Dr Carl Hart On Changing America's Perception Of Hard Drugs In His New Book "Drug Use For Grown-Ups"

wake that ass up in the morning the breakfast club morning everybody it's dj envy angela yee charlemagne the guy we are the breakfast club we got a special guest in the building today yes indeed dr carl hart columbia university professor welcome sir thank you for having me good morning sir tell them a little bit more about yourself uh i'm a professor at columbia uh i also teach i mean work at the new york state psychiatric institute where i'm a research scientist um i've been doing that for about 25 years uh before that i was at yale and before that i was at the university of south uh university of california san francisco now we talked about you earlier this week uh because you were all over the news you got a book out and uh you were talking that you you are an admitted heroin user well get to the book first the book was all over the news that's what i'm asking and i saw you on that crack um documentary correct yeah but something but i saw him on that crack like jesus christ it's great it's great you should watch it if you guys haven't seen it yet yeah he was just telling me about it but the book is called drug use for grown-ups chasing liberty in the land of fear explain that title yeah the title the real action is in the subtitle chasing liberty in the land of fear um i use drugs as a topic to explore our own liberty i'm a drug expert so i use drugs and i was trying to point out to people that the declaration of independence for example guarantees all of us three birthrights life liberty and the pursuit of happiness correct as long as you don't mess with anybody else's ability to do the same now what that means is that you can live your life however you choose um and i was using drugs as a topic it's like why should people care what you put in your body as long as you are a good person you don't mess with people and so in exploring this topic this past week i realized that uh well i already knew but uh i'm an example of how uh moralistic we are regardless of what kind of person you are um people will attack you if you engage in certain behaviors that have been deemed uh evil for whatever reason whether there was a time when homosexuality was the case there was a time when black people were being attacked for just being black uh now uh drugs uh crack or heroin is is the evil thing to engage in because those things hurt people including the person using them you know what i mean yeah great question so i didn't ask a question about it well i was trying to save you right because on the one hand uh you should know that heroin is a medication that is approved for treatment heroin and morphine are essentially the same drug the bear aspirin company for example in 1874 just attached to acetyl groups to morphine to make heroin but the bottom line is that they're the same drug because the acetyl groups don't have any biological effects didn't bear used to be called heroin no no something like that no no i saw something about that no no but the point is is that heroin is a perfectly good pain reliever it also induces euphoria and a wide range of uh effects that we desire like pleasure um so when you say that it doesn't harm you certainly it can harm you if people overdo it and they don't know what they're doing yeah they certainly can be harmed um just like when you drive a car uh but is it addictive though is it is heroin addictive uh is heroin addictive certainly can be addictive uh you drink alcohol not really well people drink alcohol alcohol is addictive um sugar sugar all of these sorts of things can be addictive uh in my book i'm trying to help people to understand what makes things addictive not the substance itself because uh as much as 75 percent of the people who use heroin are not addicted they don't have any problem what do you say what percentage i'm sorry as much as 75 so when you say when you see this you say all right if most of the people who use that drug or any other drug for that matter are not addicted then you have to look beyond the drug itself and in this book i'm trying to tell people what those factors are that increases someone's likelihood of becoming addicted i'm fascinated by this conversation what are your drug of choice what are my drugs of choice yeah uh so like that kind of question for example it's like saying what's your favorite sexual position it's a private thing right i mean that's a private thing well no you put it in the book you said you do heroin you said you do hair no no no hold on i put a lot of things in the book i i i said that i i have done heroin for example like in the past week the media i think has been said i do heroin every day i inject and so forth that's what they made it seem like this is just untrue you know we're in a pandemic um how can i get heroin in this pandemic at least i can't and any heroin i ever used was pharmaceutically grade heroin i don't do drugs that are bought off the street that's stupid you know i published this [ __ ] alone heroin when did you get your hair in brooklyn or the bronx well you know there's a there the united states ain't the only company country you know uh i travel a lot in this book i travel to five different continents and um heroin is available on pharmaceutical grade in many of these countries uh in which i travel to so um people are they have this idea of someone who uses heroin as some poor soul who is injecting the drug and is a slave to the drug and they think that heroin is the reason for that person's problem because that person definitely exists but is that the person's problem is not so much heroin as everything else like the person might have co-occurring psychiatric illnesses the person might have had some traumatic stuff that's happened to their life they may have recently lost some well-paying middle-class job and they now have no status in their community like what has happened in the rust belt of america like gm left and went to other count countries and other factories left and went to other countries now those people are without gainful middle class employment how can i ask you a question absolutely i always hear people say well i'm chasing that high i got the first time that i use it but that's a real is that a real thing because i've heard so many people say that on documentaries yeah i know because we are willing to accept that right um no it's certainly true like just think of the first time you enjoyed an orgasm it's like it was amazing uh for me the first time it's like am i chasing the first time i had an orgasm no of course not but although i like that feeling i like that orgasm can't kill me diseases and and so forth uh but it's a silly sort of thing where people say i was chasing that high for the first the one i had the first time it's like saying i was chasing the first orgasm i had i mean none of us are sitting here saying that oh yeah i'm trying to get that first orgasm again that's that's the equivalent it's silly so again the title of the book is drug use for grown-ups i'm trying to have a grown-up conversation about drugs and that's what but that's why we're asking because you know we don't know like for instance would you consider yourself addicted to heroin or when is the last time you use heroin uh more than a year ago i i don't know okay but this is the thing because the press makes it seem like you use it every morning like you pop past five years you click open the fireplace and give me that but that's why we have you here i want you to know we're not we're not judging you we're bringing you here to have the conversation trust me i appreciate it and i know it and then you know mad love to all of you all but i need people to understand it's the new york [ __ ] post i mean when has the new york post been favorable to uh black people when come on i mean people are this book i'm trying to liberate black people what is the message you're trying to get across in drug use for grown-ups let's start let's start there what's the message coming from dr carhart all right so you all know um asap yams right yes you all know stephen rodriguez is his name and you know he died from what was termed a drug overdose right yes when that brother died his mom contacted me uh and she gave me his toxicology to report and showed me what was in the system um and it appears that he may have died from a a combination of opioids and other sedatives now for years i have been writing that if you're going to use opioids and particularly if you're a novice don't combine it with other sedatives like alcohol like older antihistamines like people like promethazine don't combine your opioids with those drugs because it increases the likelihood of respiratory depression so i made a promise to her that i would do everything i could to educate the public about this to help avoid uh having other mothers having to experience what she experienced and that's one of the main messages from the book and this is the message that the [ __ ] new york post does not say and that's why i am it it upsets me so much when when i have i have nothing but love and compassion and people who are attacking me yeah i'm not gonna lie watch i'm watching your body language and i see you shaking i'm like okay is he going through a withdrawal or is he upset about me a break man i'm being honest come on man you know you're upset clearly yeah you know it's like first of all i have too much respect for you too much respect for you and too much respect for you not to come here and be correct you know i obviously i am upset about what has been said about me uh because you know i have children i have a family i have all of these sorts of things would you want your children to to indulge in drug use because you know growing up i see you from miami from a poverty-stricken area you've you've sold drugs you've used drugs as a kid you're engaged in petty crimes but you know one thing growing up the first thing your parents say is don't use drugs drugs especially this drug don't use cigarettes it's a gateway to stronger drugs would you advise your kids to use drugs and tell your kids about using drugs um it's like saying would you advise your kids to have sex right uh you know why is sex always the correlation because everybody i hope has had sex i'll tell you and and sex is pleasurable right and people want that sort of pleasure correct so when you say would you advise your kids to engage in drugs and i wouldn't advise them but that's not my concern whether they do it or not my concern is keeping them safe so my kids telling them wear a condom exactly exactly bro don't buy it off the street exactly because the the most dangerous thing about drugs to most people who are black and brown it's not the drugs it's the police and so that's why i would really tell people don't you don't know what's in it sometimes but i tell my kids that's a great point man i don't know what's in it but you tell your kids don't use drugs like i tell my kids don't usually i'm not going to tell them go to the store where you know what's in the drug i'm just saying don't use it at all people used to be like that about marijuana too they should be like don't smoke weed it's terrible now it's illegal but i'm telling them i can't do that can we come back to your point please let's go the point you made was um if what we don't know what's in these substances on the street you're absolutely right so the country says we're in an opioid crisis one thing that is true we certainly have had a number of overdoses and one of the main reasons that people are overdosing is because they get tainted drug they think that they might have something like heroin or oxycontin when in fact they have fentanyl fentanyl is a lot more potent than heroin or oxycodone that means that a smaller amount of that drug is enough and sometimes cases to kill you and we can solve that problem just like they did in places like spain portugal the netherlands austria they have these centers where you can submit small amounts of your drug just and you can have it test it and get a chemical printout of what's contained in your drug and that way you know if some contaminant that's dangerous is in your drug don't take it people will do a miley ecstasy but you don't that's a combination of different things you don't really know what's in it exactly and that's one of the major dangers and in this book i am explaining how we can easily solve that problem if our officials actually gave us [ __ ] how would we solve that problem we can have these centers where we test uh what's in your substance like you can submit uh as little as 10 milligrams and have it tested and then you get a chemical print out and then you know what is in it and you know what it does uh they do this in spain austria and all these other countries we don't do it here because we're moralistic and judgmental about people seeking to have pleasure that's why we don't do it have you have you ever tried anything else to deal with whatever trauma may exist in you because so many folks turn to drugs when they have pain have you tried any other methods of course i mean i uh i love comedy you know i i go to i go see shows i uh um there are a number of ways that we deal with unpleasant things in our lives um but i would never tell somebody to turn to drugs to deal with trauma or even try wait wait wait wait what about iowa hold up hold up hold up people i know i'm talking about heroin i'm talking about crack i'm talking about meth i'm talking about cocaine i ain't talking about ayahuasca right now shrooms and stuff like we have to talk about why you ain't talking about that because i have a chapter that deals with this uh exceptionalism if you will psychedelic exceptionalism psychedelics are okay everything else is not we can talk about that but first of all to be clear i am not telling anybody to do drugs um i don't have to it's like drugs uh people will seek out drugs my job is to try and help people do this activity as safely as possible if you're going to do it that's my job so this notion that i'm somehow promoting drugs the first sentence in my author's note is that this book is not promoting drugs that's not what i do now let's talk about this psychedelic exceptionalism people what you need to understand in order for a drug to have an effect in our body there are receptors in our brain and it binds to these receptors and if if we have receptors in our brain that means that we have no natural chemicals in our brains that act like the drug now when we start saying oh psilocybin or ayahuasca is different from heroin it's just simply obviously they produce different effects but it's simply not true that one is more preferable to the next the body doesn't see it like that in fact even if one's plant-based and one isn't it all of these things are plant-based you know you go to the opium poppy what you have in it is morphine and heroin is essentially the same drug as morphine with these two acid groups attached to it but those acid groups doesn't have they don't have any biological effects really but isn't heroin often more genetically modified uh no you just make it by adding these two acid groups do it that's it it's it's it's from the opi opium poppy and cocaine it's from the coca leaf of course uh so all of these drugs have a plant basis a a natural sort of basis in our uh environment however when people say you have an addictive personality is that a real thing because they feel like you know you said a certain percentage of people will have issues with addiction and some people won't but is it how do you know you know what i mean like some people be like i don't want to try that i know i have an addictive personality yeah so this notion of an addiction addictive personality is myth uh now it is true that some people will be more likely to become addicted uh than other people and some of those things i tried to lay out earlier if you are have co-occurring psychiatric illnesses depression anxiety trauma all of these sorts of things increase the likelihood that you will become addicted and your parents if your parents are addicts is that anything nah there's no real evidence that says like your genetics will determine whether you become addicted although that's a popular sort of saying and in science we are still investigating it but the evidence is very weak but also consider this just think about you guys are in the entertainment industry think about people who have um these unrealistic expectations placed on them because they are supporting their families their friends they're supporting all of these people and they have to perform night in night out and they have to do all of these kinds of things those sort of unrealistic expectations placed on them also increases the likelihood that these people too will become addicted so that's why you tell them go to therapy tell them take up meditation tell them go do yoga i'm not gonna tell them running and do heroin i guess for me man it's i've seen so many you know bad examples of heroin users you know me and crackheads i've never seen any functioning heroin users are functioning you know crack addicts and what are you looking at once you know it i mean i know what are the good effects of heroin like you always hear the the bad effects of heroin you hear liver and kidney disease you see deteriorating the brain cells you hear all these things like what's the good effects of heroin like what's what's something good about it okay uh so in 2015 i went to switzerland and i worked in an um a heroin clinic where people who are actually heroin addicted they received heroin twice a day every day once in the morning once in the evening they came to the clinic and got their shots and this has been going on for more than 20 years in uh switzerland when we think about what are the good things uh most of those people are employed all of them have housing uh most of them are happy they're health improved because they don't know they no longer have to be out on the street looking for heroin um they have the social workers psychologists physicians um and they uh have no interest in stop use in stopping using their heroin and they are productive members of their society that's all good that's what we want from people but what about on the body though you know you're saying yeah that's good but you know what about on the body how to affect the body yeah for example um get that hit you know yeah if i don't drink this water i'm not gonna go you know sell my mother's vcr to make money to get the water yeah if it's addictive i'm doing whatever it takes because i need that hit yeah so like that story that you're telling is like an extreme anecdote certainly you can find that person but that's not where we're from the hold up no no hold up now i'm from the hood i started studying drugs because of the whole crack era uh you know i believe crack was destroying my community just like everybody else that whole new jack shitty city thing you know i believed all that sort of thing and i but the problem is is that i misattributed what was going on with those people i thought it was the drug for example when in fact it was all these other things like sexual economic conditions that lead to all that right right on exactly so this is true people are do experience problems but don't get it twisted when most of the people who are using heroin something like heroin they're not going to tell you because of all of this negative judgment of course the ones who are functioning well uh they're not gonna say so the only ones that you see are the ones who are contrite and they are repentant because they want your help and they know that's the only story that you will accept about their heroin use and then you're like uh yeah okay now you found jesus now come let me help let me help you but if they come to you and say no i'm good with my heroine i need help with my finances i need a better job you're you're gonna be like get the [ __ ] out of here that's what you're gonna so they know the story that they need to tell is that oh i'm sorry um and so what i'm trying to do in the book is to show people um that that story is actually killing people because people are less likely to seek help when they need it and we are less likely to implement the programs that we need to help people i'm glad you said that because i agree with you when you say um drugs should be legal whenever i see people get locked up for you know possession of crack or possession of heroin okay i'm like don't send them to jail send them to rehab provide them with opportunities give them treatments that's what i thought your stance was yeah yeah because that's easy that's easy i mean that's what was right well no the liberals that's that's incomplete uh because i mean obviously i'm arguing that we should regulate all these drugs that way we'll have quality control we'll have better education all of that i'm arguing that but if you argue that that perspective you have to understand that we have exaggerated the harmful effects of drugs and in this book i'm showing people how that's a tough that's a tough line to say dr carl that we've exaggerated the harmful effects of drugs absolutely have you seen what happened to the crack addicted people heroin addicted people what happened to their families what happens to the communities that exist with with individuals like that like it's kind of hard to say we're exaggerating man you know um i grew up in miami you know cocaine capital in the 70s 80s and so forth and like i said i started studying drugs because i wanted to solve the drug addiction problem i have cousins and relatives friends who got caught up in this and i thought it was crack um in the book i describe a story about new jack city about the writer the guy who actually wrote it uh meeting him it's a white guy named tom wright from idaho and you know when i was scheduled to meet him i thought i was i was looking for somebody who looked like teddy reilly or the you know the cash money brothers but it was uh this white guy who looked like a lumberjack and we sat down and talked about how that story came about and um you know it i i really encourage people to read it so they can see how we've been all told a story and we all say oh yeah i saw that cat on the corner who was addicted with crack and i remember all those cats making all that money from slangin and it's like um i just think people misinterpreted what was going on first of all like people were not making all kind of crazy loot uh most of the cats most of most of the cats who were on the corner were living at home with their moms uh most of the cats on the corner uh had no car i i know individuals i know individuals who lived at home with their mom but still had a hundred thousand dollars under the mattress well you might have known you may have known one or two but you know i was in the game for a little bit and i knew a lot and uh i know we talked about ricky ross you're using in the game as well because no no no no no no i was too dumb no no i was too dumb i i i believed the hype i did all this sort of stuff and you know i now have a lot more knowledge and i know uh what's real versus what's not real uh but the point is is that we tell everybody that [ __ ] story about crack and that story is imprisoning us it prevents us from looking at deeper what was going on what [ __ ] story about crack oh crack destroyed the community and that's it hold up let me explain that's a concern uh highest rates of unemployment for example were in 1982. crack didn't appear until late 1985 in most places in the country uh murder we talk about murder rates uh we had a peak spike in murder in 1980 again crack didn't appear to 1985 and then we had another spike in in 91 and sure it might have had something to do with the cracked sort of markets being developed but not the pharmacological effects of the drug like we tell people that's that's what i'm saying i'm saying that we just need to re-evaluate but it's developed this story is developed more in the book so i really encourage people to read the book uh they will get salvation i promise what about what about you know cause you you said that you called the war on drugs in american jobs program what do you mean by that you said that in the book yeah um the war on drugs is a jobs program one of the things that happened as i pointed out jobs left from the rust belt like illinois ohio michigan and you had to replace those jobs and we replaced them largely with law enforcement jobs that largely benefit uh less well-educated white guys and this year sort of jobs program is predicated on incarcerating black and brown bodies absolutely and that's that's what i mean and i show people how this goes goes down so when you know that right and you talk about the war on drugs and the impact of you know crack on the community when you see a black man go to jail for 15 20 years for a 20 of rock like why would you encourage that kind of behavior uh what behavior and what behavior am i encouraging because because even if the person is that's why i said i agree with you when you say that the drugs should be legal for that reason yeah because i don't want the person to go to jail for 20 years before 28 rock now if you're saying that yeah i can agree with that oh of course that's what i say in the book uh but all i'm saying is that it's the story is more even more complicated than that we have wrongly vilified the drugs themselves and not what is really going on in american society and the same old things that have always been going on good old american racism is really at the heart a lot of this sort of stuff there is a reason there is a reason that we have vilified crack and the users who who uh who use crashes right there is a reason there is a reason because of race and those sorts of things there is a reason that we are asking people to be more compassionate towards the poor person who use opioids and they got addicted because of their doctor because the face or the image of that person typically is a white person confused about is you talk about you haven't used heroin in over a year and a half yes um of course the news made it seem like you use it every day so what gets you to the point where you have to use heroin like is it is it socially is it something going on in your life is it just hanging out with the boys you made it sound like smoking a cigarette you're like i'm sitting by the fight you said it by the fireplace and there's nothing better than doing the line yeah you've also talked about the withdrawal that you have to go through from that too which is not easy right so i'll answer this question so um one of the things that happens with heroin as well as some other drugs think of antidepressants in the same way if you take heroin uh consecutively for weeks or months and then you abruptly discontinue your body has grown accustomed to the drug being in it and so as a result when you abruptly discontinue it you get withdrawal of facts and these withdrawal effects can be unpleasant um the same is true that happens with when you take antidepressants for a similar amount of time you can have withdrawal symptoms that's absolutely true with alcohol however when you do this with alcohol uh you might die but whereas with heroin you can't really die from heroin withdrawal but with alcohol withdrawal you can die and i point this out in the book so people can understand when we start talking about hard good bad drugs this distinction makes no sense what do you think you're going through with drugs so what got you to the point where you have to use and if you don't use it every day like what is that is it just socially chilling is it recognizable so i study drugs right and so i want to know everything about every aspect of what i study so you used every drug before this to study it uh damn near everyone uh have you certainly everyone that you probably have heard of crack coke heroin uh well you know i don't opioids i don't particularly like smoking drugs you know i work out every day so i i like to make sure my lungs are good and so i don't inject no i never inject i mean i'm back i'm vain too i don't want people looking at me you don't smoke and you don't inject wet house oh you take it orally i don't know yeah yeah exactly so um i wanted to know about every aspect of what i do and part of that is to actually know something about the effects like if i would have just kind of believed the narrative i would have believed that heroin was the most addictive thing that one can do and one hit or two hits you're addicted just it's just simply not true it does affect everybody differently you would say well this is what i was pointing out about people who are who have co-occurring illnesses people who have these unrealistic expectations placed on them um yeah a wide range of things i try to explain this in the book uh those sort of things certainly can impact the likelihood of you becoming addicted and also impact the likelihood of you experiencing some negative effects you know this is interesting to me because in the music business i've worked with people who definitely use recreational drugs and they're not like i never looked at them as addicts and then also to school like to but they didn't use them like it wasn't like they needed it most of these guys in the right drug addicts to work and do certain things and they talk about it in their music and then i also went to school where people did recreationally use drugs but still excelled in life from that so it is interesting to me i've never been the type of person like i've tried things obviously i always say i enjoy shrooms but i've had bad experiences too where i'm not really into it like that but i've never felt like i was addicted when i tried something a couple of times yeah that you're like most of us most the people who use drugs have that experience because you say mushroom psilocybin is certainly a drug and it was vilified in the 1960s and 70s but now it's enjoying this uh resurgence of popularity and it's okay for middle-class people to come out about their mushrooms use today but in the 1970s that would have been you would have been that would have been frowned upon it's legal in some places now so no it's not legal i want to say something about oregon which is a predominantly white state they have moved they have decriminalized all drugs so that means that if you're using or possessing drugs you won't go to jail uh why hasn't that happened in states that have greater racial diversity i'll tell you why because it's too important to have these drug laws in those places for probable cause for police so it's like oh i smell weed or now i can mess with you um and so it's important for us to watch and see where uh drug policy becomes more liberal lives and where it does not i agree with you and that's why i think the conversation should be about legalizing those drugs and getting people help as opposed to telling people it's okay to do drugs it just seems weird to be telling people just say yes especially when it comes to like whiteness right because we often think that you know we we can get away with what white people we want to get away with what white people get away with but oftentimes those things are just wrong well bro i'm glad you said that you said so much there let's let's unpack it um so first of all i'm not telling anybody to do any drugs that's that's not what i do uh in fact i'm just trying to help people who are already doing this be more safe that's one two uh i'm kind of troubled by the assumption that uh somehow black folks are not smart enough to handle or are strong enough to handle what white people can handle um so we say well you know um that might be fine for white folks but black people they can't do this that's i i'm troubled by that because no i'm just saying if something is wrong it's wrong like if if we're saying heroin use is wrong crack addiction is wrong then it's wrong it doesn't matter it don't matter who's doing well i don't want i don't want to do something wrong just because they can't get away with why is heroin used wrong you know like and let's just think about in all of these countries that use heroin in medicine and these people who are doing heroin they're fine they're they're they're contributing to their communities they're upstanding citizens you getting to the point where you have you're going through withdrawals you've probably done too much you're probably abusing it so somebody who has been on antidepressant and then they abruptly discontinue and now they have withdrawal we're saying what you're doing by taking that you're wrong you can abuse antidepressants as well that's that's a proven fact but you've been taking it to feel better and then you abruptly you can still abuse it uh certainly you can abuse it but you're saying it's wrong i mean this does this is not inherently wrong these are just uh inert substances we as humans place all this morality and judgment on this and that's part of the problem like why would i come to you if i use heroin and say yo charlemagne man i i'm having some problems here and then i know you're going to be a judgmental dude well we're not going to judge you i'm going to be like you just said it's wrong well let me ask you this how do you determine whether or not you have the capability to use hard drugs without becoming addicted but i i haven't seen it i'm sorry brother yeah thank you uh in the book uh it's called drug use for grown-ups and i explain what a grown-up is people who are responsible they handle their responsibilities they look after their children they look after their health they look after their sleep patterns all of this sort of stuff um that's who might be okay engaging in this activity if someone is irresponsible in other aspects of their life uh yeah you can probably predict that they're going to be irresponsible in terms of their drug use as well so what makes you a drug i don't know that irresponsible zone until it's too late though i'm sorry bro most people don't know they're irresponsible until it's too late and my fear is like somebody hearing this or reading your book and think it's okay well it's okay the doctor said it's okay to use drugs every once in a while he said it's not as it's not bad for me to use drugs it's just as bad as as having you know i can die the same way from having an orgasm that's that's my feeling when kids hear that and people hear that wait did i say what you just said that's what it felt like no i didn't i didn't say well let's i just want to know what your message is just clear and plain what are you trying to get across in drug use for growing up yeah what i'm trying to get across man i'm trying to tell people for example people who are using opioids i'm trying to say you know you the risk is really increased when you use street drugs and not you know you don't know what's in it um see if you can get it tested it's important to know what's in your substance that's what i'm saying to the users don't use it you're saying just make sure you know what you are using absolutely because i you know when you say don't do this that people they stop listening to the people who are doing it and so and i'm saying to government officials if you really cared about your population you would have these drug checking facilities where people can submit small samples of their drugs and have them test it for purity and then we will know if it contains any contaminants i'm saying to government officials if you really cared about your citizens you would have public service announcements saying if you're going to use opioids don't mix with these other sedatives because it becomes potentially more dangerous and i'm saying to american citizens if you know anything about what it means to be an american this life liberty and pursuit of happiness that we're guaranteed the original promise of the country if you knew anything about being an american then you would really look at and question what we're doing with our drug policies because it's inconsistent with that promise i don't think i disagree with any of that but i want to know why not just spend the money and resources on helping people get clean and providing better opportunities for people and people are dealing with some type of real trauma you know giving them other methods instead of drug use because nine times out of ten when people are on drugs it's not for recreation they're doing it because they're going through some type of trauma and what he said you can't go to cvs to go buy your hero and you can't say okay you know let me go get a you know some welch's fruit snacks and let me get a side of heroin you can't buy it so you're telling people to test it they're getting it from dealers because you can't that's right that's right so if you're going to get it from dealers and so forth make sure you can find some way to get it tested that's right that's that's what i'm telling people and back to your point because i think this is a really important point you you have to understand that no matter what you say or what i say people are going to engage in drug using activity whether i like it or not very true right so whether i like it or not so what i'm trying to do is enhance the safety of this activity without judgment you know if that's what you're into i mean that's fine i mean it's like saying i'm telling you it's like saying we don't like who you're having sex with uh they're gonna do it anyway right and so that's cool how can we enhance the safety of that activity that's my job do you agree with getting people clean at all oh if they want it absolutely if adults want it um i spent 25 years developed trying to develop medications to help people get clean for that reason that's exactly right i'm sorry that's okay so dr hart let me ask you this so like you said people who want to use drugs will find a way to use them the best thing you can do is keep them safe but at what point let's say you have these check-in facilities and people are coming too much right throughout the day say they're coming 10 times a day instead of you know once every three days is there something you think should be in place for that where it's some type of mandatory help ever um i think at these drug checking facilities they'll we should have information educational information information about treatment so people have that information but in terms of them coming multiple times a day that's fine because if they're there that means that they're not somewhere else and we we get eyes on them and we can see that they are still with us and they're okay but if you're spent in all in it right and that you find that out then do you try to find the person that sold them the tainted drugs and have some type of charges for that no that's a great point so um absolutely you can figure out this right if if fentanyl is being put into the supply and passed off of something like heroin uh yeah then we can go at the unscrupulous people who are doing this you know like in a place like spain one of the things that they see is that their drug supply is a lot more pure when you have drug checking in the region because dealers know that the drugs are going to be tested and they know that if they have contaminants in their drugs they're gonna be out-competed and so they have to make sure their product is clean do you think they should go after the dealers in situations like that i i i don't think that they should go after them for arrests but i think they should be they should be let known that it should be let known that we know that you are attaining this supply and give them warnings and let people uh know to avoid those dealers at what point do you know you have a problem at what point do you know yeah like how many how many times is too many times no thank you man because we haven't talked about that we just talked about the term addiction so that's a great point so when i when i'm talking about the term addiction i'm really talking about the american psychiatric association sort of definition and that is uh when people have psychosocial disruptions in their functioning that is they are failing to meet these major obligations like uh they don't come to work uh they don't go to school they're not engaging in family um sort of functions or events that are important uh they're failing all of these sort of obligations and the person themselves are disturbed about uh not meeting these obligations because you can imagine um for example like you failed to make uh thanksgiving dinner this year and you failed to meet christmas dinner with your family and then you say well you are using cocaine or heroin and so you might have a problem it's like no my family are trump supporters so i ain't going and so that's not necessarily a problem if the person doesn't think it's a problem and so usually uh we want people to to recognize the problem themselves when you want to take it to porn if you miss work or you're missing appointments because you're at home watching porn they said that's the level to when you know you're addicted or duh yeah yeah y'all comparing a lot of stuff to heroin and crack that is really some false equivalence yeah i agree wait wait wait wait tell me why man because i think i could do heroin once today for the first time ever i could do something today right and literally blow off my family for the day right i could blow up my daughter's cheerleading my wife might have an appointment i may not go that one time i blew off my family's appointments does that mean i'm irresponsible does that mean i have a problem no no i mean you are so successful all of you all um that the likelihood of that happening uh i'll i'll actually stake my life on what if it does no no hold on man i'm just saying the likelihood of that happening is so low i mean you you you're ascribing these magical properties to heroin that just don't what if i do it once and die what if you do it once and die well if you do that because that's certainly a possibility right that's certainly especially because you don't know what's in it and there's no way to test right and you don't know what you're doing and i don't think you'll do that because you have demonstrated all of this responsibility in your life would you mean i wouldn't do the drug no i mean you wouldn't yeah you wouldn't do the drug without being knowledgeable about it without knowing everything you're doing that exactly i mean you would but that's the point of saying just say no that's fine if that works for you that's great man that's absolutely fine i guess i just want to know what makes you an addict i think the first time you use a drug is that you have a problem like that that's what i understand the first time i think it could be experimental once or twice and i don't feel like i had a problem i did like you did heroin you did heroin once or twice i think there's heroin and ecstasy you don't know what's in it no uh well i hope you didn't have heroin in your i mean honestly i didn't know what was in it it could have been no yeah it could have been but i hope but i did feel like that was a dangerous thing to do you know in retrospect unfortunately i didn't do it again because i don't know why you know what made me what made me decide not to do it i saw this hbo special a family on ecstasy what made you do it the first time um i just tried it can i can i help you i mean so if we think about ecstasy mdma it's an excellent drug for some people to enhance connections with their loved ones um to enhance empathy openness i mean all of those things you want in your relationship with the person with whom you are in love and so that's an understandable thing how can you enhance this relationship nothing's wrong with that people have drink alcohol to facilitate social interactions we don't frown on that so the question is why are we frowning on these other things i'm not frowning on the on the drugs i'm frowning on what the effects of the drugs can you talk about adderall right yes i'll talk about adderall so talk about the correlation with adderall caffeine and how they prescribe adderall really quickly to people and people also take that recreationally yeah so i did a study of comparing adderall with methamphetamine when you look at the chemical structures of these two drugs it's the same drug essentially the same drug and when we did the study on double-blind conditions what we found is that the drug produced nearly identical effects they are the same drug other people have found the same thing but yet the narratives around adderall versus methamphetamine they wildly differ and i'm saying that this is consistent with the narrative with heroin and morphing with ketamine and pcp all of these sorts of things the narrative wildly different but the data the evidence is not different but our narratives differ why is one legal and what is it methamphetamine is legal uh it's a schedule two drug you can prescribe it for adhd and obesity but most americans don't know that because of these narratives that pop up around methamphetamine that's probably legal because of the fact that white people abused them often because if it was if that was if that was the black community they'd be treating it like crack i think well uh yeah i agree uh we think about why cocaine is is is banned cocaine is banned because of the association in the early 1900s with black men and they said that they were raping white women and they were unaffected by 32 caliber bullets and so um all of these soldiers of course were not true but they banned cocaine along with opioids because of the their racism toward chinese they banned these drugs because of american racism not because of what the drugs actually did no matter what chinese people and white people hanging together in opium then that's that's exactly it yeah you're mad you read the book if if you sleep with uh if you sleep with another woman every now and then but you still have a functioning happy marriage is that cheating oh my god uh i don't know it depends on the person because you know some people are in open relationships but your wife knows nothing about it but you keep everything solid at home happy functioning marriage with every now and then you sleep with another woman you consider that cheating oh it is cheating yeah okay yeah the secrecy of it now now you all married does does your family indulge in in in that as well when you test it or no uh no i you know i can't like put my family on blast this is the arrows come at me you know um and so that's not you know the reason i ask is because you know if i was using drugs i'm sure my wife would probably have a problem with it even if i tried it once or twice because the fear that i could possibly be addictive so i'm just asking you know is your wife approving of it or does she understand or you know oh my wife completely supports me remember too i got 30 years of experience in doing this kind of thing this is not like some cat off the street you know i ain't new to this you know what i'm saying um so just saying this ain't a big deal this is just like you doing your radio show and talking about your show to somebody else who doesn't uh do this kind of thing i mean if i want to know something about broadcasting and how to be popular i'm coming to you all you all know this i don't know this this ain't my area what about um you said you've been using heroin for the past five years is what i read yeah so when did you first start like when did the first when did you first ever take a hit of heroin and why uh i it might have been now maybe 200 2015. uh uh like i said i wanted to know every aspect about what i do and it was pharmaceutical grade uh not in this country uh in a country where um drugs are decriminalized um you did it strictly for research purposes uh yeah yeah cause i wanted to make you feel when you first took that first hit uh just like i had taken something like percocet you know um oxycodone uh it was um uh nice and euphoric pleasant chilled anxiety go melts away scared you wasn't nervous you wasn't thinking i might die so i know what i'm doing one and i know it's pure uh and i know not to take a large dose and so that's it's not a difficult proposition you know uh oftentimes like like right now we are all encouraged to get the covet vaccine and we all will uh but you know the people who are getting the vaccine know a f a lot less about that then i know about heroin so you know so it's a it's more risky for me to take uh the vaccine than it is for me to take heroin that i know the purity and i know the dose uh that's not a risky proposition for me the problem is the average person doesn't have that knowledge right you're absolutely right that's what the real problem is is that you can do these things safely because you've studied it for 30 years you know it's pure you know where you're getting it from you know how much to take the average person doesn't know that he's coming from but you're coming from a place you're coming from a place of privilege because there's plenty of people in point disenfranchised areas who are gonna who can do heroin or any of these drugs and they will get addicted they're not doing it for reach they don't have the luxury of doing it for research purposes they're truly trying to escape something see that that's why i wrote the book i wrote the book so i could share as you point out my privilege with other people my knowledge with other people i wrote the book to try to help keep those people safe who will do this anyway you're absolutely right and you might not like this equivalency but i look at it like this how we always talk about like people will say music and heart is harmful to people because they talk about doing this and doing that now people are going to try it but this doesn't make me want to try heroin but you know what i mean i don't think anybody listening that would never want to do that would be like i'm about to go try some heroin right but there's people that are doing it that are like oh man i'm doing it let me do it safely that's right that's all i want um that's why i wrote the book and uh to try and help keep americans safe to try and help keep people safe who for whom i care about have you ever had a bad experience when you took anything tried something um uh uh i'm sure uh well i'll tell you uh you had withdrawals yeah yeah so there was a time when i wanted to know what opioid withdrawal was like so i took some opioids for uh consecutive weeks and abruptly discontinued and and i had withdrawal i planned it like uh so it would happen uh the night before a big talk so i could say that you know this is no big deal so you were able to quit cold turkey oh yeah yeah i did i know that's not everybody's story either though um you know uh there are people who use a lot more than i did in this little experiment and they would have a lot more difficult time you're absolutely right the withdrawal would have been a lot worse but i wasn't trying to um have the worst withdrawal i could have all i wanted to do was experience it and so i could see what it was like for myself that's the experience what it was like um the worst of that experience was the adapt abdominal pain it felt like it was stabbing that radiated throughout my body um and i have no interest in going through opioid withdrawal again i won't ever do that you know we did this when we did this detox me and envy did this detox and for two weeks we couldn't eat anything only thing we could have was like water and um one of my friends who did the detox she had like a withdrawal but it wasn't i don't know it's not like she was using i don't know what it was from but it was really bad it was like that like stomach pains chill shivering throwing up and everything she probably was taking a medication that you didn't know about and probably didn't consult her physician before starting this detox and that's probably not the smartest thing to do how does how does our environment influence drug usage or lack thereof uh our environment uh influences drug use quite a bit you can think about uh in a place where marijuana is illegal and um and people smoke young people and um somebody knocks at the door and then they think that uh it's it's the postman but they see a uniform and then they think it's the police that can trigger uh some paranoia that looks like schizophrenia in some people um that's an environmental sort of effect uh so the paranoia surrounding drug use in this society uh is important and it is it can be really harmful so the environment is one of the most important things when we think about uh where drugs are taken and uh their effects and so that's why it's important to for people to take if they're going to do this to take drugs in a comfortable safe environment do you enjoy drugs dr carhart do you enjoy drugs uh some drugs i do you know um that's otherwise uh why would i engage in an activity that i don't enjoy how does a university feel about this obviously you are an expert and you've done this for 30 years but now there's all this attention around it so what are they saying about it i'm just curious i don't know but you know like the attention that i have gotten has been inaccurate you know and they just been lied so if anybody reads my book they'll know that it's nonsense and and that wouldn't be any sort of reason for the university to be concerned so they haven't contacted you and been like what's going on here just because it has gotten a lot of attention yeah you have to understand too they check my record and they know that i have more than 100 scientific publications in this area they know that i have multiple books they know that um i'm one of the most responsible professors they have uh they know all of the work that i've done and so like the things that are being said in the press you don't get to be like me if you are doing that activity that they said i was doing in the press well let's bring this home um i agree on the fact that drugs should be legal i don't think people should be going to jail when they have an actual problem you know i i agree with that but um as far as like just encouraging people to do it recreationally just because they're going to do it anyway i'd rather personally get them some treatment personally i think he was saying that if people who are using it to be responsible not but he doesn't say i would rather get those people some treatment as opposed to encouraging them to just creating safe spaces yeah i agree i'll try to get them to shelter man you ain't gonna get an argument for me when you're talking about treatment man i mean i i'm with you uh but that ain't what i'm saying i'm not saying yo you should go out and do this i'm not saying that i'm i'm i'm saying that there are people doing this and how can i as a responsible professional help enhance the safety absolutely that's it and i would i would and i'm saying i would rather get those same people some help i'd rather get them clean and provide them opportunity as opposed to providing a safe space for them to continue to do drugs well you know i have tried that too and i mean with relatives and friends and they basically said like get the [ __ ] out of here you put pedantic [ __ ] you know and so uh now i can't uh they don't even talk to me so there's no way i can even help because you know they're gonna as adults people will do what they're going to do and so um i've learned as a parent you know my number one goal is to get my kids home right and so they will do their thing and i have to figure out how to help them do their thing as safely as possible and how to make sure they are good people that that's my goal as a parent if in 10 years we see you five years 10 years and you're you're strung out and you got a problem and you had to check into rehab and you're trying to get clean can we burn all your books yeah please do that but you know i'm 54 years old man uh i challenge you to find somebody my age in as good good as shape and as productive you know it's like the [ __ ] it's crazy like that you know people all have families that have crack crackheads or crackheads don't die about weed and things like that that affects everybody's family you know me personally i think the message is don't use drugs stay away from drugs not well test the drugs that you use them to see wait wait hold up hold up understand people aren't doing drugs and and and my job is not a moralist and i'm not gonna see here sit here and be like don't do that that's that's wrong that's what that's what's wrong with this country today when we're telling people telling adults how to behave when the original promise of the country is that you can live your life like you see fit as long as you don't bother other people that's the original promise that's what it means to be an american but a lot of times it bothers other people especially people now that's a different question if you're bothering other people and you're disrupting their ability to enjoy that original promise then we got a problem the original promise is [ __ ] though no it's not yes it is because think about who wrote the original promise how can that original promise ever have been true when we were in bondage when that original promise was wrong that's right thomas jefferson wrote the original promise now thomas jefferson probably being injustice for all his [ __ ] especially when people were enslaved hold up hold up hold up jefferson wrote the original promise and now and he probably plagiarized it from john locke you know but that's okay the point is jefferson was a horrible individual in many respects but that doesn't mean that this promise is a horrible promise that promise is what propelled people like martin luther king and all the rest of my heroes to move forward to fight for justice in this country to fight for liberty in this country that promise is what was driving those people who i hold in high esteem i agree but we have to know that we were not in mind when they kept those promises because in that same constitution we were labeled three fifths of a human trust me i know that and there's a critique of that in the book but that does not negate the promise we want them to keep up hold the promise absolutely and that's what i'm fighting for for people to uphold the promise because when they don't my people suffer all right well dr carhart we appreciate you for joining us this morning telling the title of your book one more time please drug use for grown-ups chasing liberty in the land of fear it was a great conversation thank you for having me man i really appreciate it i have no problem um exchanging ideas even if we don't agree on on everything i really appreciate it you you don't know how much it means but don't you overdose cause i swear to god if you overdose i'm gonna give you the greatest donkey of the day i have ever written in my life i promise you okay yo that's a bat my man yeah all right dr carl hart mr breakfast club good morning [Music] foreign [Music] you

Channel: Breakfast Club Power 105.1 FM

Views: 297,903

Keywords: the breakfast club, breakfast club, power1051, celebrity news, radio, video, interview, angela yee, charlamagne tha god, dj envy

Id: 3xAwJFKQ7Qs

Length: 58min 39sec (3519 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 26 2021