh man never in my life did i ever think i'd be a love guru they were
00:42:19.720
both talking to me like i was totally one of the girls and who knows maybe i'm setting a new standard
00:42:24.200
for ultimate femininity wait hang on a sec but now peak new mau mau from apothecary's diary
00:42:35.320
is so simone i have to put like a clip on screen here or something like this okay similar to the jade
00:42:41.960
pavilion the servants here are hard workers there are a few idiots who could learn a thing or two
00:42:47.400
from them if he knew so many high-ranking rich guys he should have offered them sooner with access
00:42:53.800
to this kind of referral base i could have decimated my loan amount i'll just grin and bear it
00:43:00.600
the only thing i missed was my freedom to experiment with poison
00:43:07.720
you shouldn't be dabbling in poison at all do people ever tell you you're hard to read yes
00:43:13.400
routinely but i am loving it i i finished the series by the way it's a sweet series you might
00:43:18.520
actually like it it's dubbed as well so you know when you're watching your mindless brain rot
00:43:22.440
it takes place just a pitch here because you'd like this it takes place in the emperor's court in
00:43:28.600
imperial china yeah you know imperial china doesn't do it for me really i'm super about japan i'm super
00:43:37.800
about south korea you know yeah i've toured the forbidden palace i've gone to like the beautiful
00:43:45.320
temples in beijing i've traveled i mean i've gone all the way from now it just doesn't
00:43:51.720
what is it is it the the the costumes is it the
00:43:58.440
it's really hard for me to put a finger on it like i'm just because she typically loves like
00:44:04.360
court life stuff and yeah i love court like stuff yeah like i'm just picturing burning cows i i i can't
00:44:12.200
really well articulate this um burning cows yeah like offerings to the gods but that i mean no this
00:44:18.840
is just it's it's very it's a very vibes based i hate that word but like it's very vibes based
00:44:25.560
simone we need to i i'm not i'm not happy with your vibe it's it feels
00:44:32.040
i mean all all of all these you know courts and stuff are bureaucratic but for whatever reason
00:44:43.080
stiflingly bureaucratic instead of like fun bureaucratic it's a yeah it's an element of the
00:44:51.400
show it's lots of bureaucrats well it's it's it's over the sort of competition between the courtesans
00:44:58.520
and the the main character is an incredibly competent person which you like yeah but i think here's the
00:45:04.040
thing is in historical japanese european korean court dramas there's this sense that there could be
00:45:14.440
some disruption that you know the entire order could could change you know but okay well now the boylands
00:45:21.000
are gonna take over whatever like oh yeah good point yeah there is there is room for an upset um the
00:45:28.520
furthest i ever really see an upset go in like chinese court dramas it's like i'm gonna be the
00:45:34.840
number one main bitch like like dreaming big is not like the the the oppressiveness of this like
00:45:43.480
confucian system on one hand it is admirable because it's so effective but on the other hand
00:45:50.520
it is to me the most horrifying stagnated thing ever because you can't overcome it it cannot be
00:45:56.280
disrupted it cannot be shaken and i see that as a point of of stifling it's like being buried in a
00:46:03.960
coffin and slowly running out of oxygen i i can't deal with it so that's so you need you need the
00:46:10.280
disruption you need the turnover which court does it best for you then out of all the court systems
00:46:15.400
which one do you like shows on the most french court the french court movie the 14th wait you would
00:46:21.400
like i'm sorry and boleyn era yes henry court hands down so much turnover in king louis the 14th but
00:46:29.720
specifically under the sun king he created the most beautiful prison for an extremely threatening
00:46:39.640
nobility and he trolled the hell out of them with his etiquette system he just i i've never seen an
00:46:48.840
ownage of other powerful people by one powerful family or really person in any other point in
00:46:55.720
history just trounced and just humiliated king louis the 14th he's he is the king famous for building
00:47:03.160
versailles turning a mosquito-ridden swampy hunting lodge into one of the most famous now tourist destinations
00:47:08.680
of all time he grew up in this period of a series of rebellions of nobles that were extremely
00:47:15.320
threatening to them you know he's like in hiding in the countryside for a lot of his childhood he's
00:47:18.920
he is a very acutely aware of the fact that there is a a wealth of very powerful like the most wealthy
00:47:25.960
powerful people in his country he is the this boy king with his mother serving his i think regent for
00:47:30.920
a while along with cardinal richel i think i'm getting the names wrong whatever it doesn't matter
00:47:35.560
but like he is growing up with all the cards stacked against him in such a threatening and hostile
00:47:40.120
environment what does he do he builds versailles he takes this hunting lodge that outside of paris
00:47:45.800
that you know everything the whole court used to be in paris you know he was surrounded by this like
00:47:50.120
den of wolves there and what does he do he moves the court to this hunting lodge that he's building
00:47:55.800
up that is a complete dump that is absolutely horrible i mean it reminds me a lot of washington dc you
00:48:00.520
know like just like bad environment blah like why would you go there no one wants to be there
00:48:07.240
on the like stairwells and stuff if i remember well like during construction yeah i mean like
00:48:12.040
people got there literally their shit under control over time but yes it was not no one wanted to be
00:48:17.480
there and as it was being built but this is this is again this is what makes him so impressive is he's
00:48:22.200
like all right this is where the court's going to be everyone this is where if you want to matter
00:48:26.200
you have to be here and and we have nobles like literally living in closets in this palace it's
00:48:31.720
under construction it is a mess there's construction materials everywhere you are
00:48:35.400
shitting in the stairways because there's nowhere else to go like and but you are there and then
00:48:40.040
he over time builds this elaborate set of court etiquette not because he is a weird pompous bastard
00:48:47.400
but because he is using it to control the nobility he is using access to him he is using proximity to him
00:48:54.920
like many kings have before and many kings well and and leaders have sense but like he's using it as
00:49:00.360
as a tool but he's like literally making these people obsess that he's like turning them into
00:49:06.520
instagram stars like so like now it's they're spending all their money and time instead of
00:49:10.680
thinking about overthrowing him although people still think about overthrowing him all the time
00:49:15.000
they're thinking about fashion they're getting about how to get closer to them how to get their wife
00:49:19.480
in like you know some bedchamber role so she can be one of the people who hands the stockings who
00:49:23.640
hands the stockings to the other person who finally puts the stocking on one queen after they switch out for
00:49:27.400
another person like these these rules are elaborate he's literally reading off legal documents to
00:49:32.680
people while taking a dump in his beautiful little bathroom like just the level of humiliation that
00:49:38.520
he's subjecting the most senior people to is is insane and is that what you would do as queen
00:49:45.000
i don't i don't have the iq for that i don't have the social acuity but he so like he turned this whole
00:49:50.760
thing into this like amazing troll where he like creates this it's like it's like squid game it's like
00:49:56.120
reality tv he like suddenly creates this and he's like survivor bachelor edition like all of it put
00:50:01.320
together and he completely distracts them and he creates this amazing french court and and he sleeps
00:50:06.040
with everyone's wives while he's at it and has amazing romances and and it's just like what and
00:50:11.000
then his brother his brother this fabulous gay one right well he i mean he had male and female lovers
00:50:17.560
he had a wife he had children but yeah no he had amazing gay lovers and he would sometimes just
00:50:21.400
fabulously like well when people are like well there he goes he's wearing a great dress today and they
00:50:24.840
didn't make a big deal out of it because that's just how things were people just if you want to
00:50:28.280
pull it off pull it off okay and then he would go and like kick ass in battle because that's what you
00:50:32.200
do and come on that is a court that's a court screw this like imperial nonsense in china i'm not into
00:50:39.560
that you can't you don't see right you're right it is less spicy i mean the i i still honestly i'm
00:50:45.960
more pro the anne berlin story the the king henry story honestly i just i found that more depressing
00:50:52.280
because here you have you know two like both the boylan sisters incredibly brilliant also trained
00:50:58.520
in the french court all right how did they get so cunning and smart and great you've got like
00:51:03.480
these amazing characters like cardinal wolsey who's like so intelligent and so cunning and in the french
00:51:08.840
courts all the intelligence is it's sort of like a female intelligence i guess i'd say where it's like
00:51:13.880
petty and throwing people under the bus it's not about actually trying to build a sustainable better
00:51:21.000
you everyone in the british system every one of their plans was to create a utopian
00:51:27.640
better society that is true that is true they were all fighting over how to create the best
00:51:32.200
the best world or the i mean a few of his wives were just like boring like woman woman like the spanish
00:51:39.800
one that he started with catherine of aragon yeah well but she was but she was doing her job as a pious
00:51:46.360
wife everyone is the main character syndrome no no yeah well yeah and yeah i yeah i guess the the
00:51:52.200
everyone's fighting for themselves in the french court whereas in the english court everyone is
00:51:57.480
fighting for the species and i get that even catherine of aragon was doing what she thought for the
00:52:02.200
betterment of humanity king hammer the eighth totally thought that although he had his distractions
00:52:06.920
yeah the boylan sisters were just being they were being used to like every other woman who's
00:52:10.840
thrown at him except for that like no they were trying to revolution in the country like they were
00:52:16.600
very religiously focused they they might have quote-unquote been used but they weren't like
00:52:22.200
being used used they were religious extremists in their own way i mean i have respect for that i mean
00:52:29.640
it but it's not as fun and interesting we've got we got the johnny anomaly call now so we gotta hop on
00:52:34.280
that okay i love you bye i mean bye and hello again very like anything else new today
00:52:39.960
no i shared with you my friendship model that was my only fun thought the rest of it was just oh
00:52:47.720
yeah we really got to do an episode on that i'll put that in the notes hold on i'll put it right here
00:52:50.920
get rid of friends get rid of friends to do waste of time well and the real realization that i had since we
00:53:02.840
talked about it was that the only friends that people originally had were utility friends and how can
00:53:09.880
we be the bastards for being utility friend fans when that was literally why everyone had friends
00:53:16.920
in the past people don't know what you're talking about basically what she was no i'm talking to you
00:53:21.240
malcolm not this isn't for the podcast it is going at the end of the podcast that's why i was asking
00:53:25.480
people like hearing our i really need to be careful about what i say so the utility friends the concept
00:53:30.520
that she's talking about here is to say that the amount of friendships people have had has gone
00:53:34.840
down dramatically recently because a lot of the things you formerly would have asked a friend to do like
00:53:38.440
drive you to you're ruining the podcast take this out let's just start okay i'll just the episode