The Drug Science Podcast

Dennis Jon McKenna is an American ethnopharmacologist, research pharmacognosist, lecturer and author. He received his doctorate in botanical sciences from the University of British Columbia and completed post-doctoral research fellowships in the National Institute of Mental Health and in the Department of Neurology at Stanford University School of Medicine. 

His research has included the pharmacology, botany, and chemistry of ayahuasca and oo-koo-hé, the subjects of his master's thesis. He has also conducted extensive fieldwork in the Peruvian, Colombian, and Brazilian Amazon. Having authored numerous scientific articles and books, McKenna’s work led to the development of natural products for Aveda Corporation as well as greater awareness of natural products and medicines. Additionally, together with his brother Terence McKenna and Jeremy Bigwood, he developed a technique for cultivating psilocybin mushrooms, and published what they had learned in a book Psilocybin - Magic Mushroom Grower’s Guide.

With that immense experience and knowledge of psychedelics, Dennis McKenna is a founding board member and the director of ethnopharmacology at the Heffter Research Institute, A non-profit which investigates the potential medicinal uses of these substances.

Tune in to this week’s episode to find out about the true significance of ethnopharmacology and a conference organised by Dennis that you’ll be able to stream online very soon!

ETHNOPHARMACOLOGIC SEARCH FOR PSYCHOACTIVE DRUGS

Dennis McKenna

ESPD 50

National Institute of Mental Health

Alexander Shulgin

Andrew Weil

Ethnopharmacologic Search for Psychoactive Drugs

Ethnopharmacology

Coca

Cody Swift

COMPASS psilocybin trial

Psilocybin

ESPD 55

“Sea DMT” Tryptamine in Sea Sponges

New York Times DMT toad article 

How to Change your Mind by Michael Pollan

National Institutes of Health (NIH)

Poison arrow frogs

Bufotenin

Serotonin receptors

Ayahuasca

Autoradiography

LSD

Salvinorin

Kappa opioid receptor

ICCERS - The International Centre for Ethnobotanical Education, Research, and Service

Iboga

Ayahuasca tourism

Mckenna’s mission

DMT: The Spirit Molecule (documentary)

ESPD55.com

Psilocybin Pulse Dosing

Microdosing

Oregon Drug Decriminalization

Set and setting

Serotonin

Dopamine

Default mode network

Robin Carhart-Harris

5-HT2a receptor

★ Support this podcast ★

This week we’re talking about ketamine with Professor Celia Morgan, a Professor of Psychopharmacology at the University of Exeter and the academic lead for Exeter Translational Addiction Partnership (ETAP) and Ketamine for Reduction of Alcoholic Relapse (KARE). Professor Morgan is interested in the effects of drugs and alcohol on the brain and behaviour. Her research focuses on examining both the benefits and side effects of recreational drugs on cognition, mental health and neurobiology. Through behavioural, neuroimaging studies and clinical trials, she has investigated the potentially therapeutic sides of controlled substances in clinical trials aimed at the treatment of addiction and in particularly looking at drugs such as ketamine and MDMA in combination with psychological therapies. 

Tune into this week's episode to find out all about ketamine and how cycling around squats in North London can be part of scientific research... 

★ Support this podcast ★

Dr Watts is a clinical psychologist, a mother, and a nature lover. Her work as the Clinical Lead for Imperial College London’s psilocybin trial, and subsequent role as the Clinical Director at Synthesis Institute, have made her one of the most prominent voices and minds in the field of psychedelic research. Dr Watts builds tools and structures to foster connectedness after psychedelic experiences, finding inspiration for their design from nature. The most recent of which is the integration community she’s created - ACER Integration.

While working in clinical practice Rosalind has developed a psychedelic therapy model she coined ACE, which stands for, ‘Accept, Connect, Embody’. Based on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and the ‘Psychological Flexibility Model’, she mapped the journey that individuals under the influence of a psychedelic go through when they dive into their experience, extract the meaningful lessons to heal, and then integrate and embody them afterwards. Her qualitative research, exploring the perspectives of participants in several psychedelic research studies, gave rise to her interest in the common theme of ‘connectedness to Self, others, and the world’ as an essential aspect of psychedelic treatment. With that patient-centred attitude, she gives insightful talks focusing on the patients’ perspective on the psychedelic journey as a part of the healing process.

Listen to the podcast to learn about the beauty and the nuances of psychedelic experience and healing.

Join Dr Watts for the inaugural launch of ACER Integration here -> https://dandelion.earth/events/622233b3025fc50011891f2e 
Learn more about ACER Integration -> https://www.drrosalindwatts.com/ 

Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT)

Psychedelic therapy

Forensic psychology

The Portman Clinic

Psychoanalysis

Psychedelic use and recidivism

Ayahuasca

Michael Pollan

Robin Carhart-Harris

MDMA

Mendel Kaelen

Kintsugi

Psilocybin

Bad trip

William A. Richards (Bill)

Abraham Maslow

Carl Jung

Acceptance and Commitment therapy (ACT)

Dialectical behaviour therapy

Psychological flexibility

Synthesis Institute

Island (Huxley novel)

Journal of Humanistic Psychology

★ Support this podcast ★

Professor Dame Carol Black studied history at Bristol University, then worked as a schoolteacher, however, in 1965 Black enrolled as a mature student to study medicine which she graduated from at the age of 30.

During her career, she’s been an advisor for the government on issues such as the relationship between work and health. She’d issue reports regarding sick leaves due to physical and mental health, including drug addictions.

In 2019 Professor Dame Carol Black was appointed to lead a major 2-part review that looked into the relationship between drugs and violence but also treatment, recovery and prevention of drug addictions.

Listen to this week’s episode to hear the perspective of a dedicated physician but also a government advisor on the approach to both treatment and social implications of drug addictions.

Cicely Saunders

Scleroderma

Royal College of Physicians

Newnham College

Review of drugs: phase two report

Methadone

Individual placement and support

Sajid Javid

Matt Hancock

National Treatment Agency of Substance Misuse (NTA)

★ Support this podcast ★

Ethan Nadelmann studied at Harvard University and London School of Economics and was a lecturer at Princeton University. While at Princeton, Nadelmann’s work focused on drug policy, attracting considerable attention with his articles in Science, Foreign Affairs, National Review and many others. He also formed the Princeton Working Group on the Future of Drug Use and Alternatives to Drug Prohibition. 

In mid-90s Nadelmann founded the Lindesmith Center, a drug policy institute that six years later became the Drug Policy Alliance, a group for drug policies "grounded in science, compassion, health and human rights.” As the Executive Director of the organisation, Nadelmann advocates for the application of harm reduction principles to minimize the public health effects of the War on Drugs. 

In 2021 he launched Psychoactive, a podcast on drug policy, drug use, and drugs research featuring Nadelmann interviewing leading figures in current debates on drugs such as head of the US National Institute of Drug Abuse Nora Volkow, authors Michael Pollan and Andrew Weil. 

What’s the future of drug policies? Will tobacco become the next substance politicians will go to war against? Be sure to tune in to find out! 

McGill University

Cannabis

Hash

Magic Mushrooms (Psilocybin)

Cops Across Borders 

DEA

Andrew Weil 

Alexander “Sasha” Shulgin 

Lester Grinspoon 

Harry Levine 

Jeffrey Fagan 

Tobacco (Nicotine) 

Kenneth Warner 

Sylvia Law  

Arnold Trebach 

National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws 

Kevin Zeese 

War on Drugs 

George Soros 

Foreign Policy magazine 

Open Society Foundations 

Lindesmith center 

Alfred Lindesmith 

Drug Policy Alliance 

International Harm Reduction Development Program (IHRD)
 

Ballot initiative 

Brompton cocktail 

The Heroin Solution by Arnold S. Trebach 

Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 

Marjorie “Mo” Mowlam 

Keith Hellawell 

Heroin-assisted treatment 

Partnership for a Drug-Free America 

Jesse Jackson 

Charles Rangel 

Chuck Schumer 

The Beckley Foundation 

Fentanyl 

Tobacco Harm Reduction 

Smoking Cessation and Psilocybin 

★ Support this podcast ★

James Fadiman is a true man of many talents. Wikipedia calls him an ‘American writer’, but actually, he’s worked in multiple fields, from psychology, through to IT and, finally, to psychedelic research.

He studied Psychology at Harvard University and obtained a PhD from Stanford University. As a graduate student at Stanford, Fadiman was Stewart Brand's LSD guide on Brand's first LSD trip, at Myron Stolaroff's International Foundation for Advanced Study in Menlo Park, California.

He was also part of the team in the psychedelics in problem-solving experiment at the International Foundation for Advanced Study, which was abruptly halted in 1966 together with all the remarkable psychedelic research that was happening in the US.

Additionally, Fadiman worked at Stanford's Augmentation Research Center, a division that did research on networked computing. What did the technological research group need a psychologist in their team for? How are psychedelics and technological advances interconnected? And finally, what happens when you give psychedelics to a group of scientists? Listen to this week’s episode to find out!

Richard Alpert (Baba Ram Dass)

Psilocybin

Timothy Leary

Aldous Huxley

International Foundation for Advanced Study

Myron Stolaroff

LSD

Brandeis University

Willis Harman

PTSD

Set and setting

Mescaline 

Doug Engelbart

The Mother of All Demos

Nixon’s War on drugs

Abraham Maslow

Microdosing

microdosingpsychedelics.com 

FDA

Double-blind studies

Lupus

★ Support this podcast ★

If you were told you had months, weeks or even days left to live...would you care what the law said about consuming psychoactive substances? This week’s episode features Spencer Hawkswell the CEO of TheraPsil - a non-profit coalition dedicated to helping Canadians in medical need access legal, psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy to treat end-of-life distress. 

Spencer believes that responsible drug policy requires effective organization and leadership and is dedicated to bringing together the experts and advocates, to facilitate change that results in increased access to compassionate care, harm reduction, and treatment options for those in need.

Tune in to this week’s episode to hear how the Land of Maple Leaf implements its patient-centred approach in healthcare. What happened in the UK? Are there lessons to be learnt from Canada? 

Psilocybin

Cannabis

Trigeminal neuralgia 

Patty Hajdu

Jean-Yves Duclos

Health Canada

Fentanyl 

Clonazepam 

Section 56 Exemption 

Roland R. Griffiths

Mathew W. Johnson

Robin Carhart-Harris

Anthony P. Bossis

Ketamine

Holotropic breathwork

Cluster headache

ADHD

Acid (LSD)

Medical assistance in dying

Letter to Minister Duclos

Re: Proposed Regulations for Medical Access to Psilocybin

★ Support this podcast ★

This week’s episode features Paul Glue, professor of Psychiatry at the Dunedin School of Medicine, University of Otago, New Zealand.

With a vast experience in both academia and pharmaceutical industry, Paul Glue's research focuses on clinical and basic science to investigate the pharmacology of drug treatments in psychiatry and the disease mechanisms of neurological and psychiatric disorders. He is also interested in psychopharmacology and the development of novel therapeutics for affective disorders. One of these novel substances that have dominated his career is ketamine for treatment-resistant depression. 

Tune in to this episode to listen to a fascinating conversation between two great scientists about, well… Drug Science.

Ketamine

Ibogaine

National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism

Microdialysis

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT)

NMDA glutamate receptor

Overexcitement and disinhibition
 Dynamic Neurotransmitter Interactions in Alcohol Withdrawal by Paul Glue and David Nutt 

Methamphetamine 

John Krystal

Treatment-resistant depression

Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy

Montgomery-Asberg Depression Rating Scale

Douglas Pharmaceuticals

Plasma brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and response to ketamine in treatment-resistant depression

Mechanisms of ketamine action as an antidepressant - P Zanos, T D Gould

Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency

Good manufacturing practice (GMP)

Paroxetine 

QT interval 

The Anti-Addiction Drug Ibogaine and the Heart: A Delicate Relation

Noribogaine

Prozac

Psychedelics Promote Structural and Functional Neural Plasticity - Ly et al.

Serotonin 2a receptor

★ Support this podcast ★

Cory Doctorow is a Canadian-British citizen of Eastern European Jewish descent and, frankly, it is no less difficult to grasp his vast interests and points of expertise than his family roots. After attending four universities without obtaining a degree, Cory’s career started with co-founding free software P2P company called OpenCola and selling it to the Open Text Corporation after four years. Later Doctorow relocated  to London and worked as European Affairs Coordinator for the Electronic Frontier Foundation helping to establish the Open Rights Group, before leaving the EFF to pursue both fiction and non-fiction writing full-time. 

He is also an activist in favour of liberalising copyright laws and a proponent of the Creative Commons organization, using some of their licences for his books. Some common themes of his work include digital rights management, file sharing, and post-scarcity economics.

Academically, he was named the 2006–2007 Canadian Fulbright Chair for Public Diplomacy at the USC Center on Public Diplomacy, and in 2009, Doctorow became the first Independent Studies Scholar in Virtual Residence at the University of Waterloo in Ontario. Doctorow is also a Visiting Professor at the Open University in the United Kingdom. In 2012 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from The Open University.

If you want to find out how data surveillance, AI, and monopolization can be connected to drug policy, be sure to tune in to this episode!

Blog: www.pluralistic.net 

Books: www.craphound.com/shop 

Podcast: www.craphound.com/podcast   

Newsletter: https://mail.flarn.com/mailman/listinfo/plura-list/

Medium: https://doctorow.medium.com/

RSS: https://pluralistic.net/feed/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/doctorow

Drugs without the hot air: Making Sense of Legal and Illegal Drugs - without the hot air

“Nutsack”

Harm reduction

Selective enforcement

Electronic frontier foundation

Association for Computing Machinery

Statement on principles for the development and deployment of equitable, private, and secure remote test administration systems.

Bruce Alexander

Danah Boyd

Network effect

Switching Costs

★ Support this podcast ★

Niamh Eastwood is the executive director of Release, the national centre offering legal services for drug users.  

She started at Release as a legal advisor. Now, having worked in drug policy for the last fifteen years she’s co-authored many of Release’s advice booklets and drug policy related papers including ’The Colour of Injustice: 'Race', Drugs and Law Enforcement in England and Wales’. One of the aspects of drug laws she’s most passionate about is how disproportionately they affect the most vulnerable in society. 

Accordingly, she’s advocating for drug policy reform in the UK by giving talks and lectures, contributing to drug policy journals and publications as well as drafting many of Release's briefings for parliamentarians and policy makers. 

Release 

The Numbers in Black and White: Ethnic Disparities in the Policing and Prosecution of Drug Offences in England and Wales 

MDMA (Ecstasy)  

Cannabis 

Drug harms in the UK: a multicriteria decision analysis 

Heroin 

Police told not to use smell of cannabis in stop and search amid racism allegations  

Amber Marks 

Drug Detection Dogs and the Growth of Olfactory Surveillance: Beyond the Rule of Law? 

Cocaine 

Psychedelics 

Drug Action Against Drugs 

Release’s playing cards 

★ Support this podcast ★

In this week’s episode we'll meet Dr Mendel Kaelen, CEO of Wavepaths, a London-based company researching and developing methods for music-assisted psychotherapy. 

Prior to Wavepaths, Dr Kaelen worked as a PhD student and post-doctoral neuroscientist at Imperial College London with a special focus of the role of music in psychedelic therapy. Combining his passion to both music and neuroscience he advocates for the therapeutic use of music in talks and publications that has been featured in Nature News, San Francisco Chronicles, Vice Motherboard, Rolling Stone, TEDx and others.

Tune in to this week’s episode to gain some insight on how music actually affects our brains and hence ourselves. 

Ketamine

Psychedelics

Out of body experience 

Magic mushrooms

Robin Carhart-Harris

Beckley Foundation

Amanda Feilding

Ayahuasca

LSD

Peyote

Helen Bonny

Insight (psychology)

Peak experience

Parahippocampus

Visual cortex

Brocas area (inferior frontal gyrus)

Planum temporale

Timbre

Default mode network

The entropic brain

Hyper-connectivity in the brain under specific drugs

Precuneus 

Serotonin 2a receptor

Pyramidal neurons

Predictive coding

Wavepaths

Michael Pollan 

Brian Eno

Grateful Dead

Acid Test

Buchla synthesizers

★ Support this podcast ★

Dan Carden is a British Labour Party politician serving as the MP for Liverpool Walton since 2017. 

A self-proclaimed “proud Scouser”, Carden highlights his close relationship with Liverpool’s working class and recalls his father being the shop steward during the Liverpool dockers’ dispute. From his early years he cared deeply for his community, standing on picket lines as a young boy and then going into politics. 

He studied International Relations at the London School of Economics where he also took the position of Chair of the University Labour Club. In his 20s however, while clearly being on a path to a brilliant career in politics, Carden developed a drinking problem. Now, he talks openly about this difficult experience as it brought into light the gaps in support for alcohol users in the UK. Carden therefore, advocates for changes in the logistics behind treating alcohol addiction as well as for ending the stigma affecting its sufferers. 

In this week’s episode Dan Carden and Professor, David Nutt will be discussing how we can change the way we deal with problematic alcohol use for the better.

Why is alcohol consumption so normalised despite being far more dangerous than multiple illegal drugs? Why don’t we talk more openly about the harms from alcohol?

Tune in to the episode to find out!

'Choose to live': Dan Carden's emotional speech about alcohol addiction

Unite

Liverpool dockers’ dispute

Binge drinking

Insight (psychiatry)

★ Support this podcast ★

Professor Mike Barnes is a consultant neurologist and an expert cannabis physician. He dedicated his career to the development of neurological rehabilitation as well as medical cannabis awareness and education.

After holding multiple senior NHS management positions, chairing Neurological Rehabilitation in the UK and years of clinical practice, professor Barnes brings his expertise to educate clinicians and patients about the benefits of medicinal cannabis and CBD wellness. He also is an advocate for a sensible and robust approach to medical cannabis prescribing and industry growth in the UK. 

In his recent discussion paper entitled “Ten Recommendations for Government” he explores what Government can do to address what is currently a great missed opportunity for the country to secure the economic and patient benefits of a new approach to medical cannabis and CBD well-being products.

Professor Nutt and professor Barnes will be talking about medical cannabis. Should our future doctors obtain proper education on how to use botanical medicines? Should we change the way we think about drugs and treatments?

Tune into this week’s episode to find out!

Interested in learning more about Project Twenty21? Find out more about the project here

How to prescribe medical cannabis?

Learn more about medical cannabis 

Download medical cannabis resources

Professor David Nutt, live in London

Ten Recommendations for Government - Discussion Paper - UK Medical Cannabis and CBD Market

Cannabis

Multiple sclerosis

Hypobaric oxygen therapy

Neurological rehabilitation

World Federation for NeuroRehabilitation

Botox

Spasticity

Motor neurone disease

Cannabidiol (CBD)

Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC)

GW pharmaceuticals

Sativex

Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA)

PCDH19 Epilepsy

Schedule 1 drugs

Medical Cannabis Clinicians Society

Maple Tree Consultants

Subarachnoid hemorrhage

★ Support this podcast ★

Norman Baker, described by our host, professor Nutt, as “the first and last truly honest politician” is a Liberal Democrat and former MP for Lewes in East Sussex. Following three years as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Department of Transport he was promoted to Minister of State at the Home Office in 2013. However, rejection of many of his progressive suggestions including ones on drug policy e.g. legal use of medical cannabis for pain relief in cancer and multiple sclerosis patients, lead to his resignation from this position in 2014. Now, he advises the campaign for better transport in the UK and makes his voice heard by having authored multiple books including his autobiography “Against the Grain”. Tune in to this week’s episode to learn more about his interesting insights to UK politics and especially to UK’s drug policies.

Professor David Nutt, live in London

Against the grain

Drug decriminalization in Portugal

Drug consumption rooms in Denmark

Safe injection facilities

Cannabis 

Home office

Jeremy Hunt

SpAD - Special adviser

Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill

Green industrial revolution

David Kelly

… And What Do You Do?

Misuse of Drugs Act 1971

★ Support this podcast ★

Dr Margaret Ross is a Senior Clinical Psychologist and Psychotherapist from Melbourne, Australia and the Chief Principal Investigator for Australia’s first psilocybin assisted psychotherapy study. 

Throughout her career, her main focus has been youth mental health and more recently cancer and palliative care. Following working as a research psychologist and clinical trial coordinator for The University of Melbourne and Orygen Youth Health, Margaret decided to move into researching alternatives for her oncology patients who were terrified of dying and experiencing existential distress in the face of their diagnosis.

After seeing the compelling results of US-based research into the use of psilocybin assisted therapy for patients with existential distress in the face of terminal cancer, she decided to set on a fight so that similar treatments would soon become an option within Australia.

Have a listen to this week’s episode in which professor Nutt and Dr Ross talk about the land of Golden Wattle - a DMT-rich plant - fighting for its Drug policies being based on Science.

Recent Australian TGA Independent Expert Panel on MDMA and psilocybin consultation 

Psilocybin

Randomized controlled trial (RCT)

Open label dose

Trial of Psilocybin versus Escitalopram for Depression

Drug Scheduling in the UK

Standard for the Uniform Scheduling of Medicines and Poisons (Australia)

National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) 

Entheogens

Golden Wattle

DMT

Dr Ben Sessa 

Ketamine

Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA)

Pitjantjatjara

LSD

★ Support this podcast ★

Theresa Marteau is a British health psychologist, professor, and director of the Behaviour and Health Research Unit at the University of Cambridge. Her initial research concerned communicating risk information and found out that people usually don’t change their behaviours despite receiving any form of information about preventable diseases like type 2 diabetes or certain types of cancer. Hence, she decided to redirect her focus on the non-conscious rather than conscious processes that could improve people’s health behaviours e.g. reducing glass size to reduce alcohol consumption. Through that research, she’s demonstrated that it is the change in government policies or population-level interventions - putting nudge theory into practice - that present a potential for the improvement in our population’s health. For these notable findings and contributions she was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2017 Queen's Birthday Honours List.

Nudge theory

Social psychology

Milgram experiment

Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View by Stanley Milgram

Spatial, temporal, and demographic patterns in prevalence of smoking tobacco use and attributable disease burden in 204 countries and territories, 1990–2019: a systematic analysis from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019

Impact of bottle size on in-home consumption of wine: feasibility and acceptability randomised cross-over study

Shopper lab

Impact of minimum unit pricing on alcohol purchases in Scotland and Wales: controlled interrupted time series analyses

★ Support this podcast ★

Today’s episode features Dr Peter Gasser, the president of the Swiss Medical Society for Psycholytic Therapy.

Professor Nutt and Dr Gasser talk about the rather unusual and innovative attitude to psychedelic research in Switzerland. 

How can Britain learn from the Swiss? What are the drug policies in the Albert Hofmann’s - the discoverer of LSD - country?

Dr Peter Gasser is a Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist and the President of the Swiss Medical Society for Psycholytic Therapy since 1997. After LSD was criminalized worldwide he was the first person to conduct research on psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. Additionally, he holds a permission for and provides treatment using MDMA and LSD.

MDMA

LSD

Swiss Medical Society for Psycholytic Therapy

International Symposium on the Occasion of the 100th Birthday of Albert Hofmann

Albert Hofmann

Psilocybin

Post-traumatic stress disorder

MAPS - Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies

War on drugs - US political campaign 

The Psychedelic Renaissance

Pilot study on LSD-Assisted Psychotherapy for Anxiety Associated With Life-threatening Diseases

End of life anxiety 

Obsessive-compulsive disorder

Cluster headache

Psycholytic therapy with MDMA and LSD in Switzerland - MAPS article 

★ Support this podcast ★

This week on the Drug Science podcast, Professor Deborah Mash tells us about Ibogaine. A hallucinogenic compound derived from the roots of a West African shrub, sometimes used as a treatment for heroin or cocaine addiction.

Professor Mash found herself trying to reverse the damage that cocaine had caused on the streets of Miami, Florida. To explore new and novel therapies, she took a flight to Amsterdam to examine whether a West African shrub could be cure to cocaine and heroin dependency.  Since that fateful trip, she’s been at the forefront of Ibogaine and Noribogaine research in the US. Now, she’s bringing that research to the UK for a landmark Ibogaine study in Manchester, England. Could Ibogaine be one of the most clinically significant advances in addiction medicine of the 21st century? 

Deborah Mash is one of the world's foremost experts on the hallucinogenic drug ibogaine. She is the CEO and Founder of DemeRx Inc., a clinical-stage drug development company advancing ibogaine and its active metabolite noribogaine for the treatment of opioid use disorder. DemeRx has partnered with ATAI Life Sciences -- a global biotech platform with a special focus on psychedelic medicine -- to develop ibogaine for those suffering from opioid use disorder. Building on the extensive human data available around ibogaine, DemeRx and ATAI will submit Clinical Trial Applications for a Phase II study in opioid-dependent patients. This joint venture will also develop screening procedures, dosing guidelines, and best practices for opioid withdrawal management to ensure patient safety.

Enrol to the MAC Ibogaine Clinical trial 

DemeRx

Miami’s drug war 

Brain Endowment Bank

National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)

Cocaethylene

Drug Free America 

Howard Lotsof

Noribogaine

Rick Doblin 

Cerebellar Toxicity 

Buprenorphine 

U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

Psilocybin

MAC Manchester

Alexander Shulgin  

Allopregnanolone (Brexanolone)

★ Support this podcast ★

In this episode of the Drug Science Podcast, world-renowned author Michael Pollan and Prof David Nutt discuss gardening.

Of course, this being the Drug Science podcast, there’s no mention of sunflowers or strawberries. Instead, these two icons of psychopharmacology discuss the cultivation and everything else you might want to know about psychoactive plants with a particular focus on Opium, Caffeine and Mescaline.

Michael Pollan, a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine since 1987, Professor of Journalism at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism and Director of the Knight Program in Science and Environmental Journalism, is one of the nation’s most influential writers and scientific and environmental investigative journalists. His many award-winning, best-selling books include: The Botany of Desire; The Omnivore’s Dilemma; In Defense of Food; and, most recently, How to Change Your Mind.

Who is Michael Pollan? 

Michael Pollan, a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine since 1987, Professor of Journalism at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism and Director of the Knight Program in Science and Environmental Journalism, is one of the nation’s most influential writers and scientific and environmental investigative journalists. His many award-winning, best-selling books include: The Botany of Desire; The Omnivore’s Dilemma; In Defense of Food; and, most recently, How to Change Your Mind.

Michael Pollan’s latest book -> This is your mind on plants

How to change your mind 

Opium 

Caffeine 

Mescaline

Jim Hogshire

Papaver Somniferum

Harper’s magazine

John ‘Rick’ MacArthur

Purdue Pharma Oxycontin

Bentley compounds 

Bees and Caffeine

Roland Griffiths Caffeine research

The enlightenment coffeehouses 

Voltaire

Denis Diderot

Honoré de Balzac

Roland Griffiths

Peyote 

Aldous Huxley The Doors of Perception  

American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978

San Pedro

Muscimol

Ibotenic Acid 

★ Support this podcast ★

This week’s episode features Doctor Sheila Vakharia and Professor Alex Stevens, together with Professor Nutt they will be talking about decriminalization and drug policies in the US and the UK. Has both countries’ drug policies arisen from colonialism and social class hierarchy? What are the consequences of the policies that can be witnessed today? Are there any reasons for drug criminalisation? 

Sheila P Vakharia, PhD is Deputy Director of the Department of Research and Academic Engagement for the Drug Policy Alliance, a US organisation advocating for decriminalisation of drug use. Prior to joining DPA, Dr. Vakharia was an Assistant Professor of Social Work at Long Island University, and had also worked as a clinical social worker in both abstinence-only and harm reduction settings. Her research interests include harm reduction therapy, drug policy reform, drug user stigma, overdose prevention, and social work education. She is currently on the Board of Directors of HAMS Harm Reduction Network and Filter magazine. She has written op-eds for the Philadelphia Inquirer on the overdose crisis and NY Daily News on drug-induced homicide laws and stimulants.

Professor Alex Stevens has worked on issues of drugs, crime and health in the voluntary sector, as an academic researcher and as an adviser to the UK government. He has published extensively on these issues, with a focus on the sociology of drugs and crime, on risk behaviours by young people, on the use of evidence in policy and on quasi-compulsory drug treatment. His published works include a book on ‘Drugs, Crime and Public Health‘, studies of decriminalisation of drugs in Portugal, of the right to use drugs, on gangs and on the ethnography of policy making.

Professor Stevens’ interest in drugs and crime dates back to his time working with UK charity Prisoners Abroad, which provides advice and information to British prisoners held in foreign prisons, and as European project manager and coordinator of the European Network of Drug and HIV/AIDS Services in Prison for Cranstoun Drugs Services.

Drug Policy Alliance

War on drugs

Cannabis

Harm reduction

Decriminalization in Oregon

Crack house statute legal definition

An article about what this statute actually means 

HIV crisis in the 1980s

Opium Wars

Pharmacy Act 1868

Opioids

Doctor shopping

Heroin

Metamphetamine

Fentanyl

Methadone

Buprenorphine

Uprooting the Drug War

★ Support this podcast ★