Drug Positive

Dr. Elinore McCance-Katz would rather you were dead than use drugs. This is the take-away message from her recent article critical of fentanyl testing strips, the only tool we have that can detect fentanyl in heroin, cocaine and other drugs before they are consumed. Dr. McCance-Katz heads the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), an agency of the federal Department of Health and Human Services, and is supposed to be helping lead us out of the current opioid crisis, which is currently killing more than 70,000 Americans a year. Yet the only perspective she brings is more judgment, more stigma and more blaming the victims.

Please tweet to Dr. McCanceKatz and let her know that fentanyl testing strips save lives. Send her Emanuel's open letter.

In this episode we speak with Helena Valente, the Vice President of Kosmicare, a harm reduction organization in Portugal. In 2001 Portugal decriminalized all drugs, resulting in a 53% reduction in overdose deaths. Valente describes why Portugal took this route, why it is working, and why the vast majority of Portuguese citizens—both liberal and conservative—support the policy.

Portugal's drug laws stand in stark contrast to those of the United States, and Dr. McCance-Katz stands to learn a lot about how to end the opioid crisis if she would listen.

Oh, and you get to listen to someone's first DMT trip in another segment of People on Drugs! :)

This is a teaser for episode three of our Patreon.com subscriber podcast, Drug Nonsense. In the full episode we cover not only the MDMA octopus study, but crack pipe vending machines, Trump at the UN, expensive trip sitters, Australia wanting to ban music festivals, and more. To listen to the full episode and get instant access to all the others, head over to Patreon!

Do psychedelics have any generalizable effects on the political consciousness of people who use them? Studies show that people who use psychedelics generally score higher in the personality trait of openness, which is correlated with greater tolerance and liberal cultural values. But is there a causal effect happening?

And is the US Army secretly testing MDMA on active duty soldiers in order to create more effective killers?

We spend an hour with David Nickles, underground researcher and moderator for The DMT-Nexus community. Not to be confused with former Purdue University professor and psychedelic chemist, David Nichols, Nickles has been ruffling a lot of feathers lately with questions and criticisms of what he views as the willingness of the psychedelic community to partner with the most destructive forces in society.

A small section of one of Tatiana's coffee stain pointillisms.

Edited by Emanuel Sferios Music track by Frankum, creative commons.

Elon Musk did not actually smoke weed on the Joe Rogan podcast, despite the entire media claiming otherwise. The video makes it perfectly clear.

This is a special, free episode of our Patreon subscriber podcast, Drug Nonsense, where we expose the falsehoods and sheer idiocy of the mainstream media's reporting about drugs.

On June 17th, 1971, Richard Nixon launched the so-called "War on Drugs." Now, 47 years later a new generation of psychedelic users are taking the lead to end it. Working in solidarity with the communities most affected, today's new psychedelic advocates bring the lessons of the past four decades of reform activism to bear in calling for rational drug policies that protect both civil and human rights.

Ashley Booth

In this episode we speak to Ashley Booth, founder of the Aware Project: Rethinking Psychedelics, a Southern California-based psychedelic society, producing a monthly speaker series around psychedelics as medicines and transformational tools. She is also the co-founder of InnerSpace Integration, a psychedelic integration organization with a team of support providers serving the growing community. Currently, she works part-time as the study coordinator for the Los Angeles Phase III clinical trial of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for the treatment of PTSD funded by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS.org).

Edited by Emanuel SferiosCover art by Tatiana Makovkin Sound engineered by Jimmy Martin Music by Frankum, creative commons.

Tatiana creating her Burning Man theater.

In this special, live episode of Drug Positive, we hang out in the lobby of the famous Grauman's Chinese Theater after watching the world premiere of comedian Shane Mauss's documentary, Psychonautics. We interview Shane as well as a number of movie-goers and ask them about the most memorable psychedelic experiences.

Warning: This episode promotes drug use.

How was MDMA invented? Who came up with the idea to add a methyl group to MDA, the "hug drug" of the 1960s? Forget the irrelevant Merck patent of 1913. We found the person who "thought up" MDMA as a recreational drug. In 1975, on a hunch, Carl R. suggested to Sasha Shulgin that they methylate MDA. Later that Summer, they made a batch of MDMA together in a UC Berkeley laboratory, and Carl and his girlfriend were the first people on the planet (that we know of) to try it.

This is part 2 of the secret history of MDMA, and this is the first time Carl tells his story to the world.

Carl in 1975

Carl in 2018

You may think you know the history of MDMA, but in this conversation with historian Dr. Torsten Passie, we discover it's weirder than we thought. From the Rajneesh cult in Oregon to the hills of Tennessee to the home of Panama's former dictator, Manuel Noriega, the history of MDMA is full of surprises, as well as mystery and intrigue.

This is part one of a two-part series on the secret history of MDMA. Hold on to your baggies, because you're in for a wild ride!

Edited by Emanuel Sferios Sound engineered by Jimmy Martin Opening music track by Frankum, creative commons.

We do not have an overdose crisis. We have a poisoned drug supply. Fentanyl and its analogs are killing tens of thousands of Americans every year. Alarmingly and with ominous future implications, fentanyl-laced cocaine fatalities in Ohio are now outstripping fentanyl-laced herion fatalities. This trend began in 2016 but the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation (BCI), who operates the three state crime labs that first learned about it, never made the data public.

In this episode we speak with Dennis Cauchon, founder of Harm Reduction Ohio, who just this summer used public records laws to obtain the data from BCI and publish it, warning people that this poisoning crisis had now spread far beyond just the heroin market.

Who is adding fentanyl and carfentanil to the cocaine supply? How many lives has Cauchon saved by spreading this information to the public? And why did BCI sit on the data for three years and not tell anyone? According to Cauchon, they simply didn't realize what they were looking at. Disconnected from the drug culture, they just assumed that mixing fentanyl with cocaine was a new drug trend. They had no idea that cocaine users were unaware that their cocaine contained fentanyl, and that they didn't want their drugs contaminated with it.

Cauchon was able to educate some of the folks in BCI. "After initially being reluctant to provide the information," he say, "BCI was remarkably helpful, which showed a real concern about drug overdose deaths, not just helping police convict people on drug charges."

This is the state of prohibition. This is drug war culture.

In this episode we also speak to Donna May, a mother who lost her daughter to heroin after her doctor cut her off from the prescription opiates that relieved her symptoms of anxiety. We hear from Dr. Torsten Passie, who helped spearhead heroin maintenance programs in Germany. And we talk to Dr. Gabor Maté, best-selling author and addiction treatment specialist from Vancouver, Canada, who explains why drug users are one of the most scapegoated groups in our culture.

This episode describes the problem as well as the solution. And the solution lies not just in changing drug laws, but also our own attitudes and false beliefs about drugs and the people who use them.

Edited by Emanuel Sferios Sound engineered by Jimmy Martin Opening music track by Frankum, creative commons.

Every week, millions of people around the world re-create themselves with MDMA. They might take the drug and go out dancing, or they might stay at home and have intimate conversations with their spouse, or with a small group of friends. But either way, everyone who uses MDMA makes a determination that the potential benefits outweigh the potential risks.

Are they right?

In this episode we spend an hour discussing the benefits of MDMA with Dr. Ben Sessa, child and adolescent psychiatrist with the Imperial College of London. Dr. Sessa is currently leading a study using MDMA to treat alcoholism. This is the first study of it's kind, and we'll hear some of the preliminary results.

We discuss not only the science of MDMA, but also new research in to psychedelics in general, that appear to show that they increase structural and functional neuroplasticity in the brain by actually growing new dendrites and creating new connections between neurons. We talk about microdosing LSD, whether children can benefit from MDMA therapy, the importance of post-psychedelic integration and how that may be missing if you do underground psychedelic therapy today.

We also talk drug war politics and whether MDMA therapy for veterans is simply patching them up so they can go back and fight more wars. We talk about psychonaut culture, it's pros and cons, and the very real problem of sexual harassment within the psychedelic community.

The interview was filmed in our Oakland studio and is also available as a video on our YouTube channel, minus the introduction.

Edited by Emanuel Sferios Sound engineered by Jimmy Martin Opening music track by Frankum, creative commons.