Comedian Bill Burr joins Jemele to discuss his new book, Drug Use for Grownups, and his thoughts on the Harvey Weinstein scandal. He also talks about why he doesn t care about what other people think of him, and why he thinks he s better than them. And, of course, he talks about his new comedy show, The Joe Rogan Experience, which is a podcast where he hosts a live show at a coffee shop in Los Angeles. He s a standup comic, writer, podcaster, and podcaster. He s also the author of and , and he s a frequent guest on Comedy Central s as well as on . He s one of the funniest, smartest, and most genuine people I know, and I m so grateful to have him on the show. Thank you, Bill Burr! Thanks to Bill Burr for being on the pod, and thanks to Jemele for being a part of the podcast, and for coming on to talk about the Harvey scandal, and so much more. I hope you enjoy this episode, and tweet me if you liked it! and don t forget to leave us a review on Apple Podcasts! . Timestamps: 4:00 - What do you think of Bill Burr? 6:30 - The Harvey scandal? 7:00 8:15 - What would you like to see Bill Burr do more comedy? 9:20 - What are you looking for? 11:00- Harvey Weinstein? 16:15 17: What are your thoughts on this week? 18:00: What does it mean to you're scared? 19:40 - Who's the most powerful person in the world right now? 21:30 22:50 - Why do you have a bad guy? 25:00 | Harvey Weinstein is good or bad? 26:40 27:10 - How do you feel about Harvey Weinstein should be held accountable? 29:10:10 32: Is there a good guy in power? 35:30 | What do we need to be scared of Harvey Weinstein ? 36:40 | What are we're scared of something bad enough? 37:20 39:10 | Who do we get scared of it? 40:00 + 39:00 // 45:00 ~
00:01:06.000Well, the COVID lockdowns affected everywhere, and I think it affected here less than it affected L.A., but I think the real thing is, you know, I mean, it's mental health, right?
00:01:19.000That's the real reason most of those folks are out there.
00:01:23.000And then, you know, you've got a lot of drug addicts, and you've got a lot of mental health, which brings up your book, Drug Use for Grownups.
00:03:05.000You know, I mean, and I was expecting more of them to stand up, and they didn't.
00:03:12.000Well, there was a bunch of different narratives, right?
00:03:14.000And if Louis wasn't talking, you know, all Louis did was, like, release a statement.
00:03:18.000But if you weren't talking to him, you didn't get his version of it.
00:03:21.000Once I talked to him personally and got his version, I'm like, well, this is a very different version than what you're hearing from the public.
00:03:28.000And from the people that are making the worst judgments on it, what it was mostly was he's kind of a pervert, and he asked if he could jerk off in front of them, and he had already been flirting with these girls, and he knew them, and they had made it seem like he was a monster.
00:03:46.000He was cornering people and jerking off in front of them.
00:03:49.000I mean, but even that's hard to cancel somebody.
00:05:33.000And that's coming from the highest levels of government, and it's like I don't like that ethos, and so I don't want to be around it because I don't want it to infect or poison me.
00:05:44.000Do you feel like it has affected or poisoned you?
00:05:48.000You know, it makes me angry for people who like support Trump, for example.
00:05:56.000They're all not racist, of course, and this sort of thing, but I don't understand How people can support a guy who's so mean-spirited and just attacks other people.
00:06:47.000Yeah, their take on it is just that he released the shackles that the military had to go and take down ISIS. And he released some of the restrictions that the military had under the previous administration as far as engaging with terrorists.
00:07:02.000They've shut down ISIS in like less than a year from Trump being in office.
00:07:05.000And when I talk to people that are active military, they said there was a night and day difference between the way the military was funded, the way...
00:08:05.000I think that what Trump represented to a lot of people was like this deviation from this system that never supported them, that never served them.
00:08:13.000They felt like politicians were all full of shit and finally this guy's gonna come in and you know even his ideas like clean up the swamp like this motto.
00:08:21.000Like that, oh yeah, that's what we need.
00:10:19.000I mean, this recent thing where those folks went to the Capitol and they were standing up on his behalf, and then he throws them under the Yeah, I threw them all under the bus after it was over.
00:10:44.000I had no idea how bad it was in terms of the sheer number of people storming the gates and screaming and It's a small handful of cops that were supposed to protect it, and that one cop that got beaten, there's like a video of them hitting the cop with flags and shit.
00:11:06.000It's really sad to me that that kind of thing happened, and then you have these fucking cowards, Rudy Giuliani, Ted Cruz, Josh Howley, all of these cowards, they're allowed to stand on their pulpit and say these things like they're tough,
00:11:28.000but they're nowhere around to support these folks in the first place, and they're sending them into the battle.
00:11:34.000And now they will comfortably join the ranks of their members of Congress while these other people are going to go to jail and have these charges, which they should have, of course, but these leaders who manipulated them,
00:12:53.000A lot of those folks that stormed the castle, that stormed Capitol Hill.
00:12:57.000If you see when they get arrested and you find out who they are, a guy living with his mom, believe in QAnon conspiracies, thinks the FBI is sending out pedophile codes, that kind of shit.
00:14:44.000But I'm talking about the Ted Cruz's and all of those people as well.
00:14:48.000I mean, those people, they should face the criminal justice system for what they did.
00:14:57.000Because these folks who are out here, we all have the potential to be assholes.
00:15:02.000And then if you think that what you're doing Is holding up the liberty that we promise in this country, that you are being a real patriot and you really believe that you've been manipulated to do that by these leaders, they should pay the price.
00:15:18.000And that's the thing that I'm really disturbed by.
00:15:46.000Politicians take stances based on where they think their constituents lean.
00:15:50.000And, you know, Stop the Steal and all that was trending on all these social media sites.
00:15:55.000And I feel like for a prominent politician that's a manipulative person that looks at these things and goes, that's an angle that I can use.
00:16:28.000I think that Ted Cruz and those folks were setting themselves up for a future presidential run or what have you and hoping that they get Trump, the kingmaker, to endorse them.
00:17:13.000You get deeply entrenched in that business and there's compromises that you make and a lot of weirdness I understand but you know like what kind of person want to be president?
00:17:23.000I don't want to do that But I'm glad there are people that that do it and the thing is I think we should require them to be more honorable than we do we certainly should and and so like when when people are posturing politically when they know that That there's no chance that this election can be overturned because there's no fraud.
00:19:03.000One of the things that could be the savior of this civilization I really believe this is the legalization of psychedelic drugs because I think if we had more people taking psychedelic drugs responsibly and Especially under the direction of real professionals if we allowed there to be real professionals We would allow people to have these experiences that dissolve their ego and give them this feeling of community and compassion I think a lot
00:19:33.000of those people that storm Capitol Hill, a lot of people like Ted Cruz, a lot of people that run for government and manipulate people, they have no experience in these things.
00:21:01.000If you want to make MDMA, all you do is put another ring, a methylene-dioxy ring, and then that's MDMA. So MDMA is called methylene-dioxymethamphetamine.
00:21:34.000Depends on dose and all those sorts of things.
00:21:38.000And if you've been to places like Burning Man and those festivals, and so you see all of those people and they're caring, they're sharing, they're doing all of these kinds of things.
00:21:49.000But some of those same people go out into the world after that experience and they misbehave and they act like assholes.
00:22:47.000For this reason that you're talking about, helping people to be more magnanimous, empathetic, giving, understanding, and all of these things.
00:22:57.000But I'm arguing that drugs like heroin should be included there, cocaine should be included there, along with the psychedelics.
00:23:06.000And so I agree with you, but I also understand that it has a lot to do with context, like where the drugs are being used, with who you're using it with.
00:23:15.000And it also has a lot to do with who's using the drugs.
00:23:18.000So the book is called Drug Use for Grownups for a reason.
00:23:21.000Yeah, you got to be a grown-up because if you end up being a grown-up It's a difficult thing as you know, you know I have kids and I have these responsibilities and I got I have to make sure that I'm a good model for them Treat people well trying to teach them to treat people well treat people well a lot of people are not grown-ups and so If you add a drug to the mix You're not going to all of a sudden have a grown-up.
00:23:50.000And so if people are responsible and grown-ups and empathetic, oh, drugs can really enhance all of those things.
00:24:01.000And so I just want to be clear that you give a drug to an asshole, no matter what drug you give, you're still going to have an asshole there.
00:25:19.000I think there's a trend right now with people that are very ambitious to take amphetamines.
00:25:24.000It's a current trend that's being accentuated by Adderall.
00:25:28.000I know quite a few people that get Adderall legally and they get it because of, air quote, fatigue or, oh, I have ADHD or ADHD or whatever the fuck it is.
00:25:44.000And if you're on a controlled version of this where you're not taking too much, but you're taking just enough, they're remarkably productive.
00:25:52.000And also, they can justify taking it because they've got a doctor who told them that it's okay.
00:26:00.000They wrote it down on a piece of paper.
00:26:08.000Nothing wrong with that, but it's weird to me that those same people oftentimes would frown upon the use of anything that creates deep introspective thought,
00:31:12.000What changed me was years of evidence of watching people giving drugs to people in a lab and watching them get high and seeing predominantly positive effects.
00:31:26.000Now this is now, I'm well into my 30s, 40s, and now 54, but over that long period of time, That's where I changed, though.
00:31:37.000I'm not like somebody who came to this from high school, always liked drugs and thought of drugs.
00:31:51.000But then me actually giving drugs to people and studying their responses and then really checking out the history of why drugs are banned...
00:32:00.000And just seeing how I was misled and manipulated and lied to.
00:32:06.000And now that I use all these drugs and think how I'm a better person for it.
00:32:14.000My life has been enhanced because of it.
00:32:17.000My connection to my loved ones are a lot better.
00:32:22.000But again, I'm a responsible grown-up, right?
00:32:26.000I'm 54 years old and I know what I'm doing.
00:32:29.000So when we think about something like cocaine, cocaine, not the bullshit that people sell on the street that's been stepped on.
00:32:36.000So like when you go to places like Columbia and you go to the source and you get really good cocaine, Like, Colombia cocaine is about $7 a gram, whereas in New York it could be anywhere from $60 to $100 a gram.
00:32:51.000And not as good as a product in Colombia.
00:32:54.000So you go to the source countries and you get good stuff.
00:32:59.000It could be a really good evening with you and your significant other, you know?
00:33:04.000And all of these sort of stories of people being paranoid about the cops with cocaine, there are reasons to be paranoid if you're doing something wrong.
00:33:45.000But when we think about cocaine and why it's illegal, cocaine came to the United States for the popular masses in the late 1800s.
00:33:57.000And Coca-Cola, this guy John Pendleton, I think his name was, he put it in Coca-Cola, well, this product, a Coca-Wine, and he was out of Atlanta.
00:34:08.000And he put it in cocoa wine in 1894. The next year, Atlanta banned alcohol.
00:34:18.000So before Prohibition, alcohol was banned in Atlanta.
00:35:19.000And now you start to get the connection between violence and cocaine use among black people.
00:35:27.000And this sort of narrative grew and grew to the point where we banned cocaine effectively in 1914, largely because of its association with black people using the drug.
00:35:43.000A similar thing happened with opium in the Chinese.
00:35:46.000That's the real reason that those drugs are banned.
00:39:32.000The problem is, if it was legal, it'd be great.
00:39:35.000Like, you could get pure cocaine, and you knew what you were getting.
00:39:39.000But if you're getting cocaine in Austin, Texas, you're probably getting it from some sketchy dude who is also selling a bunch of other shit.
00:39:56.000We got the technology to put on the streets where people can just submit small samples of their drug, 10 milligrams, which is nothing.
00:40:09.000And then they get a readout of the chemical composition of their drug.
00:40:14.000We have that technology if the public would put pressure on their officials to make sure that it's available to people where they can submit their drugs, small samples of their drugs, free and anonymously.
00:40:38.000This is why, in the book, I admit my heroin use, my cocaine use, all of my drug use, so...
00:40:44.000I'm trying to change that image because I have met people all around the world, some politicians and so forth, and got high with these people.
00:40:53.000Of course, I won't say who they are, but the vast majority of people who use these drugs are people who are responsible for Take care of their families.
00:42:02.000Because, you know, like this chemical structure I showed you, like morphine, with heroin, all you do with morphine is just add to acid groups.
00:42:13.000The acid groups don't have any pharmacological effect, really.
00:44:14.000I generally look at pain like it's an opportunity to just relax and just accept the sensation of pain and not want to just dull everything.
00:44:25.000Obviously it was different when I had surgery.
00:44:28.000That was also 92, something like that, 93. But I was sick, and so I took some NyQuil.
00:44:38.000And I remember just like my bed was just like giving me a hug.
00:44:42.000Like I remember like, God, this stuff feels so good.
00:44:45.000I think you just feel so good to be on the NyQuil.
00:46:14.000Portland is in the middle of an interesting experiment, right?
00:46:19.000Portland has essentially decriminalized everything.
00:46:23.000Basically, they've decided to treat people like grown-ups and say, we're not going to arrest you for anything.
00:46:27.000And I'm very curious to see where that goes, because we know what happened in Portugal.
00:46:31.000Portugal did that, and they had a drastic decrease in crimes, drastic decrease in addictions, and it really opened up a lot of people's eyes.
00:46:38.000They were like, oh, Jesus Christ, maybe we're doing this the wrong way.
00:46:42.000And demonizing these substances, and also infantilizing people.
00:46:47.000That's the big one, is another grown adult telling you that you can't do something, that you can't handle it, you shouldn't be able to, but also making this distinction just with drugs, but not with Other things that are legal,
00:47:02.000like bull riding or BMX riding or MMA fighting or a lot of other dangerous things that people enjoy doing, including drinking.
00:47:13.000We have this ingrained perception of what's acceptable and what's not acceptable, and you will see people at a bar with a cigarette in one hand and a drink in the other say, I don't do drugs.
00:47:23.000I mean, we have this really Looney Tunes version of what drugs are and what a person should and should not be doing with their life.
00:47:30.000And if you see someone who's out there, hey, I'm going to go do coke.
00:48:32.000Portugal should legally regulate everything.
00:48:36.000It should be legal in Portugal and around the world it should be legal.
00:48:40.000Because even with decriminalization, the thing that I worry about with drugs more than anything...
00:48:46.000Is the contaminants that people can put in the drugs, right?
00:48:50.000They're far more dangerous, or they can potentially be more dangerous than the drugs themselves.
00:48:57.000And decriminalization does nothing for that.
00:49:01.000But if you regulate it, like we have done with alcohol, what we're doing with cannabis now in 15 states or so, you now at least have some quality control.
00:49:18.000If we think about prohibition, the period between 1920 and 1933 in this country, we had a number of people dying and being maimed from tainted alcohol.
00:49:30.000We legalized alcohol in 1933. At the end of 1933, those problems went away.
00:49:37.000The quality control issues, they all went away.
00:49:40.000And so that's where I'm hoping society goes.
00:49:44.000Legally regulate these other things so we have this quality control.
00:49:49.000Right, so you can buy actual substances and not these stepped-on versions of them, like whether it's heroin or whether it's cocaine.
00:50:27.000You know, I have to wear these shirts.
00:50:29.000So, like, when I go to the airports, like, when I'm in places outside of the United States, people fuck with you because you're a dread and you're traveling and so forth.
00:50:37.000You know, they want you to go to customs and so forth.
00:51:42.000You've got to give me a little more than that, Joe, because I know far more people who haven't had problems with these pills, because you know they're a lot like you.
00:54:24.000And that shouldn't have happened, right?
00:54:27.000And if that's the problem that he had, he was going through withdrawal, no problem.
00:54:32.000Just taper him off, and so he'll be fine.
00:54:35.000He'll get back to his life without having these disruptions to have to go out and try and get something else so he's not experiencing withdrawal.
00:54:57.000So if you're taking antidepressants and then you're going to come off of them, your physician will taper you off because antidepressant medications, you will experience withdrawal if you abruptly discontinue them.
00:56:29.000The Afghan heroine connection is so bizarre.
00:56:32.000You know, we've talked about this on the podcast before.
00:56:35.000There's a really weird video from the early days of the Afghan war where Geraldo Rivera is on Fox News and he's showing US soldiers guarding poppy fields.
00:56:49.000And that they're guarding the poppy fields so that the poppy growers will help them out and rat out the Taliban.
00:56:57.000And we're watching this going, what the fuck are you talking about?
00:57:01.000The United States Army is guarding poppy fields?
00:57:49.000You know, but to think about opioids seriously, you know, because the country thinks that we're in an opioid crisis and all of this nonsense that's going on.
00:59:25.000Now, if he was simply seeking an opioid high, He would have been fine if he would only have taken the oxycodone.
00:59:36.000But people don't realize that they shouldn't mix the opioid with an antihistamine, with alcohol, with a benzodiazepine, because that increases the likelihood of you having respiratory depression.
00:59:51.000So many of these deaths are Caused by this type of ignorance.
00:59:57.000And in other cases, we don't know why people are dying.
01:00:03.000Like, for example, two, three weeks ago, I get an email from another woman who lost her son.
01:00:10.000And what they told her was that the son died from an opioid, cocaine-related death.
01:00:45.000But both of these drugs, the levels that were in his system For example, the cocaine was five times lower than the cocaine levels that we typically see in the lab when we're giving the drug and people are having a good time.
01:00:58.000And the fentanyl level in his system was also really low.
01:01:03.000So this poor guy What do you think he died?
01:01:21.000Some substance that they didn't test for, maybe, or something else?
01:01:26.000Is it possible that it was just an extreme reaction to the fentanyl and cocaine?
01:01:32.000This particular kid, I'm calling him a kid, but he's 30-some years old.
01:01:39.000He had a history of using these drugs.
01:01:44.000So he would have definitely had tolerance to both opioids and cocaine.
01:01:50.000So I don't think it was some strange reaction because these were his drugs of choice.
01:01:57.000But my point is, is that people who are doing death investigations Medical examiners and coroners are allowed to get away with saying that someone died from an opioid-related death simply because the drug is in the system.
01:02:17.000But when you start to really look at these levels, it's like, this wouldn't have killed the person.
01:02:21.000And then they don't have to do their job anymore.
01:02:48.000But I'm also concerned that we have bought into this story about the opioid crises, and we are letting people off the hook in terms of informing the public about what's really going on.
01:03:04.000Now, when you say that you think it's nonsense, like the opioid crisis is nonsense, I mean, there's a lot of people out there that are addicted to opioids.
01:03:21.000So let's just make sure we have our language.
01:03:24.000So when we say addicted, we're talking about they meet criteria for this sort of substance use disorder that we've defined in medicine, right?
01:04:04.000So let's think about the towns where we see these that's being ravaged by the opioid crisis.
01:04:10.000West Virginia, Ohio, some parts of Michigan.
01:04:14.000All of these places, what do they call them, Rust Belt, places where we had these factories, we had gainful employment, all of these people were doing fairly well.
01:05:12.000I mean, and so as long as you're not talking about employing these people, as long as you're not talking about making sure that they're not getting tainted drugs...
01:05:34.000I would bet big money that they're using more alcohol than they are using opioids because alcohol is just more accessible.
01:05:42.000But the opioid thing is just more sexy for the politician to focus on.
01:05:47.000And the politician can come in and be the hero because they got a certain amount of money allocated for this region because of the opioid crisis.
01:07:59.000Yeah, we have to change our attitudes about these drugs.
01:08:02.000What do you think the best way, other than these kind of conversations and putting these conversations out in the public, what's the best way to get people to reconsider their preconceived notions?
01:10:49.000Lying there with a rubber band strapped around their arm, like half out of it, needle poking out of their vein, life falling apart.
01:10:58.000You don't think of someone becoming more compassionate, more interested in hearing someone's thoughts and ideas, putting yourself in their position.
01:11:40.000One of them was Buffalo Bill, because he had this crazy mustache.
01:11:43.000The other one was Water Dog, and he was this dude in Connecticut.
01:11:47.000And he was a top-flight professional pool player.
01:11:52.000And he would gamble for big money, but he had to do heroin first.
01:11:56.000So I used to play at this place called Executive Billiards in White Plains, New York.
01:12:00.000And it was an unusual place at the time where there was a lot of action.
01:12:03.000I mean, a lot of guys came there from all over the country to gamble because they knew they'd get games there because there was a lot of gamblers in that particular pool hall.
01:12:11.000And it was open until like 5, 6 o'clock in the morning.
01:12:14.000But the people who worked there all encouraged gambling.
01:12:17.000My friend Guy, Guy Azariti, he's no longer with us, but he actually owned the place.
01:12:22.000And so he loved the whole gambling aspect of it.
01:12:27.000Well, this guy would go to the bathroom, he would shoot up, and he would come out, and he would sit on a stool like this.
01:14:56.000All this minor petty bullshit not bothering me, you know?
01:15:01.000So would you do it, like say if you had some very important conversation on television or something like that, would you do heroin the day before purposely?
01:18:28.000I think the discussion is that he sought out drugs because I think he had been clean before and then he started using again during the pandemic.
01:18:44.000A lot of people were stressed out, believe it or not, about not being able to perform.
01:19:13.000And then maybe they try to alleviate some pressure or alleviate some anxiety with drugs and they decide that they've gone too far and they're using it too much.
01:19:24.000You think it's a psychological issue, though, more than a chemical substance issue?
01:19:29.000Here's what I think, and this is pure conjecture.
01:21:47.000But do not act like that's a real thing.
01:21:50.000So when a person is an alcoholic and they drink all the time, one thing that is true is that people, like alcohol is one of the interesting drugs in that it's commonly available and it's one of the rare ones.
01:22:02.000Where getting off of it will kill you, right?
01:22:04.000Like, if you are addicted to drugs, and they think that's what happened to Amy Winehouse, unfortunately.
01:22:16.000Yeah, it's a dangerous thing, and we don't talk enough about this in society because people say, I'm gonna kick it, I'm gonna go cold turkey.
01:22:23.000Don't go cold turkey with alcohol, please.
01:22:26.000Because alcohol, what happens is that if you've been drinking for a long time in your life, it suppresses neural activity.
01:22:37.000So it's really good at increasing this neurotransmitter called GABA, and GABA inhibits other Neurotransmitters.
01:22:48.000And so your brain, it slows down the activity of these neurons, right?
01:22:54.000So it suppresses these other, these neurons in the brain.
01:22:58.000And now, if you abruptly discontinue alcohol use...
01:23:21.000Yeah, so that's why you want to tell people, go see a physician and slowly titrate, take something like a benzodiazepine, and then it will slowly bring the neurons back around.
01:27:02.000If people had a safe supply, not like Percocets or Vicodin, you know, you and I have talked about this in the past, about Percocets and Vicodin.
01:27:11.000The concern that I have with them is that they have Tylenol or acetaminophen in them.
01:27:19.000Large doses of acetaminophen are in Percocet and just a small amount of opioid.
01:27:28.000The acetaminophen is the thing that's going to really harm you in that case.
01:27:33.000So we need to take the acetaminophen out of that.
01:27:36.000So if you're going to do an opioid, don't do that formulation.
01:29:04.000So with heroin and all of these opioids, you get constipated because it slows down the motility.
01:29:10.000So what the body does is try to counteract what's going on, because you have these compensatory mechanisms, these mechanisms that try to maintain homostasis.
01:30:05.000And that's one of the things that can happen, and that's not good.
01:30:12.000So it's basically your body's compensation for the opioids, and that opioids are removed, so the compensation exists, but there's nothing to battle against.
01:30:23.000That's right, so you get just overcompensation.
01:30:26.000And so really you have to slowly wean it so your body comes to recognize that it doesn't need to compensate as much.
01:30:33.000And then over time, you can sort of ease off, like step off the skateboard.
01:30:39.000And if people do that, shouldn't have any problems.
01:30:45.000And this is something that you would...
01:30:48.000I would think that if it was legal and we had legitimate professional places where a person could get these things, where people had an understanding of it, because most people...
01:31:01.000Most people don't necessarily have a good understanding of the physical response to the body, to these opiates.
01:31:10.000But if you had a place where you could get it from and they could explain it to you, this is why you have to be careful getting off of this.
01:31:16.000This is what's going on in your body and this is how you avoid.
01:31:19.000This is how you mitigate these real problems that can be associated with just stopping cold turkey.
01:31:24.000Yeah, we should do this for all drugs.
01:33:07.000Their lives fall apart because they got hooked on drugs.
01:33:11.000Yeah, I'd see that you raise a really good point here, man.
01:33:13.000I'm glad you brings this point because when we talk about why we have this narrative about drugs, because there are a number of constituencies who are benefiting from this narrative.
01:33:28.000And parents are a constituency that are benefiting from this narrative.
01:33:33.000Because if you just say, you don't do drugs, that's one less thing that the parents have to actually teach about to their children.
01:37:08.000I would say what you need is silence, you need some personal reflection, find out what your problem is, but you need also some productive things to distract yourself with.
01:37:18.000Like maybe you should take up yoga, take up meditation, start exercising, do some Positive things for your health if you think your life is in a bad place and you're in a downward spiral, whether it's because of the drugs or because of behavior patterns you find yourself in or just because of the fact that you're avoiding something in your life that's disturbing you.
01:38:14.000And it shows that you don't care about those people that you're supposedly treating.
01:38:21.000And that's the thing that really, it really irritates me when we get these experts on TV with their patients on TV. That is not healthy for anybody involved.
01:39:19.000So when we were talking off camera, Anderson Cooper was asking a serious question of both of us, really me, about MDMA, considering using MDMA and was wanting to know like the real deal.
01:39:36.000And I was trying to like help him understand, you know, all of the sort of...tried to give him a comprehensive understanding in a quick time period.
01:39:47.000And this Dr. Drew idiot was chiming in and the way he was describing what MDMA does just let me know that he knew nothing about MDMA and that he was just an idiot.
01:40:04.000Because, you know, if you don't know, when you're in the presence of an expert on something, most adults shut the fuck up because they might be able to learn something, right?
01:40:19.000And then that really told me a lot about him as a person.
01:40:23.000You know, like, if I'm in the presence, if...
01:40:26.000If somebody's asking me about, how do I increase my subscriber base to my podcast, you know, and you're there or something, and then I would shut up.
01:40:36.000I mean, or somebody asked me about being a comedian.
01:40:40.000I mean, I would like to be funny, but I know I'm not a comedian.
01:40:44.000I would shut up when I'm in the presence of an expert, of people who know.
01:41:11.000Yeah, this is what I do, I study, and the literature that he's reading about how these things work is from the papers that I wrote, the papers that I, you know, so that's the difference.
01:41:25.000And so, like, think of it like, in terms of, like, I'm producing, and he's the consumer.
01:41:34.000So this is my product, and I know more about my product, and he's the consumer, and he's, And he's telling people as a marketing agent, if you will, about my product that I produced.
01:44:00.000Has that ever been a problem with the university, that you have this unusual stance on drugs, although very educated, and obviously you know what you're talking about?
01:44:12.000I haven't felt it as a problem, so I don't know what the university feels about that, but check it out.
01:45:48.000Just like other people who reminded the country about its promise, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, And how the promise or the practice doesn't match the promise.
01:46:04.000And so when I think of Rosa Parks sitting on that bus seat, she was doing that.
01:46:12.000I think about all of these sort of people who we now revere.
01:46:20.000It's like, what kind of man am I if I can't live in the way that I know is right?
01:46:30.000So when I think of the university and I think about pushback, what people say, I don't care.
01:46:37.000As long as I am treating people well and I'm not abusing or mistreating people, I will worry if I'm mistreating people because that's not right.
01:46:50.000But if I'm treating people well and people are bothering me about this issue, bring it on.
01:47:00.000It's very confident and it's very admirable that you have that position because a lot of people, when faced with public scrutiny, there's a conventional idea of what drugs are and who drug users are, and they would immediately...
01:47:15.000Most people are like, yeah, I feel differently, but I don't want the hassle.
01:47:27.000No, I know those people and many of them hang out with me or used to hang out with me and I've decided that there are so many people catching hell for being identified as a drug user that it's not right for us who are privileged and we can be in the closet when other people can't because they've been identified or whatever.
01:47:49.000So I think that it is dishonoring those people.
01:47:54.000And so I don't want to hang out with people who want to use drugs and be in the closet and not think about those other people who are catching hell.
01:48:04.000So I decided only recently, you know, in writing this book, it's like, Yeah.
01:48:28.000It's one of the weirder aspects of modern society that we do make these distinctions between different types of drugs that are acceptable and not acceptable.
01:48:36.000And oftentimes the ones that are, like cannabis, far safer than the acceptable ones.
01:48:41.000Certainly can be far safer, but you know, it could be also dangerous for some people.
01:48:56.000And one of the conversations that we had were about people that have had bad reactions to high doses of marijuana and they have these schizophrenic breaks.
01:49:09.000Well, Alex plays kind of fast and loose with the evidence, right?
01:49:21.000Alex overinterprets that sort of thing.
01:49:27.000There are people who use high doses of marijuana and get really paranoid and anxious and all of those things.
01:50:20.000Those people is that the drug will eventually float away from the receptor and you'll come back to your normal self.
01:50:28.000And so the best therapy for people is to have others just simply talk them down, make sure that they're chill, they understand that, don't worry, this is temporary.
01:50:41.000Because if they think that, oh shit, I'm going to be fucked up forever...
01:50:45.000And that causes them even more anxiety and they do something dangerous.
01:53:12.000So, like you were talking, and Nick is a Trump supporter, and you were asking him, I think, about, like, well, don't you think that Trump sometimes...
01:56:11.000Yeah, you were talking to him about this difficult conversation and I wanted to see how he dealt with it, you know, and he kind of avoided it or tried to avoid it.
01:56:25.000Yeah, I don't exactly remember what we said.
01:56:27.000You were talking about Trump being a spreader of disinformation or misinformation more so than other politicians.
01:56:59.000Like, when Bush was in office, initially, people hated him.
01:57:02.000And then 9-11 came around, and people started to love him because he represented, like, he had a very high approval rating post-9-11 because it seemed like, Someone's going to take care of us and make us safe again.
01:57:13.000And then towards the end of his administration, people hated him again.
01:57:20.000There was no weapons of mass destruction.
01:57:22.000But now, as time has gone on, people go, well, I mean, that's one thing you could say about the difference between Bush and Trump, is that Bush, in hindsight, is a far more reasonable person.
01:57:34.000And the way he looks at things is like...
01:57:39.000Even the way he looks at people that have different opinions on things, the way he looks at Supreme Court rulings, the way he looked at all those things was much more presidential.
01:58:00.000And then people start to say, wait a second, you lied to us about going to war, and they start to see him for what he was.
01:58:07.000But Through it all, through all these eight years, Bush is a decent human being.
01:58:14.000And so I think now we have a person who's not a decent human being, who makes fun of other people, who bullies other people, who...
01:58:28.000He incites other people to do bad things.
01:58:32.000So when you compare Bush to that sort of thing, Bush is still a decent person.
01:58:37.000Do you remember when they found, there was a famous photograph of him sitting there with a taco bowl.
01:58:43.000He's eating a taco bowl and it was like, right after he said something about Mexicans being rapists and shit, he's like, I love Hispanics, like eating a taco bowl.
02:00:07.000Because I remember reading that people had speculated that it was the European version of it, which was more potent, and they were saying it's...
02:00:59.000I mean, you have to be up and you got to make sure you get sleep as well.
02:01:04.000Yeah, the up part is interesting because he's obviously not fit, and he's 74 years old.
02:01:10.000And meanwhile, the guy got COVID, and then after COVID, he had all this energy, and he's talking all this craziness on Twitter and law and order and all this...
02:01:51.000And to me, that says stroke or something may have happened.
02:01:58.000I think the slur, it seemed to me more like he was coming down off of something or he was on some sort of sedative that he over-prescribed or over-overdosed.
02:02:08.000You know, you've seen that where he's like struggling.
02:02:17.000If you're really fucked up, though, if you take something and you're really kind of drowsy, but you're trying to keep it together for your speech, and God bless America, like you barely can get the words out because your mouth is failing you?
02:03:40.000It was kind of a joke, but like called Ex-Presidents on Mushrooms, where you just get ex-presidents and you make them do like a mushroom ceremony, like a real like four to five gram dose.
02:03:55.000That's great, man, because Rick, this is what Rick got to, you know, like his, I think his Undergraduate thesis was to get all these leaders, world leaders, on MDMA, though.
02:07:23.000And that would go a long way to alleviating misconceptions or preconceived notions that people have about what things do and what they don't do.
02:07:34.000Yeah, that'll be a motherfucking community service.
02:08:05.000I support what they're trying to do on the one hand.
02:08:10.000But on the other hand, I just don't believe, based on the evidence, that There's a magic bullet, because people use it to cure drug addiction.
02:08:23.000And there's no simple magic bullet like that.
02:08:29.000But if people think so, and they're not harming anybody, fine.
02:08:44.000And I think that's one of the things about Ibogaine that people talk about.
02:08:47.000And I think that when people get to examine their life and examine the whys, like as you were saying before, that maybe it's not really the substance.
02:08:56.000Maybe it's something that they're trying to squash in their past or something they haven't really come to terms with.
02:09:56.000Why am I distracting myself with this?
02:09:59.000Unhealthy stuff and like what is this about this behavior pattern that I've sort of fallen into grips with No, I mean I know people who have done MDMA to stop using alcohol, you know and that sort of thing and it's like Yeah, it helps people to have a different perspective It helps them to see sometimes the inferiority of the compound that they've been abusing Yeah,
02:10:25.000I think it's all good man See, that's what I wanted to get to you about with rehab centers, because for people that talk about drugs, most of the discussion is about people where the drugs get away from them,
02:10:41.000or they find themselves in a situation where they find themselves addicted to these drugs.
02:10:46.000And it is rare that we discuss the real root cause, psychologically, of what's leading them into these self-destructive behavior patterns.
02:11:00.000And Ibogaine seems to help that, but there's no Ibogaine rehab centers in America.
02:14:14.000As opposed to like, oh, this guy is from somewhere Ohio where they lost all of their jobs and his wife left him and his children no longer speaks to him.
02:14:32.000So it's like crack is not the problem.
02:14:44.000And my specialty is looking at crack, not looking at employment and what employment does to a male in modern American society who had been accustomed to being the number one breadwinner in his home.
02:15:05.000None of that is in the training of these people who are providing therapy.
02:15:12.000And so that's what I mean, they're not very well trained.
02:15:15.000They're only focusing on the substance.
02:15:18.000That's it, because that's all we're trained about.
02:15:20.000If you ask them, like, what does dopamine, I mean, what does cocaine do to dopamine?
02:15:25.000Oh, they can tell you that inside out, you know, but...
02:15:32.000What are the impacts of a white male in his mid-40s losing his job that paid $150,000 and now the best job he can get pays about $12 an hour?
02:16:06.000Well, just if I'm going to provide treatment in that context with that person, The first thing I'm trying to do is how the hell do we help this guy get a job that he can feel like he's a productive member of our society again?
02:16:34.000Just so they feel like they are human again.
02:16:40.000I have a friend whose significant other had a substance abuse problem multiple times and she kept going into rehab and then getting out and cleaning up for a while and then going in again and eventually he couldn't take it anymore.
02:16:54.000He had great things to say about her, she's a great girl, but she kept falling apart.
02:17:11.000Apparently, I don't know her, but according to his description, she would fall apart and just start using like crazy and fuck up everything in her life.
02:17:22.000Yeah, you know what relationships you and I both know.
02:17:28.000You can be in a relationship with a person for a number of years and not really be honest with each other.
02:17:35.000And so like that dynamic, I don't know.
02:18:26.000They're just not expressing themselves honestly to other people.
02:18:29.000Yeah, and some are more convincing than others and Being a human a decent human it's a complicated thing and the thing is is that we sometimes fail and Right.
02:19:02.000Yeah, but that's always the narrative, right?
02:19:04.000Like, oh, he started doing coke, and then the relationship fell apart.
02:19:08.000Oh, he started, oh, they got hooked on, like, that's how a lot of people view drugs.
02:19:13.000Because society has allowed them to, right?
02:19:16.000Like, if you have a problem that you can't explain, throw it into the drug waste bin.
02:19:44.000Yeah, and that's but it's maybe a way that we can look at things more clearly is to say Look at all the people that use drugs and don't have a problem.
02:19:57.000Yeah, because people are in the closet, man.
02:19:59.000Yeah, yeah, you know like all of these successful people are in the closet and it allows this Caricature of drug users as being this irresponsible degenerate.
02:20:15.000Because you're not looking at Barack Obama who used cocaine.
02:20:20.000You're not looking at him as a cocaine user.
02:20:22.000Instead, you're looking at some guy on the corner who's ruined his life.
02:20:30.000Drugs didn't ruin Barack Obama and he used cocaine.
02:20:36.000When you write a book like this, how do you balance out these ideas, your perceptions, your thoughts on these ideas, versus the common narrative?
02:20:55.000Are you trying to just express yourself in a way that you know is going to be controversial, but let me just do my best to explain the way I think about things?
02:21:03.000Are you actively trying to sort of persuade people?
02:21:08.000I'm trying to persuade people, but this is one of the reasons, man, I have so much respect for comedians.
02:21:16.000So you can tell people some really difficult shit.
02:21:22.000If you have a punch line, then they're able to hear it.
02:21:28.000So as a scientist, how can you do the same thing?
02:21:32.000How can you tell narratives and stories and teach at the same time?
02:22:21.000I do all of these kind of things, but I'm a drug user.
02:22:24.000So I'm trying to use my own stories to show people that what you've been told about drugs is wrong and what you think of a drug user, the image of a drug user that you have is wrong.
02:22:39.000The typical drug user looks like me, except they're white, but they look like me.
02:22:45.000And so if I can do that with my book, I hope it goes a long way in changing people's views.
02:22:58.000Do you feel like in academia you're on your own?
02:23:01.000Are there other people like you that are out there that are so bold and open about it?
02:23:04.000Like so completely out of the closet as it were?
02:23:09.000No, in academia nobody's out of the closet.
02:23:16.000I don't know if you know it very well, but it's a weird place.
02:23:21.000You know, I don't feel at home in Academe in some areas, but in other areas I do.
02:23:29.000I mean, I love, like, getting high and reading, you know, or that's what I do, or going through the literature in 1897 to find out what they were saying about this.
02:23:44.000This is what I... So, in terms of academe, I feel at home, because there are a lot of people like that in academe.
02:23:50.000And when you say getting high, like, what do you get high on when you do that?
02:24:03.000If I'm alone and I have all these ideas, racing.
02:24:09.000And so I have to go back and read things that other people said.
02:24:14.000To see if somebody else was saying, and typically somebody else was saying it, and it's not an original thought, but it's nice to know who said it and who published it.
02:24:26.000So in academia, I feel very much at home there.
02:24:30.000But being in my skin and being who I am out front about these things and being direct, I don't feel at home in academe.
02:25:12.000Did you have colleges that are curious, like that maybe don't have a lot of experiences with drugs, but they see you like, how is this guy keeping it together?
02:25:19.000Maybe I do have a misconceived idea about what drugs do to people.
02:25:26.000Did you get them, like, dancing around the idea?
02:25:28.000Like, Anderson Cooper's asking you about MBMA. Do you have other colleagues that are pulling you aside?
02:25:39.000They're not that direct, but they are beating around the bush to try and figure out what's what.
02:25:46.000um and then there are other ones who are using drugs and they're in the closet um and um but even those folks who are in the closet and using they're not really my people either um they're not very courageous that's another thing that marks academe there's a lot of sort of cowardly squirmy behavior stab you in the back behavior that happens that's That's disturbing about academia that you hear from people that are
02:26:16.000professors, that there is a lot of stab-you-in-the-back behavior.
02:26:21.000You would think that also with an occupation that has tenure, which is one of the weirdest things ever, weirdest positions ever, you can't get fired unless you do something horrible.
02:26:32.000You would think, boy, that would encourage people to be courageous.
02:26:37.000You have to think about the people who are attracted to academe.
02:26:41.000A lot of these people were considered nerds.
02:26:45.000I mean, not the sort of popular nerds where people put on a pair of glasses and say that they're a nerd.
02:26:50.000These people were like really alone with their books and they weren't very popular and they got picked on.
02:26:59.000And they learned how to fight in a different way.
02:27:04.000They learn how to fight with their words or with some other sort of clever, indirect method that could not be identified with them, so their fingerprints are not on it.
02:27:20.000You know, all of this, so it's what you would expect.
02:27:28.000It's not like I'm accustomed to having grown up in the hood.
02:27:32.000Like, if you have a beef, you deal with it straight on, you know?
02:27:37.000You get in a fight, and then it's settled.
02:27:39.000You lose sometimes, you win sometimes, but it's settled, and the beef is over.
02:27:44.000Whereas in academe, you don't even know sometimes that people have a beef with you, and next thing you know, you're not getting this, or you're having this taken away, and you don't even know what happened.
02:28:01.000That's one of the really unfortunate aspects about not being socially accepted when you're younger, is that for a lot of those guys, it kind of sticks in their craw.
02:28:08.000Yeah, that's the thing that's really harmful, where...
02:28:39.000I know they were abused and Even comedians and then I see them being mean and shitty and piling on and acting like bullies Yeah, and just diving I'm saying the most ruthless shit about people and I know that they're doing it because someone did it to them and they still feel like they haven't they haven't balanced their account and As it were,
02:29:02.000you know, in terms of like what the world did to them versus what they want to do to the people that they think represent what the world did to them.
02:33:57.000I didn't realize I really didn't know anything about drugs until after I was 40 years old.
02:34:05.000Although I had already published dozens of papers, gotten multi-million dollar grants, other types of awards, and I'm considered just expert.
02:34:16.000But like you said, we go from college basically into the academy and And now you're this scientist or whatever.
02:35:49.000And he wanted to experience schizophrenia.
02:35:53.000He's treating these people and he wanted to really know because of this critique that you just laid out.
02:36:00.000And he's the only person who I know in that area who's done this.
02:36:07.000He did like ketamine to try and reproduce the experience because he heard that that was like reproducing the, would reproduce the experience.
02:36:16.000Of course it doesn't, but this is what people have said.
02:36:20.000Our animal models use ketamine for that reason, but it doesn't.
02:36:25.000But he was curious enough to try to figure out what schizophrenia, people who are diagnosed with schizophrenia, he tried to figure out what they were experiencing.
02:36:37.000I don't know if he figured that out from this sort of experiential perspective.
02:36:44.000But what I do know is that if I ever had a relative who had schizophrenia, I would send him to Paul Fletcher.
02:36:53.000Because his perspective on it, it really respects the person who has this diagnosis.
02:37:02.000And it offers them the greatest amount of hope that I have seen in that area.
02:37:09.000And it would be good if other scientists in these areas, drugs, whatever it is, would also seek to try to figure out the experience that their patients are going through.
02:37:36.000Is there anything that mimics schizophrenia?
02:37:40.000Is there a commonly thought of substance that mimics schizophrenia?
02:37:47.000They have suggested large doses of amphetamines over periods of time with sleep deprivation, paranoid schizophrenia, but I don't know if it really does.
02:38:20.000It's a lot of people, but I have a lot more hope about schizophrenia after having met Paul Fletcher, just in terms of...
02:38:31.000I don't want to bastardize his sort of model of thinking about it, and so I may not have all the details right, but I would just say, simply try to explain about...
02:38:43.000You and I, we go through the world, everybody, we have these theories about how the world works.
02:38:49.000Like, you smile, I have a theory about what that means, right?
02:38:55.000And so, oh, Joe likes me or he's happy today, whatever.
02:39:00.000And then I'm right because you tell me that, whatever.
02:39:04.000Somebody who's diagnosed with schizophrenia, they also have these models that they're testing out.
02:39:08.000And so their model might be like, when you smile, they think that you're angry or whatever.
02:40:17.000There might be multiple ways of thinking about solving these problems that humans solve throughout their day.
02:40:24.000And I think that's how he thinks of it.
02:40:30.000And it's a model of hope for me because...
02:40:36.000You lessen the anxiety among the patients, and much of the problems deal with this anxiety of people telling them that they're incompetent.
02:40:46.000And you know how that is, how that feels as an adult, somebody telling you that you're incompetent.
02:40:52.000It's like, how can you tell me I'm incompetent?
02:40:54.000So it exacerbates whatever problems they might initially have and makes them far worse.
02:41:51.000Your reality just might be different from theirs, but not to the point where you have a different reality and that you're allowed to abuse people.
02:42:01.000So I want to be clear because I know there are some people out here saying something about alternative facts.
02:42:07.000I don't mean it like where you manipulate people.
02:42:09.000I mean it for people who are struggling Like these people with schizophrenia, just to help lessen their anxiety.
02:42:18.000Yeah, so in terms of marijuana, particularly high doses of marijuana, particularly edible marijuana, could really seriously exacerbate someone who has...
02:42:28.000Who's kind of hanging on barely anyway and then boom you eat an edible.
02:42:34.000So someone like Alex would say that person's schizophrenia was brought on by marijuana.
02:42:39.000Whereas I think you and I would probably agree they were more likely inclined towards schizophrenia anyway.
02:42:46.000And the high dose of marijuana pushed them over the air.
02:42:50.000All the evidence says what you just said.
02:42:54.000I mean, so when you look at the evidence where people have done all of these studies, folks who didn't have these predispositions, marijuana doesn't cause people to be schizophrenic or have a psychotic disorder.
02:43:10.000But it certainly can precipitate or exacerbate psychosis in people who are predisposed.
02:43:23.000So what I was going to get to was, do you think that maybe for people that have this predisposition towards schizophrenia, they should probably avoid psychoactive substances or avoid something that radically perturbs their version of reality?
02:43:40.000They probably should avoid cannabis, right?
02:43:45.000I don't want to say avoid everything because...
02:43:49.000Is there anything that they could maybe use that maybe would help them?
02:43:57.000Yeah, so I spent a little time working in a heroin clinic in Geneva.
02:44:02.000And so they give out heroin to these patients twice a day, every day.
02:45:31.000You know, I would have to slowly titrate and see whether or not it worked or whether or not people felt better.
02:45:41.000So this really sort of highlights the need for not just like long-term study of drugs and drug use, but also a place where someone can go where they can get real expert advice.
02:45:57.000And maybe even a real source, a pure source of these drugs.
02:46:02.000And if that happened, do you think that the world would have just a totally different understanding of what drugs are and do and what their potentials are?
02:46:19.000It's just that we have such a big microphone that we influence a lot of countries and their perspectives and their education of their physicians and psychiatrists.
02:47:10.000So I have a friend who was a big time dealer back in the 70s and the 80s and So he talks a lot about how the dealers had this sort of pride in their products.
02:47:29.000And then when the sort of real gangsters got in the field, they didn't really care about the quality of their product.
02:47:37.000They just wanted to move weight like a Walmart.
02:48:39.000The problem with these cartels is not the violence and the murder and all the money and the fucking narco songs while they're holding gold-plated AK-47s.
02:48:47.000The problem is they don't have any pride in their meth.
02:48:51.000Well, Joe, you know you say it like that.
02:48:55.000But you know the violence and the crime goes away when you take away the intensity of the law enforcement.
02:49:44.000And she runs a show where she went to Colombia, went with the people that were making the cocaine, like literally saw them make it, asked them about it, walked with them when they carried it on their back, walked with them.
02:50:01.000Find out like how all these things are made and where all these things come from and when you you see it from the source and you see like the dangers these people have to go through in order to get this stuff to America and you realize like how everything is being made And that all of this is just because it's illegal in the United States.
02:51:17.000And they're getting it in in weird, sneaky ways, and people putting their lives at risk.
02:51:21.000And the people that are being victimized are the people that are so poor that they have to work as mules, and they have to put their lives in danger and try to sneak across the border with backpacks full of coke.
02:51:34.000And the people who are getting caught are the low-level people, while the people who are really making the money, they're not...
02:51:39.000Putting themselves at that kind of risk, so absolutely.
02:51:41.000It's really, really fascinating how this problem has persisted for so many decades, and yet there's no real solutions, and there's no real progress.
02:51:58.000And so when we think about this sort of drug war, if you will, law enforcement benefits, we spend $40 billion a year on this kind of thing.
02:52:11.000Most of the money goes to law enforcement benefits.
02:52:14.000The prison industry, the businesses that have been built up around that, like phone companies, all of them, they make a lot of money from this.
02:52:24.000Politicians, they look like they are really serving their population because they're bringing law enforcement jobs or whatever.
02:52:35.000And then the big players in the drug game, they're benefiting because the more regulation, the less likely their competition will be able to get in the game, so they keep the game locked down.
02:52:46.000There are a number of people who are benefiting.
02:52:49.000Parents don't have to educate their kids about drugs.
02:52:52.000That's one less thing they have to do, so they feel like they're benefiting.
02:52:58.000Me, as a scientist, I have to think about my own role.
02:53:02.000I got multi-million dollar grants to study the drug problem.
02:53:35.000It's just, you know, if you were in law enforcement, if you work for the DEA, and you're looking at this, you're like, Jesus Christ, this is not going away.
02:53:57.000Listen, that show Traffic showed us to me.
02:53:59.000One of the things she did was she found out that a lot of the guns that are coming in to Mexico from the United States were being supplied by Los Angeles Police Department.
02:54:10.000There was a guy who worked for the Los Angeles Police Department, was selling guns to this guy who was trafficking them, bringing them across the border.
02:55:04.000They look into all sorts of things being trafficked, whether it's cocaine, steroids, guns, all these different things.
02:55:13.000But the disturbing part of the guns thing was knowing how easy it is to bring something into Mexico, because there's no real border checks to go through.
02:55:34.000The show is nuts, but Mariana going to Colombia, like literally going to the actual labs in the jungle where they make the cocaine, watching them make the cocaine...
02:55:47.000Seeing them process it with all these chemicals, and then put it in backpacks, and then she hikes out with them.
02:56:34.000Good thing for you, there's an OxyContin store right next door.
02:56:38.000And so they'd give them a prescription that's all they prescribed, and they would go right next door to the pain management center, and they would get their Oxys.
02:56:49.000And what they have done, and they have made it difficult for people who are in legitimate pain to now get OxyContin or any other opioid-based pain medication, Based on the behavior, bad behavior of a few individuals.
02:59:53.000Do you think it's just too radioactive politically in America right now?
02:59:58.000Too many people have this preconceived notion of drugs being bad, addiction being a real problem, opiate scourge ruining the country that if you offer an alternative narrative, not enough people are going to buy it because too many people have already subscribed to what we just described.
03:00:13.000And so it would be bad for you politically.
03:00:16.000It certainly would be bad for you politically as a politician.
03:01:09.000And then they don't have to talk about the fact that all those factories that left Ohio, those factories that left Maine, those factories that left West Virginia, they don't have to talk about that.
03:01:31.000One thing I think you are doing, though, is because you're so brave about this and you're upfront and so honest about it and also, obviously, you have a deep knowledge of the subject, is you're getting this narrative out there and then more people are going to hear this and they're going to say to their friends,
03:01:50.000you know, I was listening to Dr. Carl Hart and he has a different perspective.
03:03:31.000I mean, the narrative that we all have bought into, including me, someone who hasn't done coke, hasn't done heroin, You get it in your head that everyone who uses it must be ruining their life.
03:03:44.000And then you talk to you and you're like, no, it's wonderful.
03:03:48.000And everybody who's listening to this right now is probably, a lot of people are like me.
03:03:53.000When you first exposed me to these thoughts, I was like, hmm, okay, I have to rethink heroin use, which I never really thought I had to do before.
03:05:18.000If you give each of us 30 minutes to make a presentation or something, cool, but like us going back and forth, I'm not doing that kind of thing.
03:06:08.000I wrote every word in there and it was really hard to get the feel and the mood because when I was writing, I always had music and that always gets me to the place or some psychoactive substance.
03:06:46.000And then you got this person in the studio who's like, okay, you did that one wrong, you know, and don't understand that this is like, you know, my dog died or this happened to my son, you know?
03:07:29.000You know, like if that person didn't have it, the producer, if you just said, hey, I'd like to get a copy of this, Carl, so I can read along.