Are we thinking about drugs the wrong way? Dr. Carl Hart PhD sheds light on our common misconceptions when it comes to drugs, including ‘the hard drugs’ or ‘street drugs’ like cocaine and heroin. Dr. Hart breaks down where our faults in perception lie and how we can reframe to a more nuanced perception of drugs and drug users. His premise is that addiction has more to do with the person and their environment rather than the drugs themselves.

AUBREY: Dr. Carl Hart. Thanks for coming in. 

CARL: Glad to be here, man. 

AUBREY: So, I want you to fast forward to a time where you're a grandfather. And I don't know what you family—

CARL: I'm a grandfather now. 

AUBREY: You're a grandfather now? 

CARL: Yeah. 

AUBREY: All right. Well, further into your grandfatherdom. Further into your grandfatherdom. And I want you to imagine your grandchildren, maybe grandson or granddaughter, maybe a great grandson, great granddaughter saying, “grandpa, tell us about when they used to throw people in cages for putting things in their body. What was that like?” And you have to explain to them what's going on in the world and what's been going on in the world where people don't have the sovereignty of their own consciousness. 

CARL: I don't think that's going to be a time in my lifetime. There's just too much money in putting people in cages. There's just too much money to be made. And that's why it continues. So I can't deal with that fantasy, because it ain't going to happen. 

AUBREY: Really? You don't think there'll be a time when we'll just look back at all of this nonsense? Where somebody else gets to tell another person what to do with themselves and say, what the fuck were we thinking? And then the whole revolution will come. 

CARL: Let's think about where we're at. We're in Vegas at the Meet Delic conference. And there's this focus on psychedelics kind of thing. And the people here have forgotten about people who use heroin, people who use cocaine, and they don't advocate on behalf of those kinds of people, in part because we use what you put in your body as a way to discriminate, to separate. And so, until people who are in places like this are advocating on behalf of people who are using methamphetamine, who are using heroin, it ain't going to happen. Even in this moment, we haven't done that. And so, it's frustrating to somebody like me, because like you said, it's what you put in your body. As long as you're not bothering anybody, why do we care? 

AUBREY: We have very good laws that prevent people from hurting other people. They're very good. You drive intoxicated, you're increasing the risk of hurting somebody. There's very good laws that say, you can go to jail for that. And I think that's reasonable. 

CARL: I'm putting people at risk. 

AUBREY: If you hurt somebody, if you accost somebody, if you do anything else to somebody, those laws are good, keep them. Good job. Good job, legal system. However, when it's you, and your own body, and your own consciousness, what the fuck does anybody else have to say about that? 

CARL: I'm with you. Just think about the articles that are written today, the TV programs, the movies. On the one hand, we separate certain drugs. It's okay to take plant medicine, but if you use heroin, you're a bad person. Or if you even sell heroin or what have you, you're a bad person. And none of us in our society are saying, wait a second, this is the same thing. And so, until we get better at that, I'm not really as optimistic. 

AUBREY: Well, there's a bias about the potential benefit, quote, of a certain thing. And we put a hierarchy. Even within psychedelics, there's a hierarchy. If you take psychedelics just for fun, let's say you just say, I love taking mushrooms and laughing my ass off with my friends. People are like, oh, no, no, no, that's not the right way. I trained with these people down in Mexico and I know the proper way to do a mushroom ceremony. It's not just to sit around and laugh with your friends. It's very fucking serious. And some people will say, that's the way to take mushrooms and the other way. And they're just different purposes for the same thing. But even within the community, there's this big gap between what people say is good and what people say is not good. 

CARL: No, you're absolutely right. It's an artificial distinction. Because it's really difficult to disentangle pleasure, fun, from healing or whatever. But we use it, we do that with our language, we just disentangle it. But really, people are typically seeking the same thing. They may have different ways of expressing it. But they're altering their consciousness. That's what they're doing. And so, that's why we hear terms like plant medicine, versus something like a drug for fun. It's all designed to separate, discriminate. 

AUBREY: Duncan Trussell was talking yesterday on the podcast we did on stage, he said, there's a war on hedonism. Like there's a war on the desire for pleasure. As if the desire for pleasure is something evil, bad, not good. Whereas the desire for something productive, some higher virtue, that's what's good. And it was very interesting to hear him talk about that because really, when you boil it down, what are we here for? We're here to have the most enjoyable life we can and to help everybody and maybe every other being have the most enjoyable life. That's what I believe, at least. So, how are you going to denigrate someone who's enjoying their life if they're not hurting anybody else's life? It's very interesting how we just accept this whole structure. 

CARL: Well, that's what puritanism is all about, what you just described. 

AUBREY: Yeah. There's religious roots to it. 

CARL: Yeah, absolutely. That's this country. Absolutely. So, there's this sort of equating suffering with being virtuous. And that's part of what happened with our religion in this country. I wrote about this in the book. I was just trying to help people to understand that pleasure is a good thing. If you feel better, you may treat other people better or you increase the likelihood that you will treat other people better. But to have to say pleasure is a good thing, that's a bizarre concept. 

AUBREY: I heard it explained by Matias de Stefano actually. He was talking about how the Semitic religions, all the desert religions, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, they came from a place where the sun was incredibly hot and punishing. And people always tend to equate, where's God? God's up. God is the light. God is the sun. Sun and God have been equated in our mind subconsciously, if not consciously in many cultures. And because God was so dangerously punishing and hot, and you suffered when it was out there but it was also necessary for you, they really created this god that was going to be this very punishing, and not loving, nurturing god like you find in other different climates, like in the rainforest, where they worship the mother. And it's this plentiful, bountiful thing and the sun is the lovely father that pierces through the trees and warms up your face. And it's this whole different idea. But it was interesting to go back to, what he was surmising was the biological impetus for the way that we actually view God. And then how, now we're talking, how that translates down to now, God is this punishing force that wants us to suffer just like the sun wants you to suffer when you're in the middle of the fucking desert. 

CARL: I don't really know much about religion thing. I was brought up in the church and frankly, it's not one of my favorite subjects, because of the mythologies that people promote related to it in order to control other people. And this notion that the sun, that's somebody's theory, I don't... 

AUBREY: Kind of make sense, though. 

CARL: Not to me. 

AUBREY: Not to you? 

CARL: You can make up anything. That's what we do with religion. And so, it's the same thing and I don't really—

AUBREY: It doesn't make sense that that's the actual God. But I think it makes sense to me that that's what people, I think people project their own values and their own beliefs onto their deities in an interesting way. 

CARL: We have a lot of cultural mechanisms to help you project certain things in this society. And so, yeah, we can make people think and believe a lot of these things. And that's what we do. I don't really have much to say about religion. It's not my type of hype. I've been brutalized by religion too much. 

AUBREY: I think a lot of people have. I think a lot of people have. And I think that's also part of rewriting. Because it's such a strong influence, it's kind of unlearning and rewriting some of these deep subliminal codes, like the war against pleasure. Understanding where its roots are, where it's got strings tethered to. And that's what makes it kind of interesting for me in this case. 

CARL: Let's be clear. I think people who are in charge, they certainly have pleasure, and they have pleasure in their way. But they don't trust certain other people in a society to have pleasure. And that's the real problem as I see it. It's certain types of people who can have pleasure. We're in Vegas. We say it's okay for Americans to come here and do certain things. But you can't do this in the state right next door. And so, we have this space for certain people to do this. Or if you're elite, those rules don't apply to you. And so, I think that we understand and value pleasure, but it's just that for certain people, we don't think they deserve that pleasure. 

AUBREY: Rules for thee but not for me. And this is this top down hierarchical structure that we have? 

CARL: Exactly. You can think about, I don't know, I remember people like William Bennett, he was the first drug czar under Bush one. Drank alcohol a lot. But then he was just a drug warrior. You can't do those other drugs. You're intoxicated, yet you don't want other people to be intoxicated. So that's the kind of thing that's going on. 

AUBREY: What do you say, when people challenge some of your beliefs which promote full scale decriminalization? And people point to these types of drugs that are very sticky for people to get addicted to, very sticky for people to develop bad habits about. And those are the things that I think people have the hardest time. It's almost like they feel that, fuck, I get it and I'm for decriminalization. But if you start to get down that path, it's so hard to extricate yourself. So maybe we do need to insulate people. And this is this kind of belief that I think a lot of people have. Even if you go to Meet Delic, which you're going to go to and speak to today, a lot of people have this belief, man, yeah, my heart's for it but I'm just scared of these ones because it feels sticky. They feel like they’re on a slippery slope to addiction. 

CARL: I would have to know the specific criticism. If we start with we take something like heroin—

AUBREY: Let's go down. Let's talk about the big ones that people are worried about. Heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine. 

CARL: Sure. So if we think about heroin, most of the people who use heroin are not addicted. The vast majority of people. Maybe a quarter, at most 30%, will become addicted to heroin. That's an important number, of course. But addiction doesn't have much to do with the substance itself. If you take alcohol every day for, I don't know, months, and then you abruptly discontinue, you run the risk of dying from withdrawal. Whereas with heroin, if you do that sort of thing, you'll have some withdrawal, but you don't have to worry about dying unless you have some poor other health-related issue. And so, I think there are so many mythologies around the addiction potential of all of these substances or the role that the drug plays in addiction. Addiction has everything to do with the person and their environment and less to do with the drug. And we know this in science. We don't say this, in part, because there's a lot of money in having people believe these mythologies. Money in research, money in the treatment sort of places that really don't deal with the issues, people's issues. 

AUBREY: People get addicted to methadone just as much as they get addicted to the thing they're trying to get freedom from. 

CARL: Let's define addiction. We should take a step back. I know people say that. Methadone works for a number of people, even if they have to take it every day for the rest of their life. It still works. I think about my mom who has to take hypertension, medication or insulin every day. Would we say she's addicted to those kinds of things? I don't think so. It helps her live a better life. So same way with methadone for some people. When I use the term addiction, I mean, people have psychosocial disruptions as a result of their drug use. They're not going to work and they want to go to work. They're not interacting with their loved ones in a way that they want to and they're disturbed by it, they are distressed by that. That's what I mean when I say addiction. And so if somebody's taking methadone every day, and they are happy with their life, that's not an addiction. That's not how we define addiction. So, when I think about heroin, heroin is a medication that's used in Europe to treat pain. It's also used for people who met criteria for heroin addiction at some point in their life. And they take heroin every day, provided by the state. And they are happier, they're working, they have housing. A wide range of beneficial effects happen. 

AUBREY: Is that happening in Vancouver, where they're offering heroin to people who—

CARL: They have a small program in Vancouver under a research protocol. But in places like Switzerland, places like the Netherlands, even some places in Germany, they do this kind of thing. And they have larger scale clinics. So, what we believe about heroin addiction, I think it's mostly a fairy tale. Now, that's not to say that people don't struggle, because people do struggle. A lot of people struggle. Well, some of the people who struggle, oftentimes blame heroin and not even look at their life. So at some point, you don't want to blame the person who's experiencing these problems. And so, as a result, we kind of blame the substance. You don't have to necessarily blame the person without blaming the substance. You can look at their life. People are having a hard time with employment, housing, all of these things. Also, sometimes they're immature. We all make mistakes when we're younger. That's a normal sort of developmental trajectory. So, all of these normal things that happen in people's lives, if they happen to take heroin, it's just easier to blame heroin, or methamphetamine, or some other drug, as opposed to looking at the complete person. And that's what we've done. Intellectually lazy. 

AUBREY: It's like we pathologize a certain condition, which then makes the person completely exculpable, completely free of any responsibility for anything that's going on in their life. Alcoholism runs in my family. And I'm not saying that it doesn't, and I'm not saying that these things aren't true. But when you label it as such, then you kind of rob the person of the sovereignty of choice that we all have as a superpower. We're all able to do far more than what the authorities tell us we're capable of doing because there's a dollar sign at pathologizing anything. There's a treatment, there's another different kind of thing that you can charge them for. And there's also the comfort that the person has that says, shit, this isn't my fault. I got this thing and I don't have to worry about looking at my life and making those open-eyed, hard examinations of relationships, and choices, and feelings, and your self-love protocols, and whatever else might be. 

CARL: Absolutely. You hit it on the head. And one of the consequences of that is, I think about people who are suffering chronic pain issues. They can now no longer get opioids because of the hysteria around opioids and heroin in this country. So, physicians are reluctant to prescribe opioids because they may be looked at as a pill mill or something. And so meanwhile, these people are suffering who have chronic pain, and they may have been maintained on opioids for years, and happily maintained. And so when we see movies, when we read newspaper articles vilifying opioids, we don't think about those kinds of consequences. 

AUBREY: Yeah. Everywhere you look, it's the opioid crisis. I'll say that I haven't even examined that. But at the same time, Homie has some pain pills and they run out. And I'm like, I'll fucking take one of those. It's a little bit hypocritical for me because I've had a, whatever, Tylenol, codeine. It's fucking hella relaxing. That's kind of nice. I don't have issues with my compulsion to continue to do it, but I've had it and it's been like, that felt good. That was a nice evening that I had. But at the same time, I'll look at and be like, oh yeah, the opioid crisis. And I understand lots of people are dying. And so there are facts that are absolutely true. 

CARL: But that's separate, that's different from what you're talking about. The reason why people are dying is not because of opioids. That's what people are saying. 

AUBREY: So, let's help people like me who just accepted that at face value, just take another fresh look and be like, what's going on here? 

CARL: I think I read somewhere recently, I think the number was, like 90,000 people die from overdoses in the past year or so. And that's the preliminary number. But when you actually go and look at the numbers, the most recent numbers we have in the US, there were 70,000, CDC data. And then when you take out the people who committed suicide that they know of, and then you take out the people who were murdered and the drug was in their system, and then that number is about 65,000. And then when you take out only the deaths, where the person had an opioid in their system, or suspected had an opioid in their system, the number becomes 45,000. So when you start to really look at those numbers, most of those people had multiple drugs in their system. And then many of those people had tainted drugs in their system. So they didn't know they had a drug like fentanyl, or an analogue of fentanyl, which are more potent, meaning just smaller amounts are needed to produce an effect including overdose, than something like heroin or morphine. And so those people just didn't know. It was unintended too because they got drugs that were adulterated from the streets or something. And then when you consider who's doing the counting of these deaths, who's filling out the debt certificates, medical examiners and coroners. Medical examiners are physicians, and they typically have training in forensic pathology. Whereas the other people who are doing this, filling out these debt certificates are coroners. And the only requirement is a high school diploma. And in a place like California, the coroners are largely the sheriffs. And they have various conflicts of interests, all of these people kind of have conflicts of interest. And then you think about some jurisdictions don't even test for all drugs, or some don't test on a regular basis, or the testing’s inconsistent. And then you think about people getting grants for the opioid crisis in some of these places. And so they are incentivized to make sure they include opioids on the death certificate. I say all that to say that it's really hard to die from a single opioid unless you have something like fentanyl and you thought it was something like heroin. And most of these people have multiple drugs in their system. So they don't know what drug was at toxic levels because they don't measure for that. But yet, the headlines basically say it's opioids, but they don't really know. And so, I don't trust that. And I don't believe that this is an opioid problem, because we've had opioids around since humans have been around. And other countries have opioids. This is only a problem in North America. So, in Spain, they certainly do heroin and opioids, you don't have this problem. Other places. They also have this thing called drug checking, such that you can submit small samples of your substance and then get a chemical printout of what's in it. We have that technology here but we haven't shared it with the public. But we say we care about the opioid crisis. If we really did, then we'd make this available to people who use drugs. So, I don't think it's opioids. I use opioids and have, but certainly don't worry about things like overdose. Because, first of all, I won't use drugs that I don't know what's in them. 

AUBREY: In some parts of this story, you look at the behavior of Purdue Pharma, and you look at the behavior of pharma in general. Even fucking Pfizer, $2 billion in fines in one case. Pharma's doing some shady shit. This is happening. The way that they push medications, the way that they position medications. And so, I think people have also latched on to this one myopic window of the way that this one type of drug was pushed and saying, this was just an isolated thing with the opioids. I think it's kind of the thing with everything. But this has gotten a lot of attention. But people have kind of limited the window and scope to say, Purdue is doing some shady things. Doctors have been doing that. What about everything else? Everything else, when it's a for-profit driven model, where you have shareholders you're responsible for, you're really trying to maximize your profits, they're going to be giving things to people who probably don't really need them in the first place and aren't educated about them, and are taking them because well, doctor says to take this. But they don't really know what they're doing. And I think that's the key thing here is you just have this blind trust of the doctors in the white coats, and they say something, and you do it, and you don't really know what's happening, whether it's a benzo, or an opioid, or whatever it is. And it's this kind of weird space we're in right now, where there's people making a lot of money off something and people taking things that they really don't fully understand. 

CARL: Yeah. You said a lot to unpack there. On one hand, you're absolutely right. This is how the pharmaceutical company operates, this is how they get down. But one of the things that I try to do is try and stay focused on what my expertise is in order to help with this problem. And so, one of the things we've done in the country is that we've kind of distracted the country by saying, look over here at Purdue Pharma, look at what they did. And they are responsible. I'd be the last person to want to be defending a pharmaceutical company, but they're not. But that's the way we've looked at this because it's easy, and it's stupid, and it's simple. But that's not it. Purdue Pharma, they fought to have oxycodone be scheduled at a higher level, at three as opposed to two. So that meant that it was less sort of oversight, because they said that oxycodone had less abuse potential than other opioids. Of course, that's not true. But it's an opioid, it should just be scheduled just like another opioid. So, they paid a fine for that. But beyond that, that's where they push oxycodone, just like they push other drugs. And just like other companies are pushing their drugs. Now, when we focus on them, what we do is we set up the situation where, what about the people who actually need those medications? Now, they can't get those medications because of our focus on the evil pharmaceutical companies. And that's not really the issue here. The issue is they paid a fine. They paid for what they did in this case, but they're not responsible for what's going on in the country. Much of what's going on is we're pulling the wool over the American public. There are people who die from overdose. And it would be helpful if we were able to say exactly why they died, as opposed to just storing it in this general sort of category. And then that does nothing to make sure that we save people in the future. Or it does nothing to blame the pharmaceutical companies because people need their medications. There are people who actually need those medications, even if we don't think that we want them or need them. But when we go after them, I think that's a mistake, what we've done. 

AUBREY: It also maybe distracts us from the socioeconomic conditions that are actually causing people to, I mean, I know opioids cross all kinds of genders, classes, borders, races, all of these different things. But I think probably in general, we're easy to lump drug use into this thing, they're just doing drugs, but we're not looking at the conditions, the substrate, the poverty, everything that's happening, the discrimination, whatever that is at the base level that's actually driving people to the solution which is, all use of these substances is an attempt to solve a problem, whether that problem is just I want to be happier, or whether that problem is I'm deeply in pain. It's an attempt to solve some problems. But we're not looking at the reason why people are having so many problems. We're just focusing on the solution that people are choosing. 

CARL: Yeah. Let's be clear. The illicit drug trade is a multibillion-dollar industry. Poor people couldn't support this alone. This is primarily a middle to upper class activity. That's a fact. And poor people have their problems, of course. But I think Keith Richards might have said it best. He's like, I don't have a drug problem, I have a police problem. That's the poor people's issue. That issue. Police, housing, all of those kinds of things are, housing in LA, for example. California is just going up. That's a big problem. And so, when we put drugs in there, again, it's a distraction so we don't focus on what the real issues are. But to be clear, the illicit drug use, it's primarily a middle to upper class activity. 

AUBREY: When you look back at history, there was a time where opium was flourishing, when there was opium dens. And there were a lot of people, I don't know them personally, but seemingly intelligent people who commented on this kind of global degradation of society that allows opium to be readily available was causing. When you look back at that, and I don't know if that's true or not, obviously, I wasn't alive then and I don't know what their opinion was or if they had biases, but I've kind of taken that as an interesting thing. Personally, I've never tried opium but if I had the opportunity, if I'm just being honest, I trust myself. Especially if I trusted that the dose and the medicine, or the drug was clean, I'd fucking give it a go. I'm curious enough to want to see what that would be all about. But nonetheless, I've also been like, fuck, maybe it makes sense. Maybe when opium was around, people just couldn't resist. It was just too, it was too good. 

CARL: So, opium comes from the poppy. And in the poppy, we have morphine and codeine. You've had codeine. If you've had codeine then you know what opium is like. It's about the same thing. It's not a big deal. Same as with opium. Opium is not as potent as morphine. And so when people start blaming a substance for the degradation of a society, you can stop listening. We have alcohol in our society that's freely available. And certainly, people can get in trouble with it, and people do get in trouble with it. But most of the people certainly don't get in trouble with it. The same is true with opium. The same is true with any drug. And so, when people have these sort of stories, narratives about how some drug destroyed a society, you can stop listening because either they think you're an idiot, or they are an idiot, because that's some bullshit. 

AUBREY: Yeah. And it's interesting the way that we categorize certain things. This morning, I took a little bit of Green Malay Kratom. And this acts in some ways similar to an opioid. 

CARL: It is an opioid. 

AUBREY: Yeah. It comes from different trees that are in, usually, Southeast Asia. There's some Green Malay, I think it's from Malaysia, there's Bali, there's Thailand. And then you can actually refine that into a drug and it's Tramadol. As far as I understand, and I'm not too familiar, but that's the active ingredient. So, I'm familiar with kratom. And then again, if somebody has Tramadol, I'll be like, fuck, I'll have after that. I understand. What I want to acknowledge is that I participate a little bit in a bias, and I think most of us do as well, where, it's kratom, it's from a tree. All good. And then Tramadol, it's basically from kratom so that's fucking all good. I'll have that. So, we'll be okay with ourselves but we'll say globally, them, the others. The others, though. I don't trust them. And how fucking condescending to say I'm good with this. And I don't want anybody to fuck with me. But I know best for them. And I think if we really examine ourselves, we're all participating in this hypocrisy, in his condescension in a little bit of a way. 

CARL: I absolutely agree with you. Because as you point out, kratom is from a plant, so forth. So too is morphine, so too is codeine, so too is opium, and heroin, just a small modification on the morphine structure. So, they're all cocaine. It's from a plant. They're all plant medicine. But the stories that we've told around those drugs is why we behave like we do in terms of our hypocrisy. That kind of brings me to patriotism in our country. Politicians, they wear flag lapels to show their patriotism. Of course, that's not patriotism, that's some superficial bullshit is what they do. But we haven't had the national conversation to say what it really is, what patriotism is. It's the founding principles of the country is this thing. We all have life, liberty, and pursuit, those three birth rights that were guaranteed. And so, true patriotism, I was in the military, true patriotism is making sure that other people can enjoy those rights. That's patriotism. But we have all the superficial bullshit that parades as patriotism. And so I think one of the reasons we have hypocrisy is because we haven't called people out for not taking care of the rights of other people. People think it's okay to say, I'm fighting for my rights. That's not patriotism. Patriotism is fighting for the rights of other people, making sure they have those rights. That's what I did in the military. I was there where certain laws didn't apply to us because we were in the military, protecting the rights of our citizens. That's what patriotism is. And so, I think that until we really focus on real patriotism, I think we're going to have this hypocrisy. 

AUBREY: Yeah. This general feeling that people have, is, it's going to be, I think what we need is more conversations that humanize everybody, rather than a label. Even drug user is a dehumanization label. It puts somebody in a category that's beneath them. And we're doing this shit all the time. It's left, right, black, white, drug user, not drug user. We're always trying to just edge ourselves up or better than because our creed, our tribe, our ideas, our choices are just better than somebody else. And we're just so eager to make that happen. And we make ourselves better and different. When really, I think the conversations in the... It's almost a consciousness or spiritual understanding of recognizing the humanity of every single person. And then seeing that, being able to really see that and dissolve the boundaries of self and be like, you are me living a different life. Let me understand your story. It's almost like that's the necessary prerequisite to get through all of this layer of bullshit. 

CARL: I hope people can reach that higher plane that you say, be able to really empathize, put themselves in somebody else's shoes. But I'm not asking that much of people, simply because I don't know if we're going to achieve that large scale thing. All I ask the people is, I don't even really care what you call me, but just how you treat me. Because what we do in our country is then we focus on terminology more so than we focus on our actual treatment or the behaviors. And so, I really care about how we treat each other. Fuck what you call me. I just care how you treat me. As long as you treat me with respect and dignity, I'm cool. You don't have to understand me. I'm not asking that of you. I just need you to make sure that you treat people well. That's it. 

AUBREY: Yeah. Amen to that. It seems to me that one of the challenges with, let's say, you snap our fingers, is full scale legalization. We snap our fingers. The problem is that there's so many issues with our society, so much deep unhappiness, so much deep loss of meaning, lack of connection, and ways in which our social bonds have been eradicated, the ways in which social media polarize, all of these things that are creating more and more suffering. And then you snap your fingers, say, now all of these drugs are legal. Then it seems like that is something that people are going to reach to as a form of escapism at an exorbitant level. I'm not saying that maybe that would just be the thing that you would have to write out. But it feels like in conjunction, if you were going to do that, and we had the magical divine power to do that, you would also simultaneously have to say, listen, these are going to give you an escape from this very difficult societal environment that you're in. And be mindful that you still, like we have a ton of work to do in our society. It's not just about making more easy buttons, we got to do the hard, difficult stuff about improving communities and conversations, and the wealth distribution, all of these different things. Access to healthy food across the board, all of these different things need to happen. And just general awareness and principles. As well as offering these different substances. It seems like they have to kind of, nothing has to happen, but it would be good if they were both done in conjunction. 

CARL: Yeah. We know how to multitask in our country. We put a man on the moon, we have better science. All of those things are going on at the same time. So it's not like we don't multitask in this country. So that's not an issue. That's not an issue for me. And I don't think we just snap our fingers and legalize things like that. I think we do things in a way that are thoughtful. We can think about when Colorado and Washington legalized cannabis. There were some people who were like, those societies are going to fall apart. And they predicted all of these awful things that would happen. And now what we see is we see a proliferation across the country of legalizing cannabis because those societies didn't fall apart. 

AUBREY: And actually, they thrived. 

CARL: Yeah. I don't think that that's a real issue. I think that when we think like that, again, that's our imprisoned mind, how we've been thinking about drugs in general. We would make sure we have the appropriate unit dose that we sell. We would make sure that we have the requirements in order to purchase. 

AUBREY: And they definitely don't do that in the cannabis dispensaries. There's some wildly inappropriate edibles. Like a 100 milligram gummy bear. What the fuck are you talking about, in a gummy bear? That's too much. 

CARL: Well, that's too much for you. 

AUBREY: Fair enough. 

CARL: But there are people who are tolerant. But this is part of the problem in our society. We think we know what's best for everyone. And we don't. And we don't. 

AUBREY: You're right. 

CARL: It's not up to me to tell people how to live their life. It's not what I'm here for you. 

AUBREY: They just need to put a big, this is 100 milligrams. If you just want a gummy bear, this might be too much for you at this point. 

CARL: Yeah. Unfortunately, living in the world as an ignorant person, you set yourself up for some potential harm that somebody who is informed doesn't have to worry about. That's going to always be there. And we act as if with drugs, somehow it's different. It's not. It's the same thing. I've learned a lot about science in my life. And then there are people who don't know as much about science. And so they might be subjected to some of the negative consequences of not knowing. That's just life. And there's some things I don't know in life and other people know really well. And I'm subjected to the negative consequences for my ignorance. That's just life. Why are we acting like with drugs, it's different? 

AUBREY: Let's talk about cocaine. I've been to Peru many times. And when you go to the Sacred Valley, the first thing they give you as you come off the plane is some coca leaves and you chew them. Because altitude is high and you're above 12,000 feet, it helps, it's nice. And then you have coca tea everywhere. In the hotels is coca tea, just the leaves in the tea, which contains cocaine as an alkaloid in it. And this is just commonplace. Then you get into cocaine, which then has... And I think pretty much everybody's like, if you go to Peru and they're giving you the coca leaves, you're not like, how dare they? But then it becomes cocaine. And then I think because of a lot of the ways in which cocaine has been used, Pablo Escobar and the violence associated with it, and also the culture that's been associated with it, there's some stigma there on cocaine. And we've also been at parties where people have just been doing a bunch of cocaine and they're fucking hollow-eyed. And I've seen that. And it's not that I haven't ever done cocaine, I have. It's not something that I enjoy. For me, it made me feel cool for 10 minutes and then felt like shit for like a day. So, it wasn't something good. But I don't know where it came from. They could have been scraping the fucking stuff they spray on the motel ceilings with the kernels and grinding that up into a bag with a little bit of fucking meth and call it cocaine. I don't know what the fuck I was having. But ultimately, it didn't work out for me. And I've also seen some other effects. So, there's a stigma on that. But then there's an even more stigma on crack. That is now uh-oh. And it's just like a joke and a meme, and all of this stuff. So, from your perspective, what is going on here, from the coca leaf, to the cocaine, to the crack, and how all of these things... It just seems like layers and layers of stigma, some of which may be justified, some of which may be just fiction and nonsense. 

CARL: Yeah. There's a lot to say there. Aspirin comes from the willow bark. And so, you can eat the bark, or you can have the synthetic aspirin for a more efficient amount of aspirin to relieve your pain, for example. Coca from the coca plant is not as concentrated as we get with powder cocaine. So, it's more efficient. That's a sort of analogy we can work with. When people talk about drugs in the way that you just described, you have a limited sort of experience with drugs. Think about the first time you had sex. I don't know. Many people have not had such a good experience. 

AUBREY: No. I'll tell a story. I haven't ever told this story. First time I had sex, I went to use a condom and I couldn't quite get it right. And I was so nervous. And then I went soft and then the condom wouldn't go on. Then I went to the bathroom to try to fix the situation, but that didn't work. And it was just so much pressure. And I just came back, and I was sad. It was a full failure. That was it. That was it. It didn't even count. Just a failure. 

CARL: Right on. But we have a lot of positive stories around sex in our society, so you continue. 

AUBREY: I forged through? And I'm glad I did. It was a good decision. 

CARL: Exactly. That's cocaine. Exactly. Exactly. That's cocaine. If you get some really good Peruvian or Colombian cocaine in a situation that you know is good cocaine, and it's cool, you don't have to worry about all the illegality issues around it, you'll have a good time, and you won't be jonesing or anything once it's over. Because you have a life, and you have a family, you have all of these things that you have to do, you have to accomplish in life and you're a responsible person. It'll be like that. You would handle it like you handle sex. But we have all these negative stories around cocaine in our society, in part, because of drug cartels, it's great drama. It's easy to write a movie or a story about cocaine. You don't even have to develop the characters. You use the name Pablo Escobar. In Americans' minds, his name conjures up, typically, a negative sort of image. Obviously, Pablo Escobar was a far more complicated person than that. And there are millions of people who loved Pablo Escobar for a variety of reasons. But when you're writing a movie about Pablo Escobar, you have this unidimensional person, which he wasn't, and no one is. And so, right there starts the problem about how we think about drugs in this adolescent way that we don't think about anything else in that way. You're sitting here talking to me. I certainly have had all of these drugs in all of these countries. And yet, I had a book come out this year, actually two books. A textbook I revised and other sorts of science papers. I do all of these things. I have a family. I have children to take care of. I have people depending on me. Those things are first, but I also have used all of these drugs. And that's most people who use these drugs. But they're in the closet about it because it's just easier not to have people look at you as if you're a junkie or something. I don't know, whatever, the negative stereotypes are. 

AUBREY: Yeah. Undependable, right on the precipice of some downward slide and needing someone to come save you before you fall into the, all of these different stories that we have. One thing that I've become more sensitive to is the energy of things. And this is for me in my own exploration and spiritual path, understanding that even food. Food that I've grown in my garden, if you break it down and I take it to a scientist, it's going to be the same lettuce that I probably get at the organic supermarket. You're not going to find any differences in the lettuce. But there's something about me cultivating that garden and me eating that lettuce that I fucking feel different. I just do. 

CARL: Yeah, that's real. 

AUBREY: That's real. And I think with these drugs, there are some ways in which some drugs have accumulated good energy. People who've cultivated something lovingly, from land, and then offered it and brought their energy. And then there's other ways where it's gone through different hands, Mexican cartels, whatever. And it's gotten to a place where the energy associated with it, because of all of the laws, obviously, that's created all of the violence and created all of that, the energy can be something that can be difficult beyond just the substance itself. Would you agree with that? 

CARL: I certainly agree with you about the food, your food. But when we're talking about now, drugs coming from organizations, the cartels as such, they oftentimes may cut their drugs in order to stretch their product. So, they add other chemicals—

AUBREY: So, it's not only just energy, what you're saying, it's also chemical adulteration. 

CARL: Oh, absolutely. There's a lot that goes on in the illicit trade. And that's the major concern with illicit trade. It's these adulterants that people put in. Sometimes the adulterants are harmless and other times, they're not so harmless. I worry about the real chemicals that actually go into it. Still, the energy thing that you explain, for example, if you grow your own opioids, your poppies, versus getting your opioids from somewhere else, you may actually feel a lot better about it. And then therefore, you may have a better time when you do your opioid. That's very real. That's like setting. That's your mindset beforehand. And that plays a huge role in drug effects. And so, I think there's some to that. I think that's very important. 

AUBREY: I can hypothesize going to, opium poppies grow in Afghanistan obviously. And so, imagine going to a beautiful Afghani family's house. And I'm just creating this fantasy pastoral scene. Where I go there and we have some tea, and we have some food. And then they go out and in the back, they have their opium poppies. And the matron of the house is like, I've prepared this from our poppies. And I'm out there and I'm touching the leaves. And then we have this little thing, they have a beautiful pipe, and we smoke it, I can imagine that as like, wow, that sounds like a really beautiful experience. Whereas then you think of heroin in the city or something like that, and then it's like, oh no, never. But it is interesting. Some parts of it are real and some parts of it are stories. But I think the thing is, until we pierce the veil of all of our judgment and all of these stories, we don't know what's really real and what we really feel about the substance itself and what is just the way that it's been projected, the way that it's been told, the way that that story has been told. 

CARL: Yeah. By the way, you can grow some good opium poppies in Wyoming, for example. It's mountainous, high altitude, dry air. Perfect place to grow some nice poppies. I don't have as much of those kinds of negative images about drugs in my head anymore after been studying this for like 30 years. So it's kind of hard for me to even understand why Americans insist upon being adolescents about drugs. I think about this like, you have a glass of wine with your significant other. I think about doing heroin with my wife or something and having a good evening. A chilled evening walking around a nice city and checking out the people, the city, the sites, just like having a glass of wine, the same kind of thing. What kind of mindset you want to be in for the evening. Is it this or is it that? Being an expert in pharmacology, you know how to make sure you have the right mindset. It's a beautiful thing. 

AUBREY: Are there any drugs that you'd be like, that one, no. Is it fentanyl? Is there something where you draw the line and you say, that thing, fuck that thing? 

CARL: Of course. I guess in the '80s, out west here, actually back east too, people were trying to make synthetic Demerol and they inadvertently made something called MPTP, which the body converts to MPP+. And that drug selectively kills dopamine cells. Obviously, I don't think people should take that drug. But people are not seeking that drug. People are seeking things like morphine, opium, heroin, cocaine. The drugs that people are seeking, no. I think, MDMA or whatever they're seeking, typically, what they're typically seeking, I think we can teach people how to do these things safely and have a good time. Obviously, I don't want people to hurt themselves. Nicotine is one of the more toxic chemicals that we have. But used in appropriate doses, it can be helpful. 

AUBREY: And depending on the delivery mechanism. 

CARL: That's right. Can be helpful. 

AUBREY: For those people who don't understand what a heroin experience feels like, what does it feel like to do heroin? What is that feeling? 

CARL: If people have taken something like Percocet, Tylenol #3, ever had any dental work and then they had some pills prescribed afterwards, that's it. I mean, kratom. Kratom doesn't get you quite there but you're approaching, it's an opioid-like feeling. 

AUBREY: So, you just kind of feel free. What are the adjectives that you would use to describe it? Euphoric? 

CARL: Yeah. I think about being happy, unbothered. In some cases, magnanimous. Think about the adjectives that people use to describe activities that they really like to engage in. Same sort of things. And then, people say, I feel happy, I feel less anxiety, I feel more forgiving, I feel all of these kinds of things, which are good. And so, why would you want to prevent other people from feeling the same thing with their activity? 

AUBREY: Yeah. You got a lot of people who must sling a lot of hate at you. I think the whole Philippine government is mad at you. You're persona non grata in the Philippines entirely. Is that something that's challenging for you? Does that grate on you? Does that wear on you, having people who are constantly attacking you? 

CARL: I don't really know the attack, maybe online. But it's lovely being back in-person now. Because now people have to see you face to face and they are less likely to do stuff like that. But online, there are some people. But oftentimes, the people who have the hate are really just ignorant. I can't provide all of their education for them. Some of them will get here eventually. And then others may never get here. But there is far much more love because people are freed. There are a lot of drug users who are in the closet and know what I'm saying to be true. This isn't groundbreaking or earth-shattering. This is simple and they know this. So, I get a lot more love than hate. And not only that too. It's the right thing to do. I talked about being a patriot. I know what it really means to take care of other people's rights. And that's all I'm saying here. People should have the right to live their life like they want. In fact, that's the original promise of the country. And so, if somebody is showing hate to me, they don't understand what it means to be an American. 

AUBREY: And you can extend that universally in all of these different categories. And I think that's a beautiful way to redefine patriotism. So, let's be fucking patriots.

CARL: That's it. 

AUBREY: Let's do it. Thank you so much for coming on, man. This is a really illuminating conversation and I'm sure it opened a lot of people's minds as it opened my mind to just the bias, the stories, the way that we see things. And just have that open mind to question these things that we take. We just take and we just receive those, and we just repeat those over and over again until someone like yourself is like, hey, hold up, wait a minute. Let's take a look at this. And then if we have the flexibility of thought and be like, oh shit. Let's take another look. So, thank you so much for the work that you do and for sharing that wisdom on the show today. 

CARL: Thank you for having me, man. 

AUBREY: Of course. And your books and other places people can find more of what you do? 

CARL: "Drug Use for Grownups." It's everywhere. Go out, support me, show the love so I can continue saying what I say. 

AUBREY: Beautiful. Have a great talk today at Meet Delic, man. 

CARL: Thank you, man. 

AUBREY: Sure. Thanks, everybody.