The Joe Rogan Experience - November 07, 2019


Joe Rogan Experience #1379 - Ben Westhoff

Topics
fentanyl analogs cat plant NPS drugs opioids opioid crisis mitigation fentanyl overdoses fentanyl dark web dealer fentanyl crisis fentanyl precursors ibogaine effectiveness Sasha Shulgin and psychedelic drugs protest education and opioid epidemic racism in drug sentencing music and drug effects kundalini yoga identity Weinstein culture and casting couch Sober Octobers exercise values
Hosted by
Joe Rogan
Guests
Ben Westhoff
Mentioned
Rick Ross Sasha Shulgin Fentanyl Purdue Pharma Tom Petty Mike Hamilton Morris Jesus Christ Cushy Punch Kool-Aid Freeway Rick Ross Cool G Rap George Marquardt Vampire Weekend John Campbell John Coltrane Lenny Bruce Andrew Yang Ready Rock Weinstein and 61 more
Joe Rogan Experience #1378 - Greg Fitzsimmons Joe Rogan Experience #1380 - Pete Dominick

Episode Stats


Length

1 hour and 55 minutes

Words per minute

168.91

Word count

19,565

Sentence count

2,079

Harmful content

Misogyny

30

sentences flagged

Toxicity

224

sentences flagged

Hate speech

22

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

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?

Transcript

Transcripts from "The Joe Rogan Experience" are sourced from the Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool. Explore them interactively here.
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:05.000 Hello, Ben.
00:00:06.000 Thank you for having me, John.
00:00:07.000 My pleasure.
00:00:08.000 This is a subject that scares the shit out of me.
00:00:12.000 How did you stumble upon the story of Fentanyl?
00:00:16.000 Because weren't you, at one point in time, didn't you write about rap music?
00:00:20.000 Yeah.
00:00:20.000 I have a book about N.W.A. and Tupac, and I interviewed Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, all those people.
00:00:27.000 Yeah.
00:00:28.000 But I was the LA Weekly music editor, and I started looking into this story about why people were always dying at raves.
00:00:36.000 So 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.
00:00:43.000 And they always said it was from ecstasy.
00:00:45.000 But I knew that ecstasy was really not that dangerous of a drug.
00:00:50.000 You know, MDMA, pure MDMA, very few people died from that.
00:00:54.000 So I was like, what is going on here?
00:00:56.000 And I looked into it and it turned out it was all adulterated.
00:00:59.000 It wasn't real ecstasy.
00:01:01.000 It wasn't real molly.
00:01:02.000 It was adulterated with all these new drugs.
00:01:05.000 And I kind of went down the rabbit hole and I found out that all these new drugs were made in China. 0.98
00:01:11.000 They were all synthetic.
00:01:13.000 And there were like hundreds of them.
00:01:16.000 And then it turns out that the most, you know, the worst of them was fentanyl.
00:01:21.000 And that's how I got onto the topic.
00:01:24.000 And fentanyl, most people think of fentanyl, they think of it as being a new thing.
00:01:28.000 But it's not really a new thing, right?
00:01:31.000 Wasn't it, it was invented in the 50s?
00:01:33.000 Yeah.
00:01:33.000 Yeah, it was invented by a Belgian chemist.
00:01:37.000 He was trying to find something that worked better than morphine in hospitals.
00:01:42.000 Doesn't morphine work really good?
00:01:44.000 Well, it does, but for things like, yeah, traditionally, people have gotten a lot of mileage out of morphine.
00:01:50.000 But for things like open-heart surgery, he wanted something that came on really fast and it lasted a long time.
00:01:57.000 And 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.
00:02:09.000 It'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.
00:02:19.000 And then women who have epidurals during childbirth, that I believe is usually fentanyl.
00:02:25.000 So it's still an important hospital drug.
00:02:28.000 And so how did it come to be that this drug from the 1950s sort of re-emerges?
00:02:34.000 And it re-emerged during the rave scene?
00:02:36.000 Is that what it was?
00:02:37.000 It was actually before that.
00:02:39.000 It first started killing people a little bit at the beginning of the 80s.
00:02:43.000 And nobody knew what it was.
00:02:44.000 And it was from China then as well?
00:02:46.000 No.
00:02:47.000 Back then, it was these kind of mystery chemists.
00:02:51.000 There was this one guy in particular called George Marquardt, and he was like a genius maniac who read all the chemical literature.
00:03:01.000 He learned about fentanyl.
00:03:03.000 He's like, I should try to make this.
00:03:04.000 I bet it would be a hit with recreational users.
00:03:08.000 And so he started making it and it stumped authorities because these people would die.
00:03:14.000 They would have track marks in their arms like it was heroin.
00:03:18.000 They would have syringes, but they tested them afterwards and there's no heroin in their system.
00:03:23.000 And so they're like, what is this?
00:03:26.000 And 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.
00:03:37.000 What?
00:03:38.000 So they would withstand more pain and would go longer and faster and could train harder.
00:03:45.000 Yeah.
00:03:46.000 And so this guy made the connection.
00:03:48.000 He's like, oh, this is fentanyl.
00:03:50.000 This is this new thing.
00:03:51.000 And he actually predicted what was going to happen.
00:03:54.000 He'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.
00:04:04.000 When they ban that, you can make another one.
00:04:07.000 Ad infinitum, basically.
00:04:09.000 Wow.
00:04:10.000 So the thing with horses would be that they would be in pain so they wouldn't run as hard?
00:04:15.000 So they would force them to run harder by dulling the pain?
00:04:19.000 I guess so, yeah.
00:04:20.000 I don't know all the details of it, but, you know, it's performance enhancing, basically.
00:04:24.000 Doesn't it seem kind of counterintuitive?
00:04:25.000 You would think that, like, an opiate would, like, make them sleepy, right?
00:04:28.000 Well, I don't know all the details.
00:04:30.000 Maybe it just has a different effect on horses.
00:04:33.000 Gotcha.
00:04:33.000 So, 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.
00:04:47.000 Exactly.
00:04:48.000 Yeah, because back in the old days, scientists would publish a paper.
00:04:54.000 They're trying to find a new drug that they can patent, say the drug isn't a hit, no one wants to buy it.
00:05:00.000 It goes on some dusty university shelf, never is heard from again.
00:05:05.000 But in the Internet age, all these papers start going online.
00:05:09.000 And so these rogue chemists that I reference in the title of my book We're good to go.
00:05:35.000 And 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.
00:05:46.000 Have you ever experienced any opiates personally?
00:05:49.000 I've taken, yeah, like Tramadol and Tylenol-3 and stuff like that.
00:05:55.000 Tylenol-3 has opiates in it?
00:05:56.000 I think it's codeine, which is a low-level opioid.
00:05:59.000 I don't know.
00:06:00.000 To me, it always gets me stoned, but it never seems to deal with the problem.
00:06:04.000 I don't really like opioids.
00:06:05.000 You know what I mean?
00:06:07.000 I can't sleep and it's just not my thing.
00:06:09.000 It's not your thing, yeah.
00:06:11.000 The old NyQuil had codeine, didn't it?
00:06:13.000 Did it?
00:06:14.000 Didn't it?
00:06:15.000 We've been over this, haven't we?
00:06:17.000 Didn't we try to figure this out?
00:06:18.000 I remember I took NyQuil in the 90s.
00:06:21.000 In the late 90s, I was sick.
00:06:22.000 It was like the last time I ever took it.
00:06:24.000 And it was wonderful.
00:06:26.000 I was lying in bed going, this is amazing. 0.99
00:06:28.000 I don't even give a shit if I'm tired, I'm sick. 0.98
00:06:30.000 A lot of people say that. 0.99
00:06:32.000 I just sank into the bed.
00:06:33.000 I was like, ah.
00:06:35.000 And another time, I had a morphine drip.
00:06:37.000 I had knee surgery.
00:06:38.000 And they gave me a little morphine drip.
00:06:40.000 And every time I wanted, I could just hit this button and get a little bit more.
00:06:44.000 I was just hammering that button, just lying in bed.
00:06:47.000 Well, that's like the irony of the opioids.
00:06:50.000 It can produce the greatest pleasure and the greatest pain.
00:06:54.000 You know, I think Sam Quinonez said that.
00:06:57.000 Like, how can one molecule give you the greatest pleasure imaginable and the worst pain imaginable?
00:07:04.000 Yeah, Lenny Bruce had some crazy quote about it.
00:07:07.000 Something about getting hugged by God.
00:07:11.000 I 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.
00:07:24.000 And 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.
00:07:32.000 I forget his real name.
00:07:33.000 I think it was Bill.
00:07:34.000 No, that was Buffalo Bills, his other nickname.
00:07:36.000 I don't remember his real name.
00:07:37.000 But anyway, this guy was an elite pool player, a big-time gambler.
00:07:41.000 But the thing was, he had to do heroin first.
00:07:44.000 So they would play games for like $10,000, these huge games.
00:07:49.000 And all these guys would come from the tri-state area.
00:07:52.000 They would come around to watch these matches and bet on the side.
00:07:57.000 And Water Dog would go to the bathroom and everybody knew what was going on.
00:08:01.000 He would go and shoot up and then he would come and he would sit on a chair like this.
00:08:08.000 Just sit there for like half an hour.
00:08:10.000 Just sit there.
00:08:12.000 Wow.
00:08:12.000 And then when it was over, when the half hour was over, he would just like...
00:08:18.000 He 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 0.99
00:08:49.000 was fucked up on heroin. 0.99
00:08:51.000 And I remember thinking, what a bizarre drug. 0.97
00:08:54.000 I mean, think about all the amazing artists that's claimed.
00:08:57.000 Yeah, I think about jazz and all the great improv.
00:08:59.000 John Coltrane.
00:09:00.000 Yes.
00:09:00.000 Lenny Bruce.
00:09:01.000 So many people.
00:09:03.000 I mean, you go down the line.
00:09:05.000 All these different folks.
00:09:06.000 I mean, that mugshot that I have out there of Hendrix.
00:09:09.000 Yeah.
00:09:10.000 That was heroin.
00:09:10.000 Got caught with heroin in Toronto.
00:09:12.000 Yeah.
00:09:13.000 I mean, people prefer heroin to fentanyl.
00:09:16.000 I've heard it described as more soulful, people say.
00:09:20.000 But the thing is, you can't even get heroin in most parts of America, like pure heroin anymore.
00:09:25.000 It's all cut with fentanyl.
00:09:27.000 Well, you got to go straight to Afghanistan, right? 0.92
00:09:29.000 Yeah.
00:09:30.000 That's probably, yeah, probably Mexico.
00:09:33.000 Yeah.
00:09:34.000 Yeah.
00:09:34.000 Jesus Christ.
00:09:35.000 Now, can you grow poppies?
00:09:39.000 Like, can that be grown in the North American climate?
00:09:42.000 Yeah, I've heard that, like, if you just walk around on the, like, nice neighborhoods, you'll see poppies all the time.
00:09:47.000 You just don't even know you're looking at them.
00:09:49.000 And that's actually heroin.
00:09:50.000 You could get heroin from those poppies.
00:09:52.000 Yeah, it's like if they grow organically and you're not doing it on purpose, it's no big deal.
00:09:59.000 But if you start cultivating it, that's when it becomes a lot.
00:10:02.000 I don't know.
00:10:03.000 They're beautiful.
00:10:04.000 Look how pretty.
00:10:05.000 Do you also have San Pedro cactus on your lawn, sir?
00:10:08.000 Oh, those are pretty, too.
00:10:10.000 Right.
00:10:11.000 Yeah.
00:10:13.000 I mean, those cactuses, I can't imagine there are a lot of trained...
00:10:18.000 Police who know what to look for.
00:10:19.000 I feel like if you're going to grow some mescaline cacti or whatever, you're probably going to be alright.
00:10:26.000 Just mix it up with regular cactus.
00:10:27.000 Pretend you're a cactus enthusiast.
00:10:29.000 Just have it all over your lawn.
00:10:31.000 Some succulents.
00:10:31.000 Yeah, I'm just really into cactus, man.
00:10:33.000 They're pretty.
00:10:34.000 They have to water them.
00:10:34.000 I go out of town a lot.
00:10:35.000 Yeah, exactly.
00:10:38.000 So, what scares me is, I mean, I just know people that party.
00:10:45.000 I know people that take pills.
00:10:46.000 And it seems like...
00:10:50.000 Fentanyl is, things are getting cut with fentanyl a lot.
00:10:54.000 It's not an uncommon thing for all sorts of different drugs.
00:10:59.000 How many different drugs are cut with fentanyl?
00:11:02.000 Street drugs?
00:11:02.000 Oh man, it is like an awful time to be a young person on the party scene.
00:11:08.000 You know, like when I was coming up, and probably when you were coming up, they said the D.A.R.E. program and all that, just say no.
00:11:14.000 They made it sound like every drug could kill you, right?
00:11:17.000 Now, unfortunately, that's like almost reality, that basically any pill or any powder...
00:11:26.000 If you didn't get your pill from CVS, you know, your pain pill, or from a pharmacy that's legit, it could be cut with fentanyl.
00:11:33.000 And that's how Prince died.
00:11:36.000 That's how Tom Petty and the rapper Mac Miller all died, is that they thought they were taking legitimate pain pills.
00:11:43.000 Is that really what happened?
00:11:44.000 That is really what happened, yeah.
00:11:45.000 So Prince got his from the black market?
00:11:48.000 Yeah, well, the guy who supplied Prince has been, he refuses to really say exactly where he got it.
00:11:54.000 He's still alive?
00:11:56.000 The guy who got him for Prince, yeah.
00:11:58.000 Where is he?
00:11:59.000 I don't know.
00:11:59.000 I think in Minneapolis or something.
00:12:01.000 They should find that fucking guy. 1.00
00:12:03.000 Well, the doctor is also settled or something. 1.00
00:12:09.000 I think the doctor might have been involved somehow.
00:12:11.000 It's a mystery where he got these pills, but...
00:12:14.000 Prince was doing the splits on stage at age 58 or whatever, and he was definitely a guy who walked around with a lot of pain.
00:12:22.000 He was a Jehovah's Witness.
00:12:23.000 He was not a recreational drug user as we think about it.
00:12:28.000 He 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.
00:12:37.000 But then a drug dealer trying to save some money, increase profits, cut it with fentanyl, and that's how he died.
00:12:46.000 And 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,
00:13:01.000 and that's what killed him.
00:13:03.000 Jesus Christ.
00:13:05.000 Oh.
00:13:08.000 God.
00:13:09.000 And Prince needed hip replacement surgery, didn't he?
00:13:12.000 I think that's right.
00:13:13.000 Yeah.
00:13:13.000 Yeah.
00:13:14.000 It's so common, for some reason, with people who perform on stage, who do a lot of, like, jumping around and going crazy.
00:13:20.000 My friend Maynard, lead singer of Tool, he does jujitsu.
00:13:25.000 He's really into jujitsu, and he's like, man, I just have no movement in my hip.
00:13:28.000 My hip is, like, so locked up.
00:13:30.000 And the doctor went to look at it, and they're like, hey, bro, you've...
00:13:32.000 You got no hip left.
00:13:34.000 Like, it's just shot.
00:13:35.000 And it was from stomping on stage.
00:13:37.000 Oh, really? 0.99
00:13:37.000 Because when he sings, he fucking stomps all the time. 0.99
00:13:40.000 And that one hip, he just wore that hip out. 0.99
00:13:43.000 Yeah, my mom has these issues with her neck. 1.00
00:13:46.000 It's like degenerative disc disease.
00:13:48.000 And, you know, you've got this like cushy, spongy, you know...
00:13:54.000 Well, they can do something about that now.
00:13:56.000 Can they?
00:13:56.000 Yeah, before your mom goes and gets her neck cut open.
00:13:59.000 There's several options.
00:14:02.000 First of all, as it's been explained to me, the concept of degenerative disc disease, it gives you this...
00:14:09.000 It implies that there's a disease.
00:14:11.000 Like you caught a flu.
00:14:13.000 That's what I thought too.
00:14:14.000 It's not.
00:14:14.000 What it is is bad posture, wearing down, compression, carrying weight.
00:14:22.000 If people carry a lot of things, their discs get smushed over time.
00:14:25.000 There's a lot of different factors.
00:14:27.000 A lot of athletes get it.
00:14:28.000 A lot of fighters get it.
00:14:29.000 A lot of wrestlers, jiu-jitsu guys, they all get it.
00:14:31.000 I got it.
00:14:32.000 Oh, you did?
00:14:33.000 Where did you get it?
00:14:34.000 My neck.
00:14:34.000 Okay.
00:14:35.000 And 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.
00:14:44.000 But I found a thing called Regenikine.
00:14:46.000 Regenikine is what Peyton Manning used. 0.98
00:14:49.000 He actually went to Germany to go do it, but now you can do it here in America.
00:14:53.000 Kobe Bryant went and got it done as well.
00:14:56.000 It's great for people with back issues, disc issues, and with bulging discs in particular.
00:15:01.000 It helps relax the area around the disc.
00:15:03.000 It's your own blood.
00:15:05.000 There's some sort of strange procedure they do, but they take your own blood.
00:15:08.000 It's like a very advanced form of platelet-rich plasma.
00:15:12.000 And there's a place called Lifespan Medicine in Santa Monica that did it for me.
00:15:16.000 You got like full everything back?
00:15:19.000 Everything back, yeah.
00:15:20.000 I mean, depending upon how far gone it is.
00:15:23.000 You know, some people it's already bone on bone.
00:15:25.000 There's no disc left.
00:15:26.000 You know, and you got to catch it before that happens.
00:15:29.000 Yeah.
00:15:29.000 And 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...
00:15:38.000 But a lot of that's...
00:15:39.000 They'll be doing that in other countries, because they're a lot looser with their regulations, if they have any regulations at all. 0.95
00:15:46.000 They can just fucking fill you up with stem cells, and you're like... 0.72
00:15:48.000 And everything starts regenerating. 0.91
00:15:51.000 Yeah, but yeah, and it's not just these pills either.
00:15:55.000 It's like you have daughters, I know, who are getting towards their teenage years, right?
00:16:03.000 Yeah, and that's the thing I worry the most about is I have kids too.
00:16:07.000 Yeah, partying.
00:16:08.000 Yeah, because I used to, you know, I wasn't discriminated.
00:16:11.000 I didn't care.
00:16:12.000 Right, especially if you're drinking.
00:16:13.000 If you're a young kid and you're drinking, you're not going to make wise decisions.
00:16:16.000 You don't even know what you're doing.
00:16:18.000 If 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.
00:16:24.000 You don't have the wisdom and the knowledge and the history to go, okay, I've got three drinks. 0.99
00:16:29.000 I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. 0.99
00:16:30.000 I should get out of here. 0.99
00:16:31.000 Yeah.
00:16:32.000 I definitely shouldn't be taking any pills.
00:16:33.000 Yeah.
00:16:33.000 Yeah, and so I'm already, like, trying to think about how I'm going to talk to my kids who are younger.
00:16:38.000 But, 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.
00:16:55.000 But if you go on Snopes.com, they sort of debunk all that.
00:16:59.000 So I think marijuana is...
00:17:01.000 If you can smell it, it smells like weed, you're probably pretty safe.
00:17:04.000 Well, there are a lot of people that are growing marijuana that are using pesticides and chemicals that are dangerous.
00:17:12.000 And there was one, what was the company that got caught recently, Jamie?
00:17:16.000 They tested their stuff?
00:17:18.000 Cushy Punch.
00:17:19.000 I believe, yeah.
00:17:21.000 Cushy punch with the microphone.
00:17:24.000 Cushy punch.
00:17:25.000 We 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.
00:17:38.000 And he thought, hey, what a great job this would be.
00:17:41.000 I'm going to get a job in the great outdoors.
00:17:43.000 I love the outdoors.
00:17:44.000 And, you know, I'll get to do some good for the wildlife.
00:17:49.000 Yeah.
00:17:49.000 Well, 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.
00:18:05.000 Oh, yeah.
00:18:06.000 And also they would use poison to keep animals out. 1.00
00:18:09.000 And they had vats of this shit laying around, and some of the marijuana was actually infested with this shit, or infected. 1.00
00:18:15.000 Yeah. 1.00
00:18:16.000 Yeah, my friend Amanda Chicago Lewis is this great journalist focused on marijuana. 0.92
00:18:22.000 And yeah, she put the fear of God in me about those pesticides and carcinogens. 0.53
00:18:27.000 And 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.
00:18:40.000 And basically, you know, synthetic cannabinoids like K2 and Spice are what they're known as sometimes.
00:18:47.000 And those are, people call it synthetic marijuana, but the big difference is that THC is known as like a partial agonist.
00:18:58.000 So it will, like, these receptors, it will activate them to an extent.
00:19:02.000 You're chilled, it's relaxed.
00:19:04.000 But the cannabinoids, they also interact with the cannabinoid receptors, same as THC, but they're full agonists.
00:19:13.000 And so they make you basically, like, go crazy, and your heart starts beating fast.
00:19:19.000 You start, people overdose and die on these cannabinoids.
00:19:24.000 And these are all made in China, too.
00:19:26.000 I went into a lab in China where they made these and they made fentanyl analogs.
00:19:32.000 They let you in?
00:19:33.000 Yeah, I mean, it was a whole thing.
00:19:35.000 I wrote them on the internet.
00:19:36.000 I made a fake email address and I said, I'm a drug dealer.
00:19:41.000 I'd like to visit your lab.
00:19:43.000 May I do that when I come to China?
00:19:45.000 And they said, yeah.
00:19:45.000 What?
00:19:46.000 Yeah, that's like...
00:19:47.000 Did you have a fake drug dealer name?
00:19:49.000 I called myself – what did I call myself?
00:19:53.000 I 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.
00:20:02.000 And they just – They said, yeah, come by.
00:20:06.000 And so I went to Shanghai, and I met this guy at the train station.
00:20:12.000 And he owned his own lab.
00:20:14.000 And he asked me if I was a journalist, actually, like, pretty straightaway.
00:20:18.000 He was like, are you a journalist, though?
00:20:20.000 And I was like, no.
00:20:21.000 I was like, no, crazy question.
00:20:24.000 Do I look like a journalist?
00:20:25.000 No.
00:20:25.000 And so he didn't know whether to trust me, so we went to his apartment.
00:20:30.000 It was like the top floor of this fancy high-rise.
00:20:33.000 He's a total family man.
00:20:35.000 He lived there with his wife and kid.
00:20:38.000 Stranger.
00:20:38.000 Brings a stranger to his home.
00:20:39.000 Yep, yep.
00:20:41.000 Meets a guy who says he's a drug dealer, picks him up at the train station, says, hey, come to where my kids sleep.
00:20:45.000 Yeah, exactly.
00:20:47.000 Wow.
00:20:48.000 And so then he showed me – because they have the website.
00:20:50.000 A lot of these companies in China, they make legitimate chemicals and recreational chemicals.
00:20:57.000 And 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?
00:21:06.000 Well, in the U.S., we have this thing called the Federal Analog Act.
00:21:10.000 And so that bans all these drugs even before they're invented.
00:21:14.000 So anything that's similar to marijuana, structurally, or in effect, anything that's similar to opioids, is just automatically banned, automatically scheduled.
00:21:24.000 But in China, they have to do it one by one by one by one. 0.56
00:21:28.000 And so fentanyl itself was scheduled in China, was banned in China decades ago.
00:21:35.000 But 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.
00:21:47.000 So 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.
00:21:57.000 That's a hilarious term, by the way, drug nerds.
00:22:00.000 Yeah, that's what they are.
00:22:02.000 And like psychonauts, I'm sure you've heard of psychonauts, right?
00:22:05.000 They specialize in these new, usually psychedelics they tend to prefer, that have never been tested on human subjects.
00:22:13.000 But this guy was entirely specialized in...
00:22:17.000 Fentanyl analogs and synthetic cannabinoids.
00:22:20.000 And 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.
00:22:30.000 But at his apartment he showed me the real list.
00:22:33.000 And that had all these, you know, it was cannabinoids, fentanyl, it was like fake Valium, like different types of Xanax.
00:22:42.000 And he showed me the prices and I was like, alright, looks good, can I go see your lab?
00:22:48.000 And so finally he decided he trusted me.
00:22:51.000 He called up his driver on the phone.
00:22:54.000 And the driver showed up.
00:22:57.000 And he was kind of this big, like, muscular dude who didn't speak any English.
00:23:01.000 And I was a little worried.
00:23:02.000 I was like, oh, this is the dude who's going to break my kneecaps if...
00:23:06.000 When he finds out I'm a journalist, you know, but I just got in the car and we drove like 30 minutes to the outskirts of Shanghai.
00:23:14.000 And we got to the lab and it just looked like a regular office park, like a suburban office park.
00:23:20.000 There was a fountain in front of the building.
00:23:23.000 There was like, you know, you use the key card to get in the parking lot.
00:23:27.000 And then it looked like kind of a new construction building.
00:23:31.000 It smelled like cement.
00:23:32.000 We went inside.
00:23:35.000 We went up to the labs.
00:23:36.000 All the windows were open.
00:23:37.000 It was the middle of the winter, and it was kind of a strong chemical smell.
00:23:41.000 But it looked kind of just like Breaking Bad, like industrial-sized glassware, beakers, Bunsen burners, all that stuff from high school chemistry.
00:23:57.000 Basically, I had my recorder on my phone and I had it in my jacket pocket just on record.
00:24:05.000 And so he told me I couldn't take pictures.
00:24:07.000 And so to take notes, I would just say stuff aloud.
00:24:11.000 I'd be like, oh, that's a light orange mixture that's being mixed up by a mechanical arm.
00:24:20.000 And you say it's benzofentanil.
00:24:23.000 Very interesting.
00:24:24.000 But the language barrier was such that he didn't think I was being too much of a weirdo.
00:24:31.000 I clearly was.
00:24:33.000 But the cannabinoids were crazy.
00:24:38.000 There was like a table like this, like almost exactly this size, that was piled up with the cannabinoids that were there for drying.
00:24:45.000 And they were mounds like this high, just sitting right out in the open.
00:24:49.000 What did they look like?
00:24:50.000 Does it look like pot?
00:24:51.000 Yeah.
00:24:52.000 No, because it's not a plant, you know.
00:24:55.000 It's just basically, it's a chemical that's sprayed onto plant matter, like dried sage and stuff like that.
00:25:02.000 Really?
00:25:03.000 So 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.
00:25:12.000 Right.
00:25:13.000 Wow.
00:25:13.000 And so they're drying this stuff?
00:25:15.000 That's what I think.
00:25:16.000 You know, they also had like drying machines.
00:25:20.000 It 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?
00:25:28.000 Yeah.
00:25:29.000 It looked exactly like that.
00:25:30.000 Why did he not like that term?
00:25:32.000 I don't know.
00:25:33.000 I think he thought Subway would sue us or something.
00:25:35.000 Sure.
00:25:35.000 Jesus Christ.
00:25:37.000 But 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.
00:25:46.000 He said they were sending them to Russia, to Belgium, to the Netherlands.
00:25:51.000 And then I think a lot of times it's repackaged there.
00:25:55.000 And so I don't know if you knew that the cannabinoids like used to be sold legally in head shops like 10 years ago.
00:26:01.000 Yeah.
00:26:02.000 Yeah, and they would always be in these colorful packets.
00:26:04.000 They almost look like a Pop Rocks package.
00:26:07.000 They say like...
00:26:08.000 Spice.
00:26:09.000 Spice and laugh out loud and stuff.
00:26:12.000 And so I think in Europe, that's where they do that.
00:26:15.000 They put it in this colorful packaging.
00:26:18.000 And then they ship it to the US. But yeah, he was saying that like...
00:26:25.000 He kept, like, really close track of the law in all these countries, especially China.
00:26:30.000 Like, they're scheduling this next week, so we're going to take all this and throw it away.
00:26:35.000 And I thought at first he was, like, probably just putting me on, but I think they actually do that.
00:26:39.000 Like, these guys are businessmen first.
00:26:42.000 They want to make money.
00:26:44.000 And going afoul of the law, it just doesn't, you know, it's not conducive.
00:26:49.000 This is where bath salts came from, right?
00:26:52.000 Right.
00:26:52.000 Exactly.
00:26:53.000 Yeah.
00:26:53.000 Bath salts tend to be cathinones.
00:26:55.000 So synthetic cathinones.
00:26:56.000 Have you ever heard of the cat plant?
00:26:58.000 K-H-A-T? Yeah.
00:27:00.000 That's the hijackers.
00:27:03.000 Pirates in Somalia.
00:27:04.000 They love to take that stuff.
00:27:06.000 It's really popular in the Middle East.
00:27:08.000 It's a stimulant.
00:27:09.000 It gets you really...
00:27:11.000 Have you tried it?
00:27:12.000 No, I never have, yeah.
00:27:14.000 But 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.
00:27:25.000 Is it legal?
00:27:26.000 I think it's not legal in the U.S. now, but I don't know for sure.
00:27:31.000 Interesting.
00:27:32.000 It's K-H-A-T? Yeah, exactly.
00:27:35.000 And so the synthetic cathinones are the synthetic version of that, like made in a lab, but there's tons of different kinds.
00:27:43.000 You don't know how strong it is.
00:27:45.000 And the bath salts...
00:27:48.000 Of course, it has nothing to do with, like, salts for your bath, you know.
00:27:52.000 This was a misnomer.
00:27:54.000 And they also wrote, called them, like, incense, sometimes plant food.
00:28:00.000 And on the back of all of them, it would say, not intended for human consumption.
00:28:05.000 So that was like the way they got around.
00:28:07.000 They 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.
00:28:17.000 So these guys are like, not intended for human consumption.
00:28:20.000 Just put in your bath.
00:28:21.000 Yeah. 1.00
00:28:21.000 Your bath smells like fucking toxic chemicals. 1.00
00:28:24.000 Yeah. 1.00
00:28:25.000 Do you remember when the homeless guy ate someone's face?
00:28:28.000 Remember that?
00:28:28.000 And they said he was on bath salts?
00:28:29.000 Yeah, but that was actually disproven.
00:28:31.000 There was none found in his system. 0.51
00:28:33.000 He was just crazy? 0.97
00:28:33.000 Yeah, the cannibal, the Causeway cannibal, I think they call him. 0.97
00:28:37.000 And he was just crazy, right?
00:28:39.000 I think he may have smoked some weed, but yeah, I don't think he had anything else in his system.
00:28:43.000 That was just high on life.
00:28:45.000 Yeah.
00:28:47.000 Oh, man.
00:28:48.000 Florida.
00:28:49.000 The original Florida man.
00:28:51.000 Yeah. 1.00
00:28:52.000 It's funny that one state is so synonymous with fuckery. 0.99
00:28:56.000 Yeah. 0.98
00:28:57.000 And they also had this thing called Flocka. 0.88
00:28:59.000 Have you ever heard of that?
00:29:00.000 Yes, I have, but I don't remember what it is.
00:29:02.000 It's more cathinones.
00:29:03.000 And if you look it up on YouTube, there's all these people going crazy.
00:29:07.000 That killed, I think, maybe 100 people in Florida during that time. 0.98
00:29:11.000 And the problem is, you know, like the prohibition on drugs causes people to do really stupid things, right? 0.96
00:29:19.000 So you have this cathinone, like Flocka. 0.57
00:29:22.000 And as bad as that was, once they banned Flocka, the chemists started manipulating the chemical structure.
00:29:29.000 So they changed one little thing.
00:29:31.000 They add like a chlorine group, for example.
00:29:35.000 So like a chlorine, like...
00:29:39.000 It has nothing to do with the drug, but they just add it on there to make it so it becomes legal.
00:29:45.000 But then it becomes more difficult for your body to digest it.
00:29:50.000 So it becomes worse for you, and the high becomes worse.
00:29:53.000 And then they ban that, and then they make something new that's even worse for you.
00:29:58.000 And it's just like...
00:29:59.000 Down the line.
00:30:02.000 So that's what all these new drugs have in common.
00:30:05.000 My book is about, they're called NPS, Novel Psychoactive Substances.
00:30:11.000 So fentanyl is the most famous and the most dangerous, but these include basically like synthetic new versions of every drug.
00:30:20.000 So there's marijuana, the NPS version is the synthetic cannabinoids.
00:30:24.000 Heroin, the NPS version is fentanyl.
00:30:27.000 There's LSD. So you take LSD. It's like a wonder drug, right?
00:30:31.000 No one has ever died of an LSD overdose.
00:30:34.000 People may have thought they were a bird or whatever and jumped off a roof, but no one has ever overdosed on the drug itself.
00:30:41.000 But 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. 0.99
00:30:53.000 And so if you went on the dark web, this was like 10 years ago or so.
00:30:59.000 Five, 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.
00:31:11.000 These drugs are called N-bombs.
00:31:13.000 It's like the worst name of all time.
00:31:16.000 These N-bomb drugs. 0.78
00:31:18.000 And they started killing people in like the suburbs in Dallas.
00:31:21.000 Your phone's ringing.
00:31:22.000 Ooh, fail.
00:31:24.000 And yeah.
00:31:27.000 You really were a music editor.
00:31:29.000 Yeah.
00:31:32.000 Yeah, so these kids all thought they just wanted – they did their research.
00:31:37.000 These were like smart kids who said, oh, LSD has never killed anyone.
00:31:40.000 Let's get that, this new thing, and it killed them.
00:31:43.000 And so it wasn't really LSD. It was just some – No, it totally – nothing in common at all.
00:31:48.000 Yeah.
00:31:57.000 Yeah.
00:32:16.000 Yeah, 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?
00:32:30.000 So like the presidential candidate, Andrew Yang, talks about decriminalizing opioids.
00:32:35.000 And so when I first heard about that, I was like, what?
00:32:38.000 What?
00:32:39.000 I was like, that is a bridge too far.
00:32:41.000 But the more you think about it, it's like people get arrested for using fentanyl.
00:32:46.000 They go to jail.
00:32:49.000 And then the recidivism rate is like through the roof.
00:32:52.000 People like get out and they start using again.
00:32:55.000 They don't get the treatment they need, you know.
00:32:58.000 And 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.
00:33:09.000 More than heroin, more than pills, more than meth, more than crack.
00:33:14.000 And so things just get worse and worse every year.
00:33:18.000 People aren't talking about it that much.
00:33:20.000 But how is decriminalization going to stop that?
00:33:23.000 Because decriminalization will just make fentanyl more available.
00:33:27.000 The point of legalizing all drugs, and again, this is a very, very messy subject, and I'm not a proponent of legalizing all drugs.
00:33:35.000 I'm sort of agnostic on it.
00:33:37.000 I'm like, hmm, I don't know. 0.99
00:33:38.000 I don't know what the fuck is it. 0.99
00:33:40.000 What is the answer? 0.99
00:33:42.000 But If you legalize them and you can buy them from reputable sources, you would know that you're actually buying cocaine. 0.96
00:33:49.000 You're not buying some fake Chinese spice jam thing, whatever the fuck they call it. 0.96
00:33:55.000 You're buying actual cocaine. 0.99
00:33:57.000 Look, we know if you buy whiskey, right?
00:34:00.000 You get a thing on the label that tells you what proof it is. 0.99
00:34:04.000 You know that if you have three drinks, you're going to be fucked up. 0.98
00:34:07.000 And we can regulate that. 0.99
00:34:09.000 We can sort of adjust.
00:34:10.000 Like, I had two already.
00:34:12.000 I'm good.
00:34:13.000 But if you don't know what's in it, you don't know what the dose is.
00:34:16.000 So you don't know what you're okay with and what you're not okay with.
00:34:19.000 One of the good things about alcohol, if you get a beer, that's a beer.
00:34:23.000 You know what that is.
00:34:25.000 You know how much alcohol is in there.
00:34:27.000 Yeah, well, in some countries in Europe, they actually give free heroin to addicted users.
00:34:36.000 It's often not the heroin that kills people at all.
00:34:39.000 It's the dirty needles, it's the criminal lifestyle used to pay for the money to buy, prostitution, things like that.
00:34:46.000 And so I went and visited these places called Supervised Injection Facilities.
00:34:52.000 Have you heard about these?
00:34:54.000 Yes.
00:34:54.000 Yeah.
00:34:55.000 Where do they have them in this country?
00:34:57.000 Well, they don't have any in this country.
00:34:58.000 They're trying to do something like that?
00:35:00.000 They're trying to do one in Philadelphia.
00:35:01.000 Yeah, and there was a court case in its favor recently.
00:35:04.000 The former governor, Ed Rendell, is, like, spearheading that.
00:35:08.000 But I went to one in Barcelona.
00:35:10.000 And so these are places where drug use is totally legal inside the facility.
00:35:15.000 They have clean needles.
00:35:16.000 They have doctors and nurses supervise it. 1.00
00:35:19.000 And they even, like...
00:35:21.000 So they have, like...
00:35:23.000 The smoking room where you can go and do anything you want.
00:35:27.000 They have crack pipes that the government provides.
00:35:30.000 They're like government funded and created crack pipes that they'll hand out to people.
00:35:36.000 And they've never had an overdose death in one of these places.
00:35:42.000 They're connected to treatment centers.
00:35:45.000 They give out methadone, suboxone, all these treatment drugs.
00:35:49.000 It brings people into the system so that they're accounted for.
00:35:54.000 And these have been like super successful.
00:35:57.000 But in the US, there's like federal crackdowns on them.
00:36:01.000 Yeah.
00:36:03.000 Again, I think there's an issue politically, right?
00:36:07.000 Because nobody wants to be the one that says, hey, we're going to open up a place where people can come and shoot up. 1.00
00:36:10.000 And people are like, well, fuck this guy. 1.00
00:36:12.000 My son's hooked on heroin. 1.00
00:36:14.000 This piece of shit wants to help him. 1.00
00:36:16.000 What we need is detox centers. 1.00
00:36:18.000 What we need is treatment.
00:36:18.000 We don't need a place where you can go and shoot heroin.
00:36:22.000 But like many things in life, this whole heroin thing, fentanyl thing, all these different drugs, it's very messy.
00:36:29.000 Yeah, well, so even if you're not going to go that far, there are simple steps we can take to help stop the opioid crisis.
00:36:37.000 And one thing I'm a big advocate for is called fentanyl testing strips.
00:36:42.000 And so the weird thing about fentanyl is it's not a demand-driven drug.
00:36:48.000 Like every other drug, it's out there because people want it.
00:36:51.000 People want cocaine.
00:36:52.000 People want heroin.
00:36:53.000 People don't want fentanyl.
00:36:54.000 They're sneaking it into other things.
00:36:56.000 Exactly.
00:36:57.000 And 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.
00:37:08.000 And so fentanyl testing strips...
00:37:11.000 They look kind of like pregnancy tests.
00:37:13.000 They're really cheap, just these paper strips.
00:37:16.000 You mix up your solution of whatever you think you have, heroin, and you dip the strip in there.
00:37:22.000 And if there's two stripes, that means that you have fentanyl.
00:37:27.000 And if there's one, it means you don't, or else the other way around.
00:37:29.000 And so it's simple.
00:37:32.000 It's immediate.
00:37:33.000 But again, U.S. laws are so insane that these are actually banned in certain states, like Pennsylvania.
00:37:45.000 So, that could be done to help people understand that there's fentanyl in the drugs that they're looking for.
00:37:51.000 They're looking for cocaine, they're looking for heroin.
00:37:53.000 Turns out there's fentanyl in there.
00:37:54.000 What other steps do you think can be taken to sort of alleviate or at least somewhat mitigate this awful crisis?
00:38:02.000 Well, of course, there's Narcan, and you know what that is.
00:38:05.000 It's like the miracle opioid overdose reversal drug.
00:38:10.000 It's a nasal spray, usually.
00:38:12.000 And so if someone has overdosed on opioids, fentanyl, heroin pills, whatever, you know, get these sprays, it will bring them back to life, literally.
00:38:21.000 And so, you know, it's available in some places.
00:38:25.000 How does this stuff work?
00:38:26.000 Oh, man, I am not smart enough to know that.
00:38:30.000 I do not know how the chemical pathway works.
00:38:32.000 See if we can find out how Narcan works.
00:38:35.000 How does Narcan work?
00:38:38.000 That's amazing, though, that they figured out something that can stop people from in the middle of an overdose.
00:38:43.000 What else do we have that in?
00:38:44.000 Pulp Fiction.
00:38:45.000 Remember with the needle to the heart?
00:38:46.000 Remember that?
00:38:47.000 Woo! 0.99
00:38:47.000 What a scene. 0.99
00:38:48.000 You know what? 1.00
00:38:48.000 I was asking someone about that recently, and that is total bullshit. 1.00
00:38:51.000 That is like Quentin Tarantino just making something up. 0.99
00:38:54.000 That's not a real thing.
00:38:55.000 I'm glad he did.
00:38:56.000 It's a dramatic scene. 0.97
00:38:57.000 It was fucking awesome. 0.97
00:38:58.000 Yeah, it was pretty crazy. 1.00
00:38:59.000 I mean, if you could shove a fucking needle in the middle of your heart... 1.00
00:39:03.000 Pump that stuff in, like pow, and she pops up to life with a needle out of her chest. 1.00
00:39:07.000 Yeah.
00:39:08.000 In real life, it would have been a nasal spray to the nose.
00:39:11.000 But this is 1994. They didn't have that.
00:39:13.000 Yeah.
00:39:14.000 And so nowadays, it's like firefighters, librarians.
00:39:19.000 These are the people who are encountering opioid overdose victims.
00:39:24.000 Yeah.
00:39:24.000 They're encountering them in the library.
00:39:26.000 In the library.
00:39:27.000 They come to the library to do drugs, or firefighters or EMTs react to people that are overdosing, right?
00:39:32.000 Yeah.
00:39:33.000 And 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.
00:39:47.000 You can't get an overdose by touching fentanyl.
00:39:52.000 It won't go into your skin.
00:39:53.000 If there was a mound of fentanyl and someone sneezed and it was in the air, you could get it by breathing in, but by just touching it, no.
00:40:02.000 Oh, well that's good to know.
00:40:04.000 Narcon reversing an overdose. 0.99
00:40:06.000 It says, Narcon has a strong affinity to the opiate receptors Holy shit. 0.99
00:40:26.000 That's amazing. 0.99
00:40:26.000 That person needs a Nobel Prize. 0.99
00:40:28.000 They need the exact opposite as the guy who sold the drugs to Prince.
00:40:33.000 Yeah, yeah, exactly.
00:40:36.000 You know, they need love and respect.
00:40:38.000 Yeah, that's an amazing discovery.
00:40:40.000 So that's good to know because we've actually, I think we probably repeated that.
00:40:43.000 Someone told me that.
00:40:44.000 Did I ever repeat that on the show?
00:40:45.000 That people have to wear drugs or gloves when they're handling people with drug overdoses?
00:40:50.000 I don't know.
00:40:52.000 No, probably not.
00:40:53.000 I probably saved that, Janet.
00:40:54.000 Have you ever heard of car fentanyl?
00:40:56.000 What is that?
00:40:57.000 It's a hundred times stronger than fentanyl.
00:41:00.000 It's an analog.
00:41:01.000 It's used as like an elephant tranquilizer.
00:41:05.000 In one of the Jurassic Park movies, that's what they use to tranquilize the dinosaurs.
00:41:09.000 Oh, yeah.
00:41:10.000 That's right.
00:41:11.000 And so I interviewed a bunch of dark web dealers for the book.
00:41:15.000 I even actually met one in person.
00:41:17.000 What did he look like?
00:41:19.000 Well, he asked me not to say, but he came with his daughter.
00:41:22.000 He was like a buff dude.
00:41:24.000 He was like in his 30s.
00:41:27.000 Well, you're saying too much.
00:41:28.000 You're saying too much.
00:41:29.000 We're going to find him now. 0.99
00:41:31.000 Like 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? 0.98
00:41:38.000 No, no, because he knew I was a journalist. 0.99
00:41:39.000 I told him I was. 0.97
00:41:41.000 And he wanted to say, yeah, he just, he's like, people think of us as scum, but I want to tell my story. 0.96
00:41:48.000 And that's, that's what journalists like live on. 0.91
00:41:51.000 What is his story?
00:41:53.000 Well, he was a – he's probably listening to this, man.
00:41:56.000 Hey, bro.
00:41:57.000 That's crazy. 0.91
00:41:58.000 What's up, dark web drug dealer? 0.92
00:42:01.000 Total family man with his daughter.
00:42:03.000 He was like feeding her French fries and stuff.
00:42:05.000 But he had – he was addicted to meth at one point.
00:42:09.000 He had a lot of sort of depression, self-esteem issues.
00:42:13.000 But then he tried the opioids and he said it was like an antidepressant.
00:42:18.000 So he became hooked.
00:42:19.000 And so he started selling fentanyl on the dark web because he didn't want his kids to have to live in poverty.
00:42:27.000 He didn't want his drug addiction to interfere.
00:42:31.000 And so not only that, but he claims that...
00:42:36.000 He's helping addicted users more affordably maintain their habits. 0.99
00:42:41.000 So he has this big, like, fuck, you know, Purdue Pharma, anti-government, anti-big pharma mentality. 0.99
00:42:48.000 So he blames, like, Purdue Pharma made OxyContin pills and that's how the whole opioid epidemic began. 0.99
00:42:57.000 So first it was the pills, then people switched to heroin, and now it's fentanyl is in all the heroin.
00:43:04.000 And so this guy says that because he makes a nasal spray too...
00:43:10.000 And 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.
00:43:24.000 And so he says, you know, instead of paying money to the big pharmaceutical companies, people buy this, it's much cheaper.
00:43:31.000 So he had a whole moral justification of how he did it.
00:43:36.000 So he's an ethical drug pusher.
00:43:38.000 That was his case.
00:43:39.000 The problem is that this stuff, Fendil, is so potent and to make it into a nasal spray, you have to use this whole thing.
00:43:49.000 It's called volumetric dosing with the water and you got to get the exact right proportions.
00:43:55.000 And he's not a trained pharmacist.
00:43:58.000 So he's buying it.
00:43:59.000 He's a middleman.
00:44:00.000 No, no, no.
00:44:01.000 He does it.
00:44:02.000 He makes it.
00:44:02.000 He has a whole process how he does it.
00:44:04.000 Oh, Christ.
00:44:05.000 Yeah.
00:44:05.000 But he's not a trained pharmacist.
00:44:07.000 He doesn't, you know...
00:44:08.000 How does he know he's doing it right?
00:44:09.000 And so I told him that.
00:44:11.000 I said that to him.
00:44:11.000 And he's like, well, basically, I tested on myself.
00:44:13.000 So if I'm doing it wrong, I would die.
00:44:16.000 So my customers, therefore, know I've tried it.
00:44:19.000 That guy sounds like he's got a great pitch, but I'm not sure.
00:44:23.000 Yeah, I mean, you gotta justify.
00:44:26.000 Yeah, 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.
00:44:39.000 That's what that sounds like. 0.66
00:44:41.000 I mean, I feel like if you're selling fentanyl, someone's probably died.
00:44:45.000 Because of what you sold them.
00:44:46.000 I mean, it's one of those things where it's so deadly.
00:44:50.000 I mean, what are the numbers in terms of annual deaths from fentanyl in the United States?
00:44:55.000 Well, it's up over 30,000 a year, and that's more than the peak of the AIDS crisis.
00:45:04.000 Think about that while people are trying to ban flavored vapes. 0.98
00:45:09.000 Which is fucking preposterous, you know? 0.99
00:45:12.000 It's terrifying. 0.99
00:45:15.000 30,000 people. 1.00
00:45:18.000 Goddamn. 0.99
00:45:19.000 That is so many. 0.99
00:45:21.000 That's a lot of people.
00:45:25.000 And there's many, many, many, many people listening to this that know someone who's been affected by this.
00:45:29.000 That's the horrific thing.
00:45:31.000 And it sort of snuck up on us where it's, this is not a big thing in the news.
00:45:36.000 You don't hear about fentanyl deaths in the news. 0.99
00:45:38.000 You would think that if there was like Kool-Aid, Kool-Aid was killing 30,000 people a year, I'd be like, holy shit! 0.99
00:45:44.000 If Kool-Aid was killing two people a year. 0.99
00:45:46.000 Yeah.
00:45:47.000 But the fact that this fentanyl stuff and it's all happening because it's illegal, it's all happening in this sort of weird gray area.
00:45:54.000 It's, you know, a lot of people in the margins.
00:45:58.000 I want to hear the presidential candidates talking about it.
00:46:02.000 There's so little.
00:46:03.000 At the Democrat debate, they were asked, like, what would you do about the fentanyl crisis, the opioid crisis?
00:46:10.000 And they all said, basically, we got to sue the pharmaceutical companies, like Purdue Pharma.
00:46:17.000 Now, I have sympathy for that argument.
00:46:19.000 I mean, Purdue Pharma and places like Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals, no one's heard of that.
00:46:24.000 They're from St. Louis, where I'm from.
00:46:25.000 They actually made a ton more pills.
00:46:28.000 They made like 29 billion pills a year, opioid pills, at the height of the opioid crisis.
00:46:36.000 And they made jokes about it.
00:46:37.000 There were these emails that were found that people were like, it's almost like people are addicted to these pills.
00:46:44.000 It's just like Doritos.
00:46:47.000 Keep eating them, we'll make more.
00:46:49.000 They were joking around about this?
00:46:50.000 They were making jokes about that.
00:46:51.000 While people were dying.
00:46:52.000 While people were dying.
00:46:53.000 So I have total sympathy that we should sue these companies, just like the big tobacco lawsuits in the 90s.
00:47:01.000 The money will go towards care, treatment, all that.
00:47:06.000 But that does nothing to stop the fentanyl crisis.
00:47:10.000 The pill deaths are already starting to drop, which is great.
00:47:14.000 Heroin deaths are starting to drop, which is great.
00:47:17.000 But fentanyl deaths are still rising.
00:47:20.000 And besides, you know, this guy Andrew Yang, who I said, the candidate, he has a lot of good solutions.
00:47:29.000 Elizabeth Warren has some good ideas in her proposal, wants to put more money. 1.00
00:47:35.000 But for the most part, these should be the Democrats' people.
00:47:38.000 You know what I mean?
00:47:39.000 People on the margins, but they're barely talking about it at all.
00:47:43.000 I think it's one of those things where...
00:47:45.000 Just being president, right?
00:47:47.000 Being president is an impossible job.
00:47:49.000 There's no way one person can really control every single aspect of our civilization.
00:47:53.000 It's just not possible.
00:47:55.000 And I think that's the same thing about running for president.
00:47:58.000 No person running for president really can address every single issue that this nation is dealing with.
00:48:02.000 So they stick with the big ones, like jobs and...
00:48:05.000 You know, inequality and the things that are just going to get people to push the button when they get into the booth.
00:48:12.000 I mean, that's all they're doing.
00:48:13.000 This is just a, I hope you like me, sort of pitch, you know?
00:48:18.000 Yeah, and I mean, you know, it's killing more people than car accidents, more than guns even.
00:48:22.000 Did you know that?
00:48:23.000 I did not know that.
00:48:24.000 It kills more people than guns. 0.73
00:48:25.000 Makes sense.
00:48:26.000 But what kills me is I just don't see a logical first step Where someone can do something other than legalization of drugs.
00:48:37.000 And this is also the step.
00:48:39.000 I'm sure you probably heard what happened in Northern Mexico yesterday.
00:48:45.000 Yesterday?
00:48:45.000 No.
00:48:46.000 Not with El Chapo's son, was it?
00:48:48.000 No, no, it was a new one.
00:48:50.000 A family, a woman and her children were gunned down, a Mormon woman.
00:48:55.000 You know, they have these Mormon compounds in northern Mexico. 0.94
00:48:58.000 Oh, no, I didn't know that.
00:48:59.000 And ten people were murdered, just women and children, by cartels.
00:49:04.000 Oh, really?
00:49:04.000 Jeez.
00:49:05.000 And just gunned them down.
00:49:06.000 Then more people were injured, ten people, a little kid, little girl was shot in the back, and she's in a hospital.
00:49:12.000 It's like, they just gun these people down.
00:49:14.000 And 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.
00:49:28.000 So there's money to be made.
00:49:29.000 So instead of that money being made by pharmaceutical companies, that money is being made by these ruthless, murderous cartels.
00:49:35.000 And this is exactly what happened during Prohibition in the United States.
00:49:40.000 When 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.
00:49:53.000 And so organized crime rose.
00:49:55.000 And then Al Capone and all these different organized crime members, they made insane amounts of money and developed insane amounts of power.
00:50:03.000 And we're seeing the exact same thing happening in Mexico.
00:50:07.000 Alcohol is simple, right?
00:50:10.000 Yeah, make it legal.
00:50:11.000 We're adults.
00:50:12.000 The pills are not simple, right?
00:50:15.000 It's a scary one.
00:50:16.000 It's scary.
00:50:18.000 You know, the war on drugs stuff, it's increasingly going to be turned towards China.
00:50:24.000 You know, and in fact, Trump...
00:50:32.000 We're good to go.
00:50:56.000 But, you know, what is our past record in this realm?
00:51:00.000 Like, the DEA helped kill Pablo Escobar, right?
00:51:04.000 But since then, there's more cocaine coming out of Colombia than there ever was before, you know, nowadays.
00:51:12.000 El Chapo was arrested, tried.
00:51:16.000 That's doing nothing to stop the drugs, the cartels, the drugs coming into the U.S. And...
00:51:23.000 And...
00:51:26.000 And 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.
00:51:41.000 And India is already starting to see these huge busts.
00:51:44.000 There's these Mexican cartel members getting busted in India for buying fentanyl.
00:51:50.000 In India?
00:51:51.000 Yeah.
00:51:52.000 The thing is, China and India have the two biggest...
00:51:57.000 Chemical industries when it comes to generics, kind of lower level chemicals and pharmaceuticals.
00:52:04.000 The U.S. has the most profitable pharmaceutical industry because we make like the brand name drugs, things like that.
00:52:12.000 But 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. 0.94
00:52:21.000 And 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?
00:52:34.000 So Mexico doesn't have that.
00:52:36.000 Mexico doesn't have its own chemical industry and a bunch of scientists who can make fentanyl, who can make these new drugs.
00:52:45.000 So that makes India so susceptible to it.
00:52:51.000 And the biggest problem is actually not even the fentanyl itself.
00:52:55.000 It's the fentanyl precursors.
00:52:58.000 And do you know what those are?
00:52:59.000 Yes, the chemicals that are used to make fentanyl.
00:53:01.000 Exactly.
00:53:02.000 And so that was sort of the main investigation in my book.
00:53:07.000 Almost like 80 pages of the book are dedicated to this one company.
00:53:12.000 They're called Yuan Cheng, this Chinese company that makes more fentanyl precursors than any company in the world. 0.90
00:53:23.000 And not only that, they sell them to the Mexican cartels.
00:53:29.000 And they're totally sanctioned, not only sanctioned by the Chinese government, but they get tax breaks from the Chinese government.
00:53:36.000 They get subsidies, they get their land subsidized, their staff training, things like that.
00:53:43.000 And 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. 0.88
00:53:54.000 Wow.
00:53:55.000 They're encouraging the industry.
00:53:57.000 That's insane.
00:53:58.000 So it's just the idea is, look, it's making a lot of money.
00:54:02.000 Let's just keep making money.
00:54:04.000 Yeah.
00:54:05.000 A 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.
00:54:17.000 And so I think it didn't start out that way.
00:54:21.000 I think that these benefits were given so that China could increase its exports, could grow its economy, particularly when it comes to chemical exports.
00:54:31.000 So that's why these tax credits started.
00:54:34.000 They're called value-added tax rebates.
00:54:36.000 And 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.
00:54:54.000 So basically, it's like a 16% tax rebate.
00:54:57.000 And so they originally did that just to try to, like, improve their economy, improve their exports.
00:55:03.000 Yeah.
00:55:03.000 But 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.
00:55:13.000 You know, Trump was raising tariffs and doing this and that.
00:55:17.000 Right at the height of that, China increased the tax rebate for fentanyl from 9% to 10%.
00:55:24.000 So it was almost like a, seemed like a thumb in the eye.
00:55:28.000 Right.
00:55:29.000 You know, like, for fentanyl.
00:55:31.000 Yeah.
00:55:31.000 It's, I don't know.
00:55:32.000 Yeah, it definitely seems like a big fuck you. 1.00
00:55:35.000 Yeah. 1.00
00:55:35.000 Yeah. 1.00
00:55:36.000 Wow.
00:55:39.000 This is what's crazy about this, is that what you said before, no one running for president is talking about it.
00:55:45.000 The president has talked about it briefly, but I don't see any movement.
00:55:51.000 I don't see any big steps being taken.
00:55:54.000 I mean, I don't know what big movements could be taken.
00:55:57.000 I mean, how do you eradicate this stuff?
00:55:59.000 Well, have you heard of medication-assisted treatment?
00:56:03.000 This is like what I was talking about, Suboxone, Methadone, and there are these opioid blockers, too.
00:56:10.000 So there are all these drugs for low-level opioids.
00:56:16.000 So you take your daily Suboxone shot and you don't crave fentanyl.
00:56:22.000 You don't crave heroin anymore.
00:56:24.000 But it can't just be the drugs.
00:56:26.000 You 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.
00:56:36.000 But medication-assisted treatment combines that with traditional counseling and therapy.
00:56:44.000 Because a lot of times it's not just chemical hooks.
00:56:49.000 You know what I mean?
00:56:50.000 It's people's lives.
00:56:51.000 They have problems.
00:56:52.000 They're out of work.
00:56:53.000 They've got terrible family problems.
00:56:56.000 They have trauma in their past.
00:56:57.000 And if you can unravel those problems, really get to the heart of things, people can quit.
00:57:05.000 And they do it all the time.
00:57:06.000 There's another method that is not widely discussed, but it's incredibly effective, and that's ibogaine.
00:57:12.000 I've heard about that.
00:57:14.000 Yeah.
00:57:15.000 Well, I know many people that have kicked pills.
00:57:18.000 Because of Ibogaine, kicked booze, kicked self-destructive habits because of it.
00:57:24.000 Is it a root or something?
00:57:25.000 It's a plant from Africa, I believe.
00:57:27.000 It's from the iboga plant.
00:57:29.000 See if that's from Africa.
00:57:31.000 I don't want to be wrong about this.
00:57:33.000 It's legal in Mexico.
00:57:37.000 And a friend of mine, my friend Ed Clay, went down to Mexico because he had an issue with pills.
00:57:43.000 He hurt himself.
00:57:44.000 Oh, really?
00:57:44.000 Got on pills.
00:57:45.000 Really fucking up his life. 0.98
00:57:47.000 Went down there. 0.99
00:57:48.000 Got treatment.
00:57:49.000 Was so stunned by it that he opened up his own place down there to try to help people.
00:57:53.000 Oh, really?
00:57:53.000 Wow.
00:57:54.000 What part of Mexico?
00:57:55.000 So, I don't know.
00:57:56.000 Substance derived from the plant.
00:57:58.000 Yeah, African shrub called Tabernathe.
00:58:02.000 Is that right?
00:58:03.000 Tabernathe?
00:58:03.000 Iboga, which is known for its psychedelic qualities and used in African spiritual ceremonies.
00:58:09.000 Some claim...
00:58:10.000 It's something of a miracle cure for opiate addiction with minimal withdrawal symptoms.
00:58:15.000 There'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.
00:58:29.000 It rewires them in a way that they have a very low recidivism rate, a very low repeat addiction rate.
00:58:38.000 Yeah, like psychedelics seems to be so much potential.
00:58:43.000 There'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,
00:58:58.000 even fight things like PTSD. It was actually found that MDMA, ecstasy, is like this amazing drug for PTSD. Yeah, I've heard this.
00:59:10.000 The MAPS is in the middle of...
00:59:12.000 Yep, exactly.
00:59:13.000 Yeah, they're doing these...
00:59:14.000 They finally have gotten clearance to do these studies.
00:59:17.000 And in some cases, just using MDMA one time is enough.
00:59:22.000 And the term you used, it like rewires the brain.
00:59:25.000 It's like resetting the hard drive or like turning the computer off, turning it back on again.
00:59:30.000 Yes.
00:59:30.000 And 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.
00:59:42.000 These are drugs that sort of just give you a refocused perspective on reality itself.
00:59:47.000 Yeah.
00:59:48.000 I don't need to tell you about DMT. Yeah.
00:59:51.000 Yeah, it's another one.
00:59:52.000 It's the same.
00:59:53.000 But 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.
01:00:04.000 It sort of gets to the heart. 0.98
01:00:06.000 It 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. 0.98
01:00:15.000 This is something that you've sort of stored away in the back of your brain. 1.00
01:00:19.000 It's rotten.
01:00:21.000 You're always ignoring it, but it's always there, so it flavors everything you do.
01:00:25.000 And psychedelics, one of the things that they do is they shine a bright light on all of those weird parts of the mind that we all have.
01:00:33.000 We all have weird memories or weird feelings or weird...
01:00:43.000 We're good to go.
01:00:57.000 Oddly enough, the most potent ones, they mirror normal human neurochemistry.
01:01:02.000 Oh, that's amazing.
01:01:03.000 Which DMT is a part of normal human neurochemistry.
01:01:06.000 It's produced by the human body.
01:01:08.000 I've heard that.
01:01:08.000 And I've heard that ayahuasca is like 12 hours or whatever experience.
01:01:14.000 It's a long experience, yeah.
01:01:15.000 And I've heard that DMT is basically the very peak of that, like distilled down.
01:01:20.000 Yeah.
01:01:20.000 The way I describe it is mushrooms times a million plus aliens.
01:01:24.000 Uh-huh.
01:01:24.000 Uh-huh.
01:01:26.000 Did it have a profound lasting impact on you?
01:01:29.000 Oh, yeah.
01:01:30.000 It changes who you are.
01:01:32.000 You were pre that thing and then you are now you know.
01:01:36.000 Now you know that there's a whole other dimension to understanding and to experience.
01:01:42.000 It's very, very, very different than the normal static world that we all live in.
01:01:47.000 Yeah, there's this guy called Sasha Shulgin.
01:01:51.000 Yeah, you know Sasha Shulgin.
01:01:52.000 So I got to go to the farm where he designed all his drugs.
01:01:56.000 And, you know, he dedicated his whole career to trying to...
01:02:05.000 We're good to go.
01:02:23.000 Sample a tiny bit himself.
01:02:24.000 If it did nothing, it took a little more, a little more, a little more until it had an effect.
01:02:30.000 And he invented over 100 new drugs.
01:02:33.000 He was working for Dow Chemical, the people who invented Agent Orange, at the start of his career.
01:02:42.000 And he invented psychedelics while working there that have the Dow.
01:02:47.000 Dow was patented.
01:02:51.000 And so he invented this drug that was known as STP. It's a psychedelic.
01:02:58.000 It stood for Serenity, Tranquility, and Peace, I think.
01:03:01.000 And so this was like a hippie-era drug.
01:03:03.000 And there was...
01:03:04.000 The Hell's Angels actually got into selling it and distributing it.
01:03:09.000 It was this crazy story.
01:03:12.000 But the problem was the Hell's Angels got the dosage wrong.
01:03:15.000 So they gave everybody way too much.
01:03:17.000 And there was this big...
01:03:20.000 This big protest in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.
01:03:24.000 In San Francisco, it was called the Human B-In.
01:03:26.000 And they were protesting the banning of LSD that year.
01:03:31.000 It was 1967. And so everybody went to Golden Gate Park, took this stuff, this SDP and this really high dosages.
01:03:38.000 And they all like freaked out and ended up in the hospital.
01:03:43.000 And so what's it made out of?
01:03:45.000 I don't know.
01:03:46.000 It's some kind of not related LSD. Is it available now?
01:03:51.000 I'm sure it is.
01:03:52.000 Yeah, on the dark web, I'm sure you could get it.
01:03:55.000 Yeah.
01:03:56.000 I don't know.
01:03:57.000 It doesn't sound that great.
01:03:58.000 Even 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.
01:04:08.000 And even he wasn't that crazy.
01:04:11.000 About this one.
01:04:12.000 But 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.
01:04:21.000 Shut them down.
01:04:22.000 Yeah.
01:04:23.000 Have you ever heard of Hamilton Morris?
01:04:25.000 Yeah, yeah, he's great.
01:04:26.000 He's the OG. Hamilton's Pharmacopia, he's great.
01:04:29.000 I've seen him on here, yeah.
01:04:30.000 Yeah, he's the most knowledgeable person that I know in terms of the history of these things.
01:04:35.000 And he interviewed Sasha before he died.
01:04:38.000 He loved Sasha.
01:04:39.000 Yeah, he did.
01:04:41.000 He takes a scientific but yet a connoisseur's approach to drugs.
01:04:47.000 I mean, he's very scientific about what's happening, but yet he'll talk about it like the way Samal Yeh would discuss a fine wine.
01:04:55.000 Yeah, I remember he was talking about it.
01:04:57.000 He took a cannabinoid and he's like, it's my crown chakra is feeling.
01:05:00.000 Yeah, he's hilarious when he's blitzed on that show, Hamilton's Pharmacopeia.
01:05:05.000 And you know his dad, right?
01:05:06.000 Yes.
01:05:07.000 Yeah, it's amazing.
01:05:07.000 Earl Morris is such an amazing documentarian.
01:05:10.000 Yes.
01:05:11.000 Yeah.
01:05:12.000 We did a podcast.
01:05:13.000 We've done two, but the first one we did, we got way too high. 0.88
01:05:16.000 We were useless.
01:05:17.000 Yeah, I remember you guys talking about that. 1.00
01:05:19.000 We were useless. 0.99
01:05:20.000 I mean, we were useless. 0.99
01:05:21.000 It's like, hey, Hamilton Morris is on the show.
01:05:23.000 That was the early days of the podcast, too.
01:05:25.000 The early days of the podcast, we often got way too high.
01:05:27.000 Yeah.
01:05:28.000 I had to figure out how to dial it in.
01:05:30.000 Yeah.
01:05:30.000 That's the number one thing people ask me when I said I was going on this show.
01:05:34.000 They're like, are you going to get high with Joe?
01:05:35.000 I would be so useless and impart no information.
01:05:39.000 And plus, it's like the opioid epidemic.
01:05:41.000 I got to get my facts right. 0.99
01:05:44.000 Well, it doesn't seem like appropriate time to get fucked up. 0.99
01:05:46.000 Yeah. 0.98
01:05:48.000 What are you trying to do with this book besides let people know the history of fentanyl?
01:05:54.000 Do 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?
01:06:05.000 Yeah, all of the above.
01:06:08.000 All branches of the U.S. government have been reaching out to me about this book.
01:06:13.000 That's great.
01:06:13.000 That's good to hear.
01:06:15.000 Yeah, people wanted this China stuff.
01:06:17.000 Nobody knew anything about what China was doing and why.
01:06:22.000 And 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.
01:06:39.000 And that's my big sort of talking point.
01:06:41.000 It's like the war on drugs stuff is...
01:06:43.000 I always compare it to sex education, right?
01:06:46.000 I 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.
01:06:57.000 Let's try to help them do it more safely.
01:07:00.000 And so, you know, I've been in rooms where it was like...
01:07:04.000 Hardcore, law and order Republicans.
01:07:07.000 And I just try to make my point.
01:07:11.000 We can keep doing things the way we have.
01:07:14.000 We're failing miserably.
01:07:16.000 Why not give these other methods a chance?
01:07:21.000 And a lot of times, they have a proven track record of success in places like Europe.
01:07:27.000 What are we waiting for? 0.98
01:07:29.000 Yeah, we have this Puritan ideal, you know, the abstinence ideal, and then we apply that to drugs, and I just think it's so foolish. 0.98
01:07:38.000 It really is. 0.56
01:07:39.000 And it's also so politically dangerous to say anything other than that.
01:07:45.000 Yeah.
01:07:46.000 I 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.
01:08:02.000 But 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.
01:08:14.000 And so there's no doubt that that's true.
01:08:17.000 But at the same time, the positive is that this is spilling into other realms, too.
01:08:22.000 So I went to North Dakota, this small-town Grand Forks, where this 18-year-old kid overdosed and died on fentanyl.
01:08:31.000 And it just shocked the town.
01:08:33.000 Everyone freaked out.
01:08:34.000 But it inspired all these new reforms.
01:08:37.000 So 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.
01:08:51.000 You know what I mean?
01:08:51.000 Because that happens in a lot of places still.
01:08:54.000 They blame the person who they're with.
01:08:57.000 And 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.
01:09:08.000 They can use these services.
01:09:10.000 And 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.
01:09:21.000 And so I think there is slow progress being made.
01:09:26.000 Well, that's good to hear.
01:09:28.000 I mean, it just takes time, right, for people to understand that this is a real issue that's affecting everyone.
01:09:34.000 I 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.
01:09:44.000 Yeah.
01:09:44.000 You know, people were sentenced, the mandatory minimums for crack use were so much higher.
01:09:50.000 When people got caught with crack or selling crack, I mean, they went to jail for a long fucking time.
01:09:55.000 Whereas people got caught with cocaine, they didn't go to jail for as long. 0.75
01:09:59.000 And the treatment, the sentence is much smaller.
01:10:02.000 And Dr. Carl Hart, you know?
01:10:04.000 Yeah, yeah, he's great.
01:10:05.000 He's great as well.
01:10:06.000 I've had him on here.
01:10:07.000 And he was explaining, he's like, look, there is no difference.
01:10:11.000 He's like, it is cocaine.
01:10:13.000 This is cocaine.
01:10:14.000 If you want to break it down to the drug effect on the body, they are the same thing.
01:10:19.000 One of them sends you away for a long time, one of them doesn't.
01:10:23.000 Well, for my book about West Coast Hip Hop called Original Gangsters, I interviewed Freeway Ricky Ross.
01:10:29.000 Has he been on here?
01:10:30.000 Yes, a couple times.
01:10:31.000 The original Rick Ross.
01:10:34.000 The original Rick Ross.
01:10:35.000 The real Rick Ross.
01:10:36.000 Yeah, the real Rick Ross, exactly.
01:10:37.000 And his sort of – the innovation of their era was what was called Ready Rock.
01:10:42.000 And so before people would – people preferred to smoke cocaine even before crack was invented.
01:10:49.000 Freebase.
01:10:50.000 Right, exactly.
01:10:51.000 Richard Pryor got in trouble with.
01:10:52.000 Yeah, exactly.
01:10:54.000 So the innovation was to make it so you didn't have to freebase.
01:10:57.000 It was ready to smoke.
01:10:58.000 So they called it Ready Rock.
01:11:00.000 And 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.
01:11:12.000 And so he was a crack dealer before he got in the music industry.
01:11:18.000 Yeah, 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,
01:11:33.000 which is incredible.
01:11:35.000 They were using the cocaine money to fund the war with the Contras and the Sandinistas.
01:11:41.000 Yeah, Rick Ross, I wrote about him, and so I ended up actually playing tennis with him.
01:11:48.000 He's a really good tennis player.
01:11:49.000 Yeah, and I was a big high school tennis player, too, so I was like, let's do this.
01:11:53.000 And he's got some years on me.
01:11:56.000 I don't know how old he is.
01:11:56.000 I think he's maybe late 50s, but he was holding his own.
01:12:00.000 We played on a South Central tennis court somewhere, and he...
01:12:03.000 He took some games off me, definitely.
01:12:04.000 Well, his story is incredible because they sent him away on the three strikes rule for life.
01:12:09.000 And then while he was in jail, he learned how to read.
01:12:12.000 Then he learned how to understand the law.
01:12:15.000 And he literally taught himself to be a lawyer.
01:12:18.000 And then realized, no, the way they used the law was incorrect and unlawful.
01:12:25.000 Three strikes means you get arrested for larceny.
01:12:28.000 You get out, you get arrested for larceny.
01:12:30.000 You get out, you get arrested for larceny.
01:12:32.000 They did it in one swoop.
01:12:34.000 So they gave him two charges at the same time.
01:12:38.000 Oh, that's crazy.
01:12:39.000 And then put him in for three strikes. 1.00
01:12:40.000 And he was able to successfully prove that that was wrong.
01:12:43.000 That's why he's out right now.
01:12:45.000 Wow.
01:12:46.000 He's so smart.
01:12:48.000 One of the things he taught me that, you know, you always hear about crack babies all the time.
01:12:53.000 Yes.
01:12:55.000 He was like, you know, crack babies aren't real.
01:12:57.000 That's not a real thing.
01:12:59.000 He said that his...
01:13:00.000 I hope I'm not speaking out of school.
01:13:02.000 I think his wife maybe smoked crack while his son was in utero and never had any problems.
01:13:09.000 And he's like, yeah, look around.
01:13:11.000 Do your research.
01:13:12.000 Crack babies is not a real thing.
01:13:13.000 That's crazy because I remember hearing that as well.
01:13:15.000 Crack babies were the thing we were all worried about in the 80s. 1.00
01:13:18.000 Oh, my God.
01:13:19.000 Wait till the year 2000. All these crack babies are 20 years old.
01:13:22.000 Yeah.
01:13:23.000 Where are they now?
01:13:24.000 Yeah.
01:13:24.000 Where are they now?
01:13:25.000 Maybe they're mumble rappers.
01:13:27.000 Maybe that's what's going on.
01:13:30.000 Maybe that's it.
01:13:30.000 I shouldn't laugh at that.
01:13:31.000 You did though.
01:13:33.000 Because you understand real rap music.
01:13:36.000 Oh man, I'm just worried that I'm becoming like that.
01:13:38.000 You wrote about real hip-hop around the old man, right?
01:13:40.000 I know, it's just so lame to be like the kids these days.
01:13:44.000 I'm definitely that.
01:13:44.000 That's who I am, yeah.
01:13:46.000 I'm embracing it.
01:13:47.000 Are you into hip-hop?
01:13:47.000 Yes, I love hip-hop.
01:13:49.000 Okay, who is your kind of generation?
01:13:51.000 Nas, huge Nas fan, Gangstar, love Gangstar.
01:13:56.000 Of course, Biggie, Tupac, you know, the classics, you know, I mean, Big Daddy Kane, I love EPMD. Yeah.
01:14:04.000 Yeah, that old school East Coast stuff.
01:14:07.000 God, there's so many.
01:14:11.000 It's just that era.
01:14:13.000 I mean, there's a couple of eras that I just listed, but it's lyrical.
01:14:19.000 Nas is my favorite, I think.
01:14:20.000 Because his lyrics, they're so intricate. 1.00
01:14:23.000 The way he words things, you just go, oh shit! 1.00
01:14:28.000 You hear his lyrics, you just go, oh! 1.00
01:14:30.000 Nas is like the king of, he's like the oh shit king. 1.00
01:14:33.000 Yes, for lyrics, man. 1.00
01:14:35.000 He's the best.
01:14:36.000 Was it Rewind?
01:14:37.000 What was the one where he played the whole song backwards?
01:14:40.000 Oh yeah, I know what you're talking about.
01:14:42.000 From the bullet going back into the gun all the way through the entire story.
01:14:46.000 He starts at the end and then backs up the story.
01:14:49.000 Amazing. 0.99
01:14:50.000 Maybe he had some fucking classics. 0.98
01:14:53.000 I think he's the best writer in all of hip-hop. 0.97
01:14:56.000 Yeah, 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.
01:15:03.000 But 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.
01:15:12.000 I got one for you.
01:15:14.000 Let me find out if you're real.
01:15:16.000 Cool G Rap.
01:15:17.000 Oh yeah, he's the original.
01:15:19.000 He's the best.
01:15:20.000 He's undisputed.
01:15:21.000 Undisputed, underground guy.
01:15:23.000 People don't know.
01:15:24.000 You list some of the greats of all time.
01:15:27.000 People don't say Cool G Rap.
01:15:29.000 Go back and listen to Cockblockin'. 1.00
01:15:32.000 That is one of the best fucking songs ever. 0.99
01:15:35.000 To this day, I'll go listen to that song and it'll make me laugh. 0.99
01:15:38.000 Yeah, that was...
01:15:40.000 Yeah, I mean, that 80s New York stuff is so much of it...
01:15:44.000 Hill Street Blues.
01:15:45.000 So...
01:15:46.000 Like, so intellectual, so amazing wordplay.
01:15:49.000 Yes.
01:15:50.000 But see, when I came to LA, though, everyone's like, Tupac, Tupac, Tupac.
01:15:53.000 And I was like, I don't get it, man.
01:15:55.000 His flow is not that great.
01:15:58.000 You know, I just don't get it.
01:15:59.000 But the more I, like, listened to his lyrics, the more I saw he was more than just a rapper.
01:16:05.000 He was like a cultural influence.
01:16:07.000 He was like a political leader to a lot of people.
01:16:11.000 And finally, I'm like, yes, I get it.
01:16:13.000 He stood for something.
01:16:15.000 And 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.
01:16:27.000 Well, I don't think it's a competition, but I know what you're saying.
01:16:30.000 I mean, Tupac definitely had a different vision, but Biggie, you also have to realize Biggie was like How old was he when he died?
01:16:36.000 Oh yeah, they both were.
01:16:37.000 24 or something?
01:16:39.000 Tupac was 25. One of my favorite videos of Biggie is Biggie standing on a street corner when he was like 16, 17 years old rapping.
01:16:47.000 Do you ever see that?
01:16:48.000 I think I have.
01:16:50.000 Oh, Jesus.
01:16:50.000 With the lumberjack stuff.
01:16:51.000 Yeah, he's got a fucking... 0.99
01:16:53.000 I think he might even have a piece of paper in his hand. 1.00
01:16:56.000 Where he's like reading the rap off where he's got it like in case he fucks up.
01:17:00.000 But his flow was so good even as a little kid. 1.00
01:17:06.000 He was a fucking kid man. 0.99
01:17:07.000 And he was like as good as any rapper alive. 1.00
01:17:10.000 Can you find that?
01:17:12.000 Can we play that?
01:17:13.000 We'll get in trouble?
01:17:14.000 I'll play it for you afterwards.
01:17:15.000 After the podcast we'll play it.
01:17:17.000 And his breath control and his weight.
01:17:20.000 Sometimes I feel like you've got to be fat almost to be an amazing singer or rapper.
01:17:25.000 Well, comedians too.
01:17:26.000 A lot of fat comedians like Patrice O'Neill, one of the greatest of all time.
01:17:29.000 There was something about his girth when he was on stage.
01:17:32.000 He had power and this whole thing.
01:17:34.000 Here's Biggie.
01:17:35.000 He's got a piece of paper in his hand.
01:17:37.000 That's amazing.
01:17:39.000 What's that?
01:17:39.000 Oh, it might be a towel.
01:17:41.000 Oh, yeah, you're right.
01:17:42.000 17 years old in Bed-Stuy.
01:17:45.000 Yeah.
01:17:45.000 And just murdering it.
01:17:48.000 Murdering it. 1.00
01:17:48.000 He's not doing tricks. 1.00
01:17:49.000 Everybody around him.
01:17:50.000 No, look at everybody.
01:17:58.000 You know, I saw this early Tupac videos and heard early Tupac recordings, and his original style influence was actually Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.
01:18:08.000 Yes!
01:18:08.000 Remember when he was a dancer for Humpty Hump?
01:18:11.000 Yeah, Digital Underground.
01:18:12.000 He was like in the background of the Humpty Hump dance.
01:18:17.000 Arsenio Hall, you can see him.
01:18:20.000 Yeah, no, Tupac was a dancer.
01:18:22.000 I mean, and when he was young, which is really interesting, when they interview him, he was like, he wasn't thugged out at all.
01:18:29.000 Well, he's the son of two Black Panthers, you know?
01:18:32.000 The politics was always his thing.
01:18:34.000 What is that from?
01:18:35.000 Oh, yeah.
01:18:36.000 Oh, that movie!
01:18:38.000 The Gumby haircut.
01:18:38.000 Yeah, that's right.
01:18:40.000 Yeah.
01:18:41.000 Oh, I forgot about that.
01:18:41.000 That was his debut.
01:18:43.000 That was his, like, solo debut.
01:18:46.000 Wow.
01:18:47.000 Yeah, Digital Underground.
01:18:48.000 Whatever happened to them?
01:18:50.000 Humpty Hump, Shock G, he's still around. 0.99
01:18:54.000 They were so good. 1.00
01:18:55.000 They had great shit. 0.99
01:18:57.000 When 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. 1.00
01:19:06.000 But no, he has though.
01:19:09.000 He's the real deal.
01:19:11.000 There was a lot of great hip-hop in that era.
01:19:13.000 I mean, I'm sure there's a lot of great hip-hop now, but to me, it's almost like I'm a classic rock fan as well.
01:19:20.000 If I'm sitting there and I'm about to go for a drive, and I'm like, what do I listen to?
01:19:24.000 Nine times out of ten, I'll go to Leonard Skinner, Zeppelin, or The Doors, or the Allman Brothers.
01:19:31.000 What about Tom Petty?
01:19:31.000 I love Tom Petty.
01:19:32.000 I go to those classics for whatever reason.
01:19:36.000 There's so much music.
01:19:38.000 I know there's great stuff out now.
01:19:40.000 I still listen to some great stuff now.
01:19:42.000 I love the Black Keys. 1.00
01:19:43.000 They're still putting out killer shit. 0.99
01:19:45.000 The Vampire Weekend album is amazing. 1.00
01:19:47.000 I don't know if you've heard that.
01:19:49.000 What's that?
01:19:49.000 Vampire Weekend.
01:19:50.000 They're from New York.
01:19:51.000 It's a band.
01:19:53.000 The lead singer Ezra Koenig is with...
01:19:57.000 What's her name?
01:19:59.000 Jones from Parks and Recreation.
01:20:01.000 Rashida Jones.
01:20:03.000 New band?
01:20:03.000 They're not that new, but...
01:20:05.000 Vampire Weekend? 0.99
01:20:06.000 They're fucking amazing. 0.99
01:20:08.000 Lana Del Rey's album. 1.00
01:20:10.000 There's some great shit out there. 0.99
01:20:12.000 No doubt. 1.00
01:20:13.000 But it's just...
01:20:14.000 It's almost like there's too much.
01:20:16.000 There's like...
01:20:17.000 But that's what's great about music.
01:20:19.000 I mean, it's an untapped, like, it's a well that never runs dry, and that's what, I always go back to it.
01:20:25.000 Well, 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.
01:20:40.000 Mm-hmm. 0.52
01:20:41.000 But there's a lot of music that you would say is like, oh, well, what the fuck happened between 1960 and 1970? 0.97
01:20:50.000 Because something happened. 0.94
01:20:52.000 You go to the music of 1960 and then you go to the music of 1970. You go to the music of 2009 and 2019, they're fucking the same, man. 0.98
01:21:00.000 It's like there's great stuff. 0.99
01:21:02.000 There's a lot of variety, but there's no like, what the fuck happened? 0.99
01:21:06.000 But from 1960 to 1969, what the fuck happened? 0.98
01:21:10.000 Something happened, and that something is drugs. 0.99
01:21:13.000 You know, it's like the whole societal shift went right along with it.
01:21:18.000 They kind of fueled each other.
01:21:21.000 The psychedelics, absolutely.
01:21:24.000 I guess that dirt weed they were smoking probably affected them too.
01:21:28.000 Well, they smoked so much of it, it became effective.
01:21:31.000 But, you know, I've talked to some people and they said there was always some good weed back then.
01:21:35.000 You know, they'd call it Acapulco gold or whatever. 0.98
01:21:38.000 But 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. 0.98
01:21:47.000 You know, you can't feel your feet, you know, that kind of stuff. 0.98
01:21:49.000 Like, I don't think they had any of that.
01:21:51.000 Keefe and wax.
01:21:53.000 And the stuff, like, I just came back to L.A. for the first time recently, went into a legal weed store for the first time.
01:21:57.000 I didn't buy anything, but the dosages are so high.
01:22:01.000 Yes.
01:22:02.000 You know, all of them, like, there's got to be a connoisseur's market for, like, microdosing of weed.
01:22:07.000 Like, where's that?
01:22:08.000 Well, what you want to get is those CBD THC tablets.
01:22:12.000 Oh, I heard about that.
01:22:13.000 They're capsules, and it's 10 milligrams.
01:22:15.000 10 milligrams THC, 10 milligrams CBD, and it's so nice.
01:22:19.000 It's just a nice, calm, mellow high.
01:22:22.000 You just appreciate things a little bit more.
01:22:24.000 The colors are a little bit more vibrant.
01:22:26.000 But you can just walk around and talk to people. 0.99
01:22:29.000 You're not like, fuck, I've got to go home and get under the covers quick! 0.99
01:22:33.000 It's not... 0.99
01:22:34.000 But the thing is, there's so many hardcore stoners today that they need those high doses because their tolerance is so high.
01:22:42.000 And they're just trying to melt their face off.
01:22:44.000 Every time they go in there, they're trying to find some new thing that melts their face off harder.
01:22:48.000 I don't know, man.
01:22:51.000 Psychedelics.
01:22:52.000 LSD. I'm going in the other direction, really.
01:22:56.000 We went vegan, not smoking weed, really not drinking much.
01:23:02.000 It's just exercising, eating the best food.
01:23:05.000 I don't know.
01:23:06.000 I'm just trying out this new thing.
01:23:08.000 I just want to feel good all the time.
01:23:11.000 You know what I mean?
01:23:12.000 So just experimenting and...
01:23:15.000 My wife actually got us into whole foods, plant-based. 0.87
01:23:19.000 You can eat crappy vegan food, obviously.
01:23:22.000 I heard Nikki Glaser talking about this.
01:23:24.000 People talk about fake meat and the Impossible Whopper, and I had one.
01:23:28.000 Terrible for you.
01:23:29.000 Yeah, but it just makes you feel as crappy like the old Whopper did.
01:23:33.000 Yeah, it's terrible.
01:23:34.000 If you cut out the processed food, that to me is what is making me feel like I have energy all the time.
01:23:41.000 Yes.
01:23:42.000 Sleep better.
01:23:43.000 I haven't gotten sick.
01:23:44.000 Good for you, man.
01:23:45.000 But that's where it's at.
01:23:46.000 You know, be kind to your body.
01:23:48.000 Your body will treat you better.
01:23:49.000 That's just how it is.
01:23:50.000 Drink more water.
01:23:51.000 Exercise when you can.
01:23:52.000 Do you meditate at all?
01:23:53.000 Yeah, yeah.
01:23:54.000 I've been getting big into that.
01:23:56.000 Yeah, how about you?
01:23:57.000 I guess you and Nikki are talking about that a little bit.
01:23:59.000 I 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.
01:24:13.000 If 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.
01:24:27.000 Yeah, it's 100%.
01:24:29.000 It's like Johan Hari in his book, he's been on here chasing the scream.
01:24:33.000 Yeah, he like blew my mind with these revelations that really it's just like people can age out of these drugs.
01:24:41.000 You know, I always thought like...
01:24:43.000 Yeah.
01:25:02.000 And that people are addicting in the right way, addictive in a positive way.
01:25:07.000 You 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.
01:25:22.000 Those are attractive to other folks. 0.77
01:25:24.000 And 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?
01:25:38.000 Yeah, 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.
01:25:49.000 So some people criticize it and they say, well, you're just advocating for someone to go off one drug onto another drug.
01:25:56.000 And my wife in particular is like, you know, we should really be encouraging people to go off these drugs altogether.
01:26:02.000 And like, you know, whether it's a spiritual approach, meditation, all that.
01:26:08.000 You know, and she's not wrong, but it's just like...
01:26:11.000 What do the numbers show?
01:26:13.000 What are people capable of doing?
01:26:16.000 I don't have all the answers.
01:26:19.000 I don't have the answers either.
01:26:19.000 It's different for everyone.
01:26:20.000 My friend Artie Lang, I just did a podcast with him this weekend.
01:26:24.000 Yeah, I heard about that.
01:26:25.000 And he's free and clean for nine months now.
01:26:28.000 I've never seen him look better.
01:26:30.000 His eyes, they're sparkling.
01:26:33.000 He's there.
01:26:34.000 He's present.
01:26:35.000 And he's talking.
01:26:38.000 He 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.
01:27:04.000 And, you know, he's still getting his piss tested like five times a week. 0.84
01:27:09.000 I mean, he's under, it's crazy because he's under this program where if he fucks up, he goes to jail. 0.96
01:27:17.000 I think he goes to jail for a long time.
01:27:18.000 He's not a dealer and he didn't do any violent crime or anything like that.
01:27:22.000 He's just a user.
01:27:23.000 It's really strange that they've got him on this, this drug court thing.
01:27:27.000 But what it's doing for him is it's forcing him to be accountable and forcing him to be sober.
01:27:32.000 And then he's doing that.
01:27:34.000 And then he's saying, look, I like this.
01:27:36.000 I'm happy.
01:27:37.000 I'm alive.
01:27:37.000 I'm doing great.
01:27:38.000 I'm doing shows.
01:27:39.000 I feel good. 1.00
01:27:40.000 His fucking stories were insane. 1.00
01:27:42.000 He's so funny. 1.00
01:27:43.000 He was so much more vibrant than I've ever seen him before.
01:27:48.000 I love when I see people doing well.
01:27:50.000 I love it.
01:27:51.000 I love when someone was... 0.99
01:27:53.000 Their life was fucked up and now it's not fucked up at all. 0.98
01:27:56.000 Like he's doing great. 0.99
01:27:57.000 He's on the right path.
01:27:58.000 And the more people see things like that, I think the better it is for all of us.
01:28:03.000 I think some people, it's like part of their identity to be like that guy who's like drunk, you know, in like the life of the party.
01:28:11.000 Yes.
01:28:12.000 And 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?
01:28:22.000 And it's, there's so many, like, I'm drinking beer for breakfast, like, this is amazing.
01:28:26.000 And people get caught up in that, and it doesn't agree.
01:28:28.000 Drinking is not for everybody, you know, but they, it becomes part of their identity.
01:28:34.000 And so, My wife and I do this thing called kundalini yoga.
01:28:39.000 Have you ever done that?
01:28:40.000 Yeah.
01:28:40.000 Russell Brand.
01:28:41.000 My friend Ari just did it. 1.00
01:28:43.000 He goes, Garmin, hi.
01:28:44.000 Yeah, it does.
01:28:45.000 I heard someone else describe it as like...
01:28:48.000 Totally for drug people who like getting eye on drugs because you get that buzz in your head.
01:28:54.000 It's like half meditation, half yoga.
01:28:56.000 I'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.
01:29:05.000 And 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.
01:29:16.000 You're trying to like, you know, look in your third eye.
01:29:19.000 And your brain doesn't have time to wander around and think those negative thoughts and how terrible you are.
01:29:26.000 And at the same time, it's like a physically demanding thing to do.
01:29:30.000 I mean, it doesn't look like much, but you're like sweating.
01:29:34.000 And, you know, my wife like Got us into that. 1.00
01:29:57.000 That thing like you think about being a terrible person or you hate yourself, that is so common with people.
01:30:05.000 And so many people just live with those thoughts bouncing around their head and they don't have an outlet.
01:30:11.000 And that's another reason why they turn to alcohol or turn to drugs.
01:30:14.000 They try to squash that chatter.
01:30:17.000 But 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.
01:30:35.000 And I take a concerted effort to just think about my breathing.
01:30:40.000 And like meditation, you'll go off track and you start thinking about things.
01:30:44.000 Oh, I gotta pay that bill.
01:30:45.000 Oh, I gotta do this thing.
01:30:46.000 Oh, I gotta make sure I call that guy.
01:30:48.000 But you can get right back on track.
01:30:50.000 Yeah.
01:30:51.000 Always concentrate on your breathing.
01:30:53.000 Always concentrate on the pose.
01:30:55.000 Concentrate on your breathing.
01:30:56.000 Concentrate on the pose.
01:30:56.000 And just know that you're going to get off track a couple times during the thing.
01:31:00.000 But enough, you'll stay on track enough so that there is some sort of cleansing effect.
01:31:05.000 And when class is over, I feel better.
01:31:08.000 I just feel better.
01:31:09.000 What kind of yoga do you do?
01:31:10.000 I do hot yoga, like Bikram.
01:31:11.000 Like Bikram yoga.
01:31:12.000 Yeah.
01:31:12.000 Yeah.
01:31:12.000 There's a funny book about that.
01:31:14.000 The guy who started that movement. 1.00
01:31:16.000 Out of his fucking mind. 1.00
01:31:17.000 Yeah. 1.00
01:31:17.000 Yeah. 1.00
01:31:18.000 Well, that's the fucked up part about it. 0.97
01:31:19.000 The place that I go to, they actually change the name. 0.99
01:31:22.000 It used to be called Bikram, and they're like, wow, this guy's too fucking radioactive. 0.96
01:31:26.000 And they teach the same postures, which he didn't even invent, by the way. 0.98
01:31:29.000 These are fucking thousands of years old, these postures. 0.94
01:31:32.000 And the sequence, he didn't even invent. 0.99
01:31:35.000 He just...
01:31:36.000 He popularized it.
01:31:37.000 Yeah, he popularized it.
01:31:38.000 And look, as gross as that guy is, he's done a huge service by spreading his yoga across the country. 0.96
01:31:45.000 And it's like many things in life.
01:31:48.000 Things are messy.
01:31:50.000 Life is a messy proposition. 1.00
01:31:52.000 And this guy, you could say, well, fuck yoga because that guy is yoga. 1.00
01:31:55.000 No, no, no. 1.00
01:31:55.000 Yoga is a physical practice done by millions and millions, if not billions of people. 1.00
01:32:01.000 It's the same with the leader of Kundalini, this guy named Yogi Bhajan. 0.91
01:32:05.000 He's gross too?
01:32:07.000 Oh, there's lawsuits against him since he died and stuff. 0.89
01:32:10.000 I think any cult, people call it a cult.
01:32:13.000 They wear white.
01:32:15.000 But he came from the Punjab region in India, and the Kundalini yoga was only for the Brahmins or only for the...
01:32:25.000 Elite class.
01:32:26.000 And so what he did was he came to the U.S. and he brought it for like the common people.
01:32:30.000 And so there were people apparently who were so upset about this back from India that there were attempts on his life.
01:32:38.000 I heard that he wore the big, what do you call that holds your hair?
01:32:44.000 Turban? 0.93
01:32:44.000 The big turban, yeah. 0.93
01:32:45.000 It's bulletproof?
01:32:46.000 No, 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. 0.99
01:32:57.000 That sounds like a great story, but probably bullshit. 0.98
01:33:00.000 That's what I would say. 0.99
01:33:01.000 This sword bounced off my comb, and I am here to teach yoga!
01:33:05.000 Yeah, something happens when people become like a leader of something that, especially something that's so spiritually oriented and also sexual.
01:33:17.000 There'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.
01:33:25.000 That's why people think yoga teachers are like the hottest teachers. 1.00
01:33:28.000 Like if a girl's like a yoga teacher, your friend goes, dude, I'm dating a yoga teacher. 1.00
01:33:32.000 Like, whoa.
01:33:32.000 Yeah, well, my wife's taking teacher training, so that's amazing.
01:33:37.000 I think it's just like they're literally – you have like an aura.
01:33:40.000 You know what I mean?
01:33:41.000 There's something about it.
01:33:42.000 You're focused on making your – being more healthy.
01:33:46.000 Yes.
01:33:46.000 But then for men, for gross men, the problem is like all these women are like, you, you've brought me such amazing things.
01:33:54.000 He's like, I got another amazing thing for you.
01:33:56.000 Yeah.
01:33:56.000 Well, I mean, every cult.
01:33:58.000 I mean, it's like, quit being such a stereotype.
01:34:01.000 Like, have a cult, but don't make it about seducing the underage women in the cult. 0.60
01:34:06.000 Don't make it about...
01:34:07.000 Or even any of the women.
01:34:07.000 I mean, it's always...
01:34:09.000 They always become sex cults.
01:34:11.000 Always.
01:34:11.000 Yeah, exactly.
01:34:12.000 Always.
01:34:12.000 And don't, like, steal everyone's money.
01:34:14.000 Like, just change the script a little bit this time.
01:34:17.000 Yeah.
01:34:17.000 I mean, everything from Waco to Jim Jones to...
01:34:21.000 If they wind up fucking everybody's wife and taking all the money. 0.99
01:34:25.000 Yeah. 1.00
01:34:26.000 Exactly.
01:34:26.000 What was that Netflix documentary that placed in Oregon?
01:34:29.000 Wow, wow country.
01:34:29.000 Amazing.
01:34:30.000 Yeah.
01:34:30.000 Amazing.
01:34:31.000 And again, sex. 0.99
01:34:32.000 Sex and money. 1.00
01:34:33.000 It was all about sex. 1.00
01:34:34.000 That guy was banging everybody. 1.00
01:34:36.000 It was like orgies. 0.92
01:34:37.000 Yeah. 1.00
01:34:38.000 It's fucking crazy, but that's always what happens. 1.00
01:34:40.000 It always becomes some wacky sex cult. 1.00
01:34:43.000 Always! 0.95
01:34:44.000 Yeah.
01:34:45.000 Always.
01:34:46.000 Yeah, I mean, that's the number one thing that makes people distrustful of cults, sex and money.
01:34:51.000 Yeah.
01:34:52.000 The things that people want out of life the most.
01:34:54.000 These are probably, other than love, which is probably the wisest choice.
01:34:59.000 Well, that's part of it, too.
01:35:00.000 Yes, sure.
01:35:01.000 Someone to care about you.
01:35:03.000 That's why people join gangs.
01:35:04.000 Ice-T talks about that.
01:35:06.000 His own parents never said they loved him, but in the gang, they were like, I love you.
01:35:11.000 He wasn't in the crypts, but he had friends and they took him in.
01:35:16.000 Yeah, people want meaning.
01:35:18.000 You know, they want meaning in life.
01:35:19.000 And 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.
01:35:31.000 Like, this is Mike!
01:35:33.000 Mike's the drunk! 1.00
01:35:34.000 Look at Mike, you're getting fucked up tonight. 1.00
01:35:36.000 Hey, I get fucked up every night, bro. 1.00
01:35:37.000 You know me. 0.99
01:35:38.000 Some of the best advice I got is to not be so worried about your identity.
01:35:44.000 Think of it as a small I instead of a capital I. I think about myself in certain ways.
01:35:50.000 I'm like the guy who likes hip-hop.
01:35:53.000 I'm the guy who does this or that.
01:35:55.000 And that's...
01:35:57.000 But do I need to be that guy?
01:35:59.000 If I don't listen to hip-hop, I'll learn about all this other music that I might like even better.
01:36:03.000 And so the more you just strip that stuff away, the more you can get to the essence of who you really are.
01:36:09.000 Yeah, the more you just enjoy things and not wonder whether you should be enjoying them or whether they fit your package.
01:36:17.000 Not just someone, but many people have said this to me, and it's one of the grossest things anybody has ever said.
01:36:22.000 They go, I really love what you're doing with your brand.
01:36:25.000 I'm like, oh, gross.
01:36:27.000 But the fact that people think that way.
01:36:30.000 People can see through that stuff so easily if you were really doing that. 0.99
01:36:33.000 Oh, fuck yeah, they can. 0.97
01:36:34.000 But it's also like the idea that you are a brand? 1.00
01:36:38.000 You're a brand? 1.00
01:36:39.000 Ben Westhoff, you fucking brand you. 1.00
01:36:42.000 Yeah, I wish. 1.00
01:36:43.000 What is a brand?
01:36:45.000 A person's a brand?
01:36:47.000 I love what you're doing with your brand.
01:36:49.000 Like, eww!
01:36:50.000 So if you ever meet me, don't say that.
01:36:53.000 Oh, now they're going to say it.
01:36:54.000 I think you pride yourself on just saying what you really think.
01:36:58.000 And I think that...
01:37:01.000 That is your brand.
01:37:02.000 I mean, as lame as that sounds, like, not having a brand is, like, your brand, kind of. 1.00
01:37:05.000 Well, 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. 0.99
01:37:16.000 And so, like, used it correctly. 1.00
01:37:18.000 Uh-huh.
01:37:18.000 This is who I am.
01:37:20.000 I'm nice.
01:37:21.000 I'm a good guy.
01:37:22.000 But this is how I think about things.
01:37:26.000 The problem with Hollywood, and it's one of the giant problems, is that you're always trying out for the next thing.
01:37:31.000 You're always auditioning.
01:37:34.000 People develop an incredibly disingenuous mindset.
01:37:37.000 Because the mindset is, I want to be manipulative, To the casting agents and the producers, I want them to like me.
01:37:44.000 So I want to adopt whatever conglomeration of ideas they have politically, socially.
01:37:49.000 I want to fit in.
01:37:50.000 So this is why Hollywood is almost like universally left-wing.
01:37:54.000 It's not because the people are all...
01:37:56.000 They all think exactly the same way, because they're creative types.
01:38:00.000 That would be ideal, right?
01:38:01.000 But that's not what it is.
01:38:02.000 What it is, is the people that run the show know that this is how the show is run.
01:38:07.000 The show is run through progressive thought.
01:38:10.000 You vote Democrat.
01:38:12.000 You support these candidates.
01:38:13.000 You want a woman president. 0.99
01:38:15.000 You want this.
01:38:16.000 You want that.
01:38:17.000 You're pro-everything that the left stands for.
01:38:21.000 And so, these people, they don't even have their own opinions.
01:38:24.000 They just have these opinions they've adopted because they think it's going to help them get through. 0.99
01:38:29.000 And so then they do get through, and then they become famous, and then they go, who the fuck am I? Like, they don't know who they are. 0.99
01:38:36.000 And then when it comes to, like, hey, tell us your opinion on this.
01:38:40.000 Like, oh my god, they don't even know what their opinion is because they've never really developed opinions.
01:38:44.000 They've developed an act.
01:38:46.000 And 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.
01:38:55.000 Because 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,
01:39:11.000 I want a woman president, like, that guy gets the role. 1.00
01:39:15.000 The ironic thing, too, though, is a lot of real liberals see Hollywood as this reactionary...
01:39:24.000 Place in its own right.
01:39:26.000 You know what I mean? 0.78
01:39:26.000 Like, the right-wing, like, Christian part of the culture sees Hollywood as this horrible cesspool. 0.78
01:39:33.000 But then the left-wing sees it as playing to this, you know, the Weinstein stuff.
01:39:37.000 All the, like, worst elements of, you know, male-dominated corporate culture epitomized in Hollywood.
01:39:45.000 So it's funny how it's hated on both sides.
01:39:47.000 Yeah, it is hated on both sides.
01:39:49.000 But I think that Weinstein stuff is the same thing as the cult stuff.
01:39:51.000 Yeah.
01:39:52.000 It's just like a guy gets power, and he has a bunch of people that have to, like, he creates their careers.
01:39:59.000 Like, you want to be in this movie? 1.00
01:40:00.000 You've got to suck this dick. 1.00
01:40:02.000 And that's what he did. 1.00
01:40:03.000 I mean, he literally did the casting couch thing on a grand scale with A-list actors.
01:40:08.000 So awful, yeah.
01:40:09.000 It's whatever.
01:40:10.000 What 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?
01:40:20.000 Look at her.
01:40:21.000 She's on the big screen.
01:40:22.000 She's the star. 0.85
01:40:23.000 I could have been the star, but I didn't have sex with Harvey.
01:40:26.000 And then this creates that culture.
01:40:29.000 That guy just ran through that business with impunity.
01:40:33.000 I mean, he was just doing it that way forever.
01:40:36.000 Yeah, 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,
01:40:54.000 like take the three-act structure, right?
01:40:56.000 Like every movie has to have a three-act structure, whether it's the most independent or the biggest Hollywood.
01:41:02.000 So it's like, why is that?
01:41:04.000 Is that part of our brain?
01:41:05.000 You know, and take songs, like pop songs.
01:41:07.000 They're all structured the same.
01:41:09.000 Verse, chorus, verse, bridge, you know, chorus again.
01:41:13.000 And I don't know.
01:41:15.000 Well, you read any Joseph Campbell?
01:41:17.000 Yeah, I haven't read it, but I know the basic ideas.
01:41:21.000 Yeah, and Joseph Campbell, the journey of the hero, the hero's journey.
01:41:25.000 All that mirrors itself.
01:41:27.000 That's the structure of most of these fantastic stories where this hero goes through this transformation.
01:41:37.000 And faces this adversary and overcomes it.
01:41:41.000 And this story, this sort of structure is repeated over and over again.
01:41:45.000 And it's something that's like deeply embedded in culture, deeply embedded in the psyche of human beings.
01:41:53.000 Yeah, well, yeah, there you go.
01:41:55.000 There's the answer.
01:41:57.000 Yeah, and so when I'm trying to, like, write a book like this, I want there to be narrative and tell stories, you know what I mean?
01:42:05.000 Like, there's drug books out there, and it gets way deep into the neuropharmacology, and, you know, but it's, like, ultimately...
01:42:14.000 You know, 30,000 people dying of fentanyl is a horrifying statistic, but it's almost impossible to wrap your mind around it.
01:42:21.000 When you know one person who died, like my friend, his name was Michael Schafermeyer in 2010. He died from fentanyl patches.
01:42:31.000 I had never heard of fentanyl at the time.
01:42:34.000 A patch killed him.
01:42:36.000 And 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.
01:42:48.000 He didn't have the strength to move.
01:42:51.000 So 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.
01:42:59.000 So that doesn't even show up as a fentanyl death, for example.
01:43:04.000 But just that one story means so much more to me than 30,000 people I don't know, for example.
01:43:12.000 You know what I mean?
01:43:13.000 Yeah, that's the problem.
01:43:15.000 What is that old expression?
01:43:17.000 The death of one person is a tragedy.
01:43:19.000 The death of a million is a statistic.
01:43:20.000 I think that was a Nazi that said that.
01:43:24.000 Wasn't it Goebbels?
01:43:27.000 Someone like that?
01:43:28.000 I forget who it was.
01:43:30.000 Someone terrible had that expression.
01:43:36.000 There's so many people.
01:43:37.000 That's also part of the problem.
01:43:39.000 3,000 people die every year from aspirin.
01:43:42.000 150 people die every year because coconuts fall on their head.
01:43:45.000 I think Tylenol actually has the narrowest therapeutic window.
01:43:50.000 It's Stalin. 0.53
01:43:51.000 Single death is a tragedy.
01:43:52.000 A million deaths is a statistic.
01:43:54.000 When one dies, it is a tragedy.
01:43:55.000 When a million dies, it's a statistic.
01:43:58.000 Yeah.
01:43:58.000 Well, that's a little redundant.
01:44:00.000 Why do you say it twice?
01:44:02.000 Is that a Russian thing?
01:44:03.000 Yeah, 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.
01:44:10.000 Like, the amount that makes you feel better versus the amount that will kill you is not that far apart.
01:44:17.000 Oh, really?
01:44:17.000 And it's the same with fentanyl, and that's why, like, I mean, you could drink too much water and kill yourself, right?
01:44:23.000 Yeah, there was a woman who did that on a radio show contest. 1.00
01:44:26.000 Really?
01:44:27.000 She's trying to win like a game station, like an Xbox or something for a kid. 1.00
01:44:30.000 It was like in, I believe it was in San Jose, and they were having a water drinking contest.
01:44:35.000 And there's also, kids have done it, they were getting hazed for fraternities.
01:44:41.000 They had to drink a bunch of water and they died.
01:44:43.000 Yeah, and people, you hear a lot about ecstasy, overdose, deaths.
01:44:49.000 Because people didn't drink enough water.
01:44:51.000 So, like, MDMA isn't usually what kills you.
01:44:54.000 It's like you're in the hot sun at a rave, you overheat, you don't drink enough water.
01:44:59.000 But actually, some people have heard that, and then they drink too much water, and that kills them at a rave.
01:45:05.000 How much water kills you?
01:45:06.000 I don't know.
01:45:07.000 How much water do you have to drink before you die?
01:45:08.000 I think probably a ton.
01:45:09.000 Let's take a guess.
01:45:10.000 You think a gallon an hour for five hours, you think that'll kill you?
01:45:14.000 A gallon?
01:45:15.000 That is a ton of water for one hour.
01:45:18.000 Yeah.
01:45:19.000 You think that'll kill you?
01:45:20.000 For five hours?
01:45:21.000 Five hours.
01:45:23.000 I have no idea.
01:45:24.000 Have you had a guess?
01:45:26.000 No.
01:45:26.000 We're playing a game here, I guess.
01:45:27.000 I'm guessing no.
01:45:30.000 I'm thinking three gallons an hour for three hours. 1.00
01:45:36.000 You're dead.
01:45:37.000 You got the over-under on that? 0.73
01:45:39.000 What does it say, Jamie?
01:45:41.000 Is there a statistic?
01:45:47.000 Millimolar?
01:45:47.000 Yeah, that thing.
01:45:48.000 That's like for ketones.
01:45:50.000 It's a sodium level thing.
01:45:51.000 Oh, right. 0.98
01:45:53.000 Water in the blood level that gets to your brain, that's what can fuck you up. 0.99
01:45:56.000 So I'm trying to find out. 0.90
01:45:57.000 Oh, so it dilutes?
01:45:58.000 Yeah.
01:45:58.000 Dilutes your sodium.
01:45:59.000 What if you drink water with a lot of salt in it?
01:46:01.000 Then you'll probably just pee it out.
01:46:03.000 You can probably get sodium tuxus.
01:46:05.000 By the way, that will give you explosive diarrhea. 0.99
01:46:10.000 Trust me on that.
01:46:12.000 Last year we were doing the Sober October Fitness Challenge.
01:46:15.000 Me and my friends...
01:46:16.000 You did it this year too.
01:46:17.000 Yeah, but last year we went crazy.
01:46:19.000 We had a fitness challenge.
01:46:20.000 This year we just went sober.
01:46:22.000 And we did a bunch of classes and different things.
01:46:24.000 But last year we went five, six hours of cardio a day. 1.00
01:46:28.000 Nutty shit. 1.00
01:46:29.000 And I was drinking... 1.00
01:46:30.000 Literally, just giant 64 liters of water with Epsom salts, or not Epsom salts, Himalayan salt in it. 0.99
01:46:38.000 And if you don't get that mixture right, that stuff will come rocketing out of your ass like a broken fire hydrant. 0.99
01:46:46.000 It's crazy. 0.99
01:46:47.000 And then I Googled it afterwards.
01:46:48.000 I was like, what is that?
01:46:50.000 And then I Googled it.
01:46:51.000 It's actually like a salt enema by drinking a bunch of salt.
01:46:55.000 For whatever reason, I guess your body just goes, hey, what is all this water and salt?
01:47:00.000 This guy's sick.
01:47:02.000 Something's wrong here.
01:47:03.000 Everybody out of the pool! 0.80
01:47:05.000 Woo! 0.99
01:47:06.000 It all backfired on you.
01:47:08.000 Yeah.
01:47:08.000 But you've got to get it right.
01:47:10.000 You don't need a teaspoon.
01:47:12.000 You don't need multiple tablespoons.
01:47:14.000 Yeah.
01:47:15.000 I ran a marathon and I'm into long distance running.
01:47:19.000 It's gotten to the point where...
01:47:22.000 At first, I was always doing it for my health.
01:47:24.000 You know what I mean?
01:47:25.000 I was like, I'm getting my workout in, getting exercise.
01:47:27.000 But then I grew to like it so much that it was like negatively affecting my health.
01:47:32.000 You know, like I ran maybe 10 miles with my buddy, Jeff, the other day.
01:47:37.000 And I just felt awful afterwards.
01:47:39.000 But I loved doing it, you know?
01:47:41.000 Why did you feel awful?
01:47:42.000 Because you were worn out?
01:47:43.000 I don't know.
01:47:43.000 I was like grouchy with my kids.
01:47:44.000 And yeah, my level, you know, everything was depleted.
01:47:48.000 I was tired and hungry and then the next day I was sore.
01:47:53.000 But it's funny when you cross that plane to just wanting to do the thing itself.
01:47:59.000 Yes.
01:47:59.000 Well, that's a high as well.
01:48:00.000 You're obviously aware of the endorphins that you get from running. 0.97
01:48:03.000 I 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. 0.99
01:48:17.000 All of your fucks are gone. 0.99
01:48:18.000 Yeah. 1.00
01:48:19.000 Like, things don't bother you.
01:48:20.000 Like, people can yell at you.
01:48:22.000 You're like, oh, hi.
01:48:23.000 Keep yelling.
01:48:24.000 This doesn't mean anything.
01:48:26.000 Things don't bother you.
01:48:27.000 It's weird. 1.00
01:48:28.000 Like, you're on some I-don't-give-a-fuck drug. 1.00
01:48:30.000 And we were all talking about it. 1.00
01:48:32.000 I was like, if you could take that drug, how great would that drug be?
01:48:35.000 Because you don't lose any cognitive function.
01:48:38.000 It's not like you're high and you can't figure out what's going on.
01:48:40.000 No, you're the exact same person.
01:48:41.000 But you have zero internal chatter and zero negative thinking.
01:48:46.000 It's like it's gone.
01:48:48.000 The meditation is the closest that I get to that.
01:48:51.000 Things bounce off you.
01:48:53.000 You don't judge everything so harshly.
01:48:58.000 Things come in.
01:49:00.000 You process it.
01:49:01.000 You react in your own time.
01:49:03.000 You're not letting your ego get in the way.
01:49:05.000 I think there's a certain amount of physical requirements that all of our bodies have.
01:49:09.000 And most of those physical requirements are not being met.
01:49:12.000 And then when you do do something that wears your body out, you go, oh.
01:49:18.000 And then you realize, oh, a lot of that anxiety was just this excess energy.
01:49:23.000 Yeah.
01:49:23.000 It's just this body which is designed to be able to perform.
01:49:27.000 Your body's designed to be able to, you know, carry groceries and, you know, run away from animals that are trying to get you.
01:49:35.000 All these different things that your body evolved to be able to do.
01:49:38.000 And then most of what you do is sit in your car, sit on the train, sit in your chair at the office.
01:49:44.000 And that's what a lot of people do.
01:49:46.000 And because of that, your body's just like...
01:49:48.000 Yeah. 1.00
01:49:50.000 Fucking fuck, fuck, fuck! 1.00
01:49:52.000 Well, yeah, exactly. 1.00
01:49:55.000 I went to the Boundary Waters.
01:49:56.000 You know the Boundary Waters canoe area in northern Minnesota?
01:49:59.000 No, what is that?
01:49:59.000 It's like this amazing chain of lakes where there's no motorized boats allowed.
01:50:06.000 There's no motors at all.
01:50:06.000 Some parts of it, planes can't even fly over.
01:50:09.000 Really?
01:50:09.000 And it's all portaging.
01:50:10.000 So you take canoes and then to connect one lake to another, you have to carry your canoe over your head and like maybe...
01:50:19.000 Maybe a quarter mile.
01:50:20.000 Some is like a full mile.
01:50:21.000 You've got your big packs on.
01:50:23.000 With a canoe over your head?
01:50:24.000 Yeah, with a canoe over your head.
01:50:25.000 Well, it's two people carry the canoes.
01:50:27.000 That's long.
01:50:28.000 It is long.
01:50:29.000 And it's like the most amazing full day workout we would get up at...
01:50:34.000 Dawn and like we'd be canoeing and portaging all day and I had no idea my body could handle it.
01:50:40.000 I 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.
01:50:56.000 Yeah, 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.
01:51:09.000 Your body becomes accustomed to the demands that you require of it.
01:51:13.000 But most people just don't use their body enough.
01:51:16.000 And it's a really disappointing thing that we're really intelligent people.
01:51:22.000 Connect exercise with being a superficial thing.
01:51:26.000 And there's less of that now than there was when I was younger.
01:51:29.000 But 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.
01:51:39.000 You weren't concerned with books and intellectual pursuits.
01:51:42.000 But those things are not mutually exclusive. 0.99
01:51:45.000 And in fact, if you're really smart, you realize that this is the only fucking body you have. 0.99
01:51:50.000 Yeah. 0.99
01:51:51.000 And if you're really smart, you realize that it's good to have a body that's not disgusting.
01:51:56.000 Yeah.
01:51:56.000 The whole, like, hope I die before I get old mentality, I don't agree with that.
01:52:01.000 Like, my kids, it's like sports is our bonding thing.
01:52:05.000 It's like sports, sports, sports, sports all day long.
01:52:08.000 And I started to stop to think about that for a little while.
01:52:11.000 I'm like, there's other things in life, you know what I mean?
01:52:13.000 What's the values that I'm imparting on my kids for doing sports?
01:52:18.000 But ultimately, it's just like...
01:52:20.000 A sense of exercise.
01:52:22.000 There's some competition, but it's not like they're crying if they lose.
01:52:29.000 A healthy sense of that.
01:52:31.000 And 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.
01:52:41.000 That is a great lesson.
01:52:42.000 And 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.
01:52:55.000 Yeah.
01:52:57.000 I think.
01:52:58.000 It is.
01:52:59.000 The sad thing is that the opioid epidemic was so often started by people who were prescribed drugs from their doctors.
01:53:08.000 And so that's another thing.
01:53:09.000 There's a sea change happening right now, is that there's all these new regulations about what doctors are allowed to prescribe.
01:53:16.000 They're trying to discourage them from prescribing opioids.
01:53:20.000 And that's a positive shift, I think, for people who are...
01:53:25.000 New patients, right?
01:53:27.000 So if you get a root canal, you don't need some crazy strong opioid to recover from a dental procedure or whatever.
01:53:35.000 But the problem is that now they're starting to take away people's opioids when they've been on them for a long term.
01:53:43.000 I talked to this woman from Colorado, and she had a disease, I can't remember, rheumatoid arthritis or something.
01:53:49.000 She'd been taking opioids for years and years and years.
01:53:53.000 And now all of a sudden, the doctor was like, I can't give you these anymore.
01:53:57.000 You have to take these classes about alternatives to opioids.
01:54:02.000 And they talked about acupuncture and yoga and stuff like that.
01:54:05.000 And all that's great.
01:54:06.000 But she felt just degraded.
01:54:10.000 And studies have shown that people, if they get their opioid pills taken away, they're going to turn to street heroin.
01:54:18.000 As a result.
01:54:19.000 And so the whole thing is insanely complicated.
01:54:23.000 Yeah, you talked about that, that there's three waves, right?
01:54:26.000 The first wave is the pills, second wave is street heroin, and then third wave is fentanyl.
01:54:30.000 Yeah, exactly.
01:54:32.000 And 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.
01:54:40.000 And Another scary thing is that up until now, people hadn't been asking for fentanyl by name.
01:54:50.000 Like we said, it's just put in other drugs.
01:54:53.000 But 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.
01:55:05.000 You know what I mean?
01:55:06.000 They take heroin, and it just gets rid of their withdrawal symptoms.
01:55:10.000 And so fentanyl will get them high again, and so people are starting to seek it out.
01:55:19.000 It's a bummer.
01:55:22.000 I hate to end it like this, but I think it might be the best way.
01:55:25.000 Yeah.
01:55:26.000 Thank you.
01:55:27.000 Thanks for being here.
01:55:28.000 Tell everyone your book, Fentanyl, Inc.
01:55:30.000 It's available now.
01:55:31.000 Oh yeah, absolutely.
01:55:32.000 It's, yeah, Fentanyl, Inc., How Rogue Chemists Are Creating the Deadliest Wave of the Opioid Epidemic.
01:55:38.000 And thank you for having me.
01:55:39.000 I really appreciate it.
01:55:40.000 Thanks, Ben.
01:55:40.000 Appreciate it, man.
01:55:40.000 It was good talking to you.
01:55:41.000 I enjoyed it.
01:55:42.000 Thank you.
01:55:42.000 Bye, everybody.
01:55:47.000 Much wider ranging than...