PSYCHOACTIVE

This is a bonus episode of PSYCHOACTIVE. The next episode of PSYCHOACTIVE will be my interview with Ellen Scanlon. She’s the host and creator of the podcast, 'How to Do the Pot,” a weekly podcast for women, by women, that tries to demystify cannabis for people looking to learn safe and trustworthy advice about a topic they might know little about. In advance of my interview with her, we're giving you an episode of her podcast called “Weed Words."

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Many people have achieved remarkable success in overcoming a longstanding addiction through ingesting ibogaine. It is a powerful psychedelic drug derived from the iboga shrub, which can be found in the West African country, Gabon, and its neighboring regions. Unlike most other psychedelics, ibogaine can dramatically reduce withdrawal symptoms and craving. Hattie Wells is a psychedelic practitioner, ethnobotanist and drug policy reform advocate who was an ibogaine treatment provider in Britain for several years and is now working on clinical trials involving ibogaine. We discussed similarities and differences between ibogaine and other psychedelics, the details of ibogaine treatment, why aftercare is crucial but typically lacking, ongoing clinical research into the plant, uses of ibogaine for conditions other than addiction, and much else.

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CBD has exploded in popularity over the past decade. I talked about the power and promise of this cannabinoid with one of the world’s leading experts on the subject: Martin Lee, author of two highly acclaimed books, Acid Dreams and Smoke Signals, and co-founder and director of ProjectCBD.org. We covered topics including what is CBD and how does it work, what is its relationship to THC and what’s the evidence for its medical and health benefits, what role is the FDA playing in regulating hemp and what’s going on outside the United States? 

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Chelsea Handler is the famous comedian, author, talk show host, documentary maker and activist whose millions of fans relish her revealing and humorous stories about sex, drugs, relationships and politics. Our conversation focused, of course, on drugs: on how getting in trouble with drugs launched her career in comedy, on why she prefers marijuana to alcohol, on what she has learned from her experiences with psychedelics, on which drugs help with creative writing, and on why she considers herself a “pharmacological intuit.”

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Millions of women use drugs when they’re pregnant. Some are punished when their pregnancies end with a miscarriage or stillbirth, or even when they give birth to a healthy baby. No one knows more about this than Lynn Paltrow, founder and executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW). We discussed the scientific evidence regarding pregnancy and drug use, the media coverage, and the myths that abound – about “crack babies,” “meth babies” and “oxytots.” Not surprisingly, issues of class and race play a pivotal role not just in determining which women are drug tested and sanctioned but also in popular perceptions of who is to blame and what should be done. Lynn and her colleagues have been at the forefront in defending the rights of pregnant women, and hearing about this important work made for a fascinating and at times heartbreaking conversation.

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An extraordinary number of the greatest jazz musicians were deeply involved in psychoactive drug use – to the extent that the history of jazz and the history of drugs during the middle third of the 20th century are inseparable. The King of Jazz, Louis Armstrong, never went a day without marijuana. The great “Lady Day,” Billie Holiday, became during the 1950s “the most famous drug addict in America.” Most of the great saxophonists – Charlie Parker, Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane, Stan Getz, Art Pepper, Gerry Mulligan, Dexter Gordon and many more – used heroin as well as other drugs. Martin Torgoff, author of Bop Apocalypse, has probably thought about this subject more deeply than anyone else. Why did so many jazz musicians use heroin and other drugs? How did it impact the music they made and the lives they led? What role did racism and the nascent war on drugs play in all this? And what’s the connection with famous Beat writers like Jack Kerouac and the poet Allen Ginsberg?

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Kurt Schmoke’s life and mine intersected at a pivotal moment in the spring of 1988, as the war on drugs was approaching its most feverish pitch. I was a 31 year old assistant professor at Princeton University who had just published a prominent article which explained why the drug war was as doomed and counterproductive as alcohol Prohibition. Kurt was a 38 year old former district attorney who had just been elected mayor of Baltimore, when he said much the same to a national conference of mayors and police chiefs. It was an extraordinary act of political courage. Confronted by an avalanche and mockery, he did not back down. His life, and mine, were transformed. We talked about those times, why he did what he did, and what transpired.

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Boris Jordan is a fascinating figure. An American of White Russian ancestry, he played a pivotal role in Russia’s roller coaster economic transformation during the 1990s. Today he is best known as the founder, executive chairman and principal shareholder of Curaleaf, which is in many respects the world’s largest cannabis company. We started off by talking about the politics of marijuana reform in Congress but then focused on the future of the cannabis industry. What role will Big Tobacco, Big Pharma, Big Alcohol and the other big consumer good companies eventually play? Which countries, not just in Europe but also in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, are most likely to legalize cannabis in coming years? Why does he think cannabis beverages will account for half of the cannabis market within ten years? What does he think about the future of legal psychedelics? And how and why did he get involved in this industry in the first place?

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“We could not have civilization without intoxication,” says Professor Edward Slingerland in his important new book: Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization. Indeed, “the use of intoxicants should puzzle us as much as religion does.” This episode examines how and why intoxicants – and particularly alcohol -- have played such a crucial role in the evolution of human societies. Humans are, Professor Slingerland points out, “the only animals that deliberately and methodically get high.” Understanding the evolutionary dynamics of intoxicant use is essential to thinking clearly about the role intoxicants can and should play in our lives today.

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“We could not have civilization without intoxication,” says Professor Edward Slingerland in his important new book: Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization. Indeed, “the use of intoxicants should puzzle us as much as religion does.” This episode examines how and why intoxicants – and particularly alcohol -- have played such a crucial role in the evolution of human societies. Humans are, Professor Slingerland points out, “the only animals that deliberately and methodically get high.” Understanding the evolutionary dynamics of intoxicant use is essential to thinking clearly about the role intoxicants can and should play in our lives today.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.