PSYCHOACTIVE

About the show

Latest episodes

• Steve Rolles on Legalizing Drugs

  January 26, 2023 · 1 hr 32 min

  The notion of legalizing any sort of illicit drug seemed preposterous to most people just twenty years ago. Now cannabis is being legalized in a growing number of states and countries, psychedelic legalization is proceeding much faster…

• Charley & Shelley Wininger On Healthy Aging & Sex with MDMA

  January 19, 2023 · 1 hr 4 min

  It ain’t easy getting old but the right drugs, used in the right ways, can help. Charley Wininger is a psychotherapist, called “The Love Doctor,” who recently authored of Listening to Ecstasy: The Transformative Power of MDMA. I talked…

• Paul Gootenberg on the Global History of Drugs

  January 12, 2023 · 1 hr 2 min

  There’s more or less never been a drug free society in human history but scholarly examination of the history of psychoactive drugs was surprisingly sparce until just a few decades ago. Paul Gootenberg is a distinguished professor of…

• Dennis McKenna on The Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss

  January 5, 2023 · 1 hr 1 min

  The renowned ethnopharmacologist and research pharmacognosist, Dennis McKenna, wrote "The Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss: My Life with Terence McKenna," ten years ago. That book is being republished, with a new afterword by Dennis…

• Neil Carrier on Khat

  December 29, 2022 · 1 hr 4 min

  I’ve long been fascinated by khat, the psychoactive plant that is legal and consumed widely in Yemen and the Horn of Africa (Somalia, Ethiopia and Djibouti) but that was criminalized in recent decades in the United States, Europe and other…

• Bonus episode: Psychedelic Confessions - Speaking Personally

  December 22, 2022 · 1 hr 10 min

  I’m often a guest on other podcasts. Among the conversations I most enjoyed, and which many listeners may find particularly interesting, was with Giancarlo Canavesio on his Mangu.TV Podcast. He asked me to be his first guest in a series…

• Lisa McGirr on Alcohol Prohibition and the Rise of the American State

  December 15, 2022 · 1 hr 6 min

  The Prohibition era (1920-33) plays a far more significant role in U.S. history than is commonly assumed. Yes, it clearly failed in its objectives. And, yes, the assumptions that led to the rapid enactment of the 18th Amendment were…

• Gabor Maté on Trauma and the Myth of Normal

  December 8, 2022 · 57 min

  “Our culture’s skewed idea of normality,” says the well known physician and author, Dr. Gabor Maté, “is the single biggest impediment to fostering a healthier world, even keeping us from acting on what we already know.” Some years ago, his…