PSYCHOACTIVE

David Simon is the co-creator and head writer of the HBO series “The Wire” (2002-08) and “We Own This City” (2022) as well as other outstanding TV series on policing, drug dealing, music, porn and the potential for fascism in the United States. We discussed the ways in which the war on drugs has undermined, distorted and corrupted effective policing; how issues of race and class manifest, or not, in policing and drug policies; and the extent to which Baltimore’s problems and challenges are indicative of those in other U.S. cities. We also talked about the actor, Michael K. Williams, who depicted Omar in The Wire, and who died of an overdose late last year.

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Adam Strauss is an actor and comedian who created a play, The Mushroom Cure, about his own struggles with OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) and his attempts to cure, or at least ameliorate the symptoms, with psychedelics. Critics have described his show as “a hilarious ride through OCD,” “a fabulous, perceptive trip,” and “hugely intelligent and incredibly engaging.” Adam and I discussed his life with OCD, how OCD compares to other addictions and forms of mental illness, how taking psilocybin mushrooms helped and whether other psychedelics might have as well, why he went back to a 12-step program - OC Anonymous - after finding some success with psilocybin, and why calling 911 while under the influence of mushrooms to discuss an existential experience is rarely a good idea.

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Drug policy in Russia is -– no surprise -- highly repressive. But that was not entirely the case in the early 2000s, when dozens of harm reduction programs operated around the country and a drug liberalization law resulted in fifty thousand people being released from prison. Anya Sarang is probably Russia’s best known harm reduction advocate.

We discussed the evolution of illicit drug use, markets and policies in her country, including the transformative impact of the rapid shift to online drug markets a few years ago; the fanatical hostility of Russia’s narcological establishment to methadone and other opioid substitution treatment; and the rise, fall and bare survival of harm reduction activism and services in an ever more repressive country. We also talked about how President Putin’s drug policies compare with drug policies elsewhere in Asia and the former countries of the Soviet Union, and the ways in which his approach to illicit drugs foreshadowed the broader repression now underway in Russia.

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When Rodrigo Duterte became president of The Philippines in 2016, he launched a drug war that was distinguished by his encouragement and approval of extra-judicial killings by police officials and their associates. Although widely condemned by foreign governments, this drug war, which has killed between ten and twenty thousand people, appears to retain the support of most Filipinos. Gideon Lasco is a brave scholar who has researched both illicit drug use and the drug war in his country. We talked about the use of shabu (methamphetamine) in the Philippines, why most Filipinos support Duterte’s drug war, who opposes it, how the drug war has evolved over the past six years, and the extent to which it really differs from drug wars elsewhere in Asia and other countries. I was also curious about what will happen now that Duterte’s presidential term is ending.

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Until it was supplanted by LSD in the 1950’s and 60’s, mescaline was the best known and most popular psychedelic in the world. It’s the key psychoactive ingredient in peyote, which has been used for millennia among indigenous people in the Americas and often demonized and prohibited by civil and religious authorities who feared it. Mike Jay, whose latest book is entitled Mescaline: A Global History of the First Psychedelic, is broadly regarded as the outstanding historian of psychoactive drugs around the world. We talked about that rich history, which included experimentation with mescaline by writers, poets, painters and scientists as well as the head of the Mormon Church, its impact on psychiatry, investigation into its potential as a truth serum and weapon by the CIA and the military, its use by prominent counter-cultural figures, and why it was largely displaced by LSD and other psychedelics.

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Chef Nikki Steward is one of the most famous and talented of chefs who cook and bake with cannabis. She describes her brand “The High End Affair” as a traveling “infused culinary experience" and has curated large dinner parties for Snoop Dog, Dave Chapelle, DJ Khaled and many other celebrities. I’m an eager consumer but an inexperienced chef so I peppered her with questions: Is there something different about cooking for people who are high on cannabis and how does she standardize dosing? What about cooking for people who use cannabis as a medicine? Have old school techniques of cooking with cannabis become obsolete with high potency extracts and does she use all parts of the cannabis plant? How does she keep from getting too high when she’s tasting as she cooks? And how does she deal with the challenge of people “overdosing” at a dinner?

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Sam Quinones is a distinguished journalist and author who has reported on America's opioid crisis for over a decade. His 2015 book, Dreamland, examined the spread of prescription opioids and then heroin across the country. His new book, The Least of Us, focuses on the spread of fentanyl and P2P methamphetamine, and their devastating impact on people and communities. We discussed all of this, including the evolution in illicit drug networks, racial differences in drug use, Sam’s skepticism of hard reduction, and my skepticism of his policy recommendations.

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Few countries have suffered the consequences of ineffective prohibitionist policies for so long or severely as Mexico.  Professors Alejandro Madrazo and Catalina Perez are among the world’s leading experts on this subject.  I wanted to know:  How did the criminal organizations that traffic in drugs get so powerful?  Why is it a misnomer to call them “cartels”?  What explains the extreme violence?  How pervasive is not just the corruption but the fear of violent reprisals among Mexico’s most senior political figures?  What’s the role of the Mexican military, and how has it been impacted by its evolving responsibilities in the country’s war on drugs?  Is the current president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, doing anything differently from his predecessors?  Does growing support for drug policy reform offer any hope?

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I took a short subway ride from my home on Manhattan’s Upper West Side to East Harlem to visit OnPoint NYC – the first overdose prevention center, a.k.a. safe injection site or supervised injection facility, to operate openly in my country with the permission of the mayor and other top officials. Executive director Sam Rivera, senior director of programs Kailin See, and other OnPoint staff and clients showed me around and answered my questions: Why did it take so long and how have people in the neighborhood responded? What about the police? What drugs do they use, and how? What happens when someone overdoses? What other services are available? How does this site differ from OnPoint’s other location, in Washington Heights, and from other sites in Europe, Canada and Australia?

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Philippe Bourgois, along with his co-author Jeffrey Schonberg, spent over a decade getting to know a group of homeless people in San Francisco whose lives revolved around their injection drug use. The result of their research was one of the greatest of all drug ethnographies, a book called Righteous Dopefiends. It's a remarkably intimate book, full of detailed descriptions of people's lives and the community that forms around injection drug use. He describes the different rituals that go into preparing and using heroin, as well as both the generosity and duplicity that surround its use. Today, we'll talk about this book as well as his newer research centered on drug use in Los Angeles and Tijuana.

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