🎙️ JLS Podcast: Hosted by William Leonard Pickard

🚀 About Carl Hart
Carl Hart is a neuroscientist, professor, and outspoken advocate for evidence-based drug policy and human autonomy. A former Air Force serviceman who rose to become a leading researcher at Columbia University, Hart has dedicated his career to challenging misinformation, dismantling stigma, and defending the dignity and rights of individuals who use psychoactive substances.

🧠 From Miami to Neuroscience: A Life Shaped by Systems
Hart’s journey—from growing up in Miami to joining the Air Force and eventually entering the world of neuroscience—reveals how structural forces shape opportunity. His work insists that understanding drugs requires understanding the brain, but also understanding society—how narratives, politics, and inequality influence the way we interpret both.

⚖️ Debunking the “Brain Disease” Model of Addiction
Hart directly challenges the dominant claim that addiction is a chronic brain disease. He argues that this narrative is largely political, not scientific, and can be harmful—encouraging fatalism while limiting humane and effective treatment approaches. Instead, he emphasizes data showing that most people recover and that addiction cannot be diagnosed from brain scans alone.

🌿 Responsible Use, Bodily Autonomy, and Honesty
Through his book Drug Use for Grown-Ups, Hart publicly acknowledges his own responsible use of illicit substances—an act he frames not as radical, but as simple honesty. His goal is to normalize the reality that many adults use psychoactive substances responsibly, just as they engage in other forms of leisure, and to reclaim the right to bodily autonomy.

🔬 What the Science Actually Shows
Across major research institutions, Hart explains, substances like heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, and cannabis are administered to human participants in controlled studies every day. The resulting data reveal that the predominant effects are often positive—improvements in mood, cognition, and alertness—while harms are typically linked to social context, adulterated supply, or preexisting conditions, not the drugs themselves.

🛑 Stigma, Policy, and the Real Sources of Harm
Hart emphasizes that many harms associated with drugs arise not from chemistry but from prohibition: contaminated supply chains, criminalization, and lack of social support. He points to real-world harm reduction efforts—like community drug-checking initiatives—as compassionate, evidence-based solutions that save lives.

🌍 Freedom, Civil Liberties, and a Global Perspective
Through travel and reflection, Hart frames drug policy as part of a broader conversation about human rights and civil liberties. He highlights places like Portugal—where decriminalization and public health approaches allow individuals to exist without fear—as glimpses of what a freer and more humane future could look like.

😂 Humor, Humanity, and the Absurdity of the Drug War
From research participants expressing pride in government-grown cannabis to border agents suspicious of his academic credentials, Hart shares stories that reveal the strange contradictions embedded in modern drug policy—where stigma, fear, and misinformation often collide with reality.

💬 Empathy as a Superpower
If given a superpower, Hart says he would give people the ability to feel each other’s suffering as their own. For him, empathy—not punishment—is the foundation of a just and compassionate society.

🎶 The Soundtrack of Liberation
If his life had a soundtrack, Hart says it would be Nina Simone—songs of liberation, dignity, and the ongoing journey toward freedom.

🏆 Final Takeaways
A bold, clear-eyed conversation that reframes drugs not as moral failings or medical myths—but as human experienc

Support the show

🎙️ JLS Podcast: Hosted by William Leonard Pickard

🚀 About Tom Feegel
Tom Feegel is the co-founder (with Tali Eisenberg) of BEOND Ibogaine Clinic in Cancún, a medically rigorous program at the forefront of ibogaine-based treatment. Unlike lab-based research or policy debates, Feegel works directly with patients—building real-world protocols for safety, ethics, and long-term healing.

🫀 Safety, Medicine, and Ethical Care
Feegel details BEOND’s intensive medical framework, including physician-led screening, cardiac monitoring, repeat diagnostics, and strict eligibility standards. The conversation offers a rare look into how ibogaine can be administered responsibly, emphasizing transparency, patient education, and risk mitigation.

🧠 Ibogaine, Neuroplasticity, and Cognitive Renewal
Moving beyond addiction alone, Pickard and Feegel explore ibogaine’s potential to enhance cognition, restore neural pathways, and support executive function. Drawing on clinical observation and emerging research, they discuss ibogaine’s unusually long window of neuroplasticity and its implications for performance, learning, and personal growth.

🔁 Addiction, Relapse, and the Power of Integration
Feegel speaks candidly about relapse, aftercare, and why community support is essential. He explains how ibogaine often restores a sense of choice—helping patients re-engage with life, relationships, and responsibility—while emphasizing that healing extends beyond the individual to families and social systems.

🏛️ From Clinics to Congress
In a bold initiative, BEOND has offered treatment to elected officials—not to lobby, but to heal. Feegel reflects on how firsthand experience can shift perspectives on trauma, addiction, and policy, contributing to broader cultural and regulatory change.

🌿 Meaning, Nature, and the Human Spirit
Interwoven with clinical rigor are moments of humor and humanity—stories of insight, connection with nature, and the subtle wisdom that emerges during integration. Together, they explore how ibogaine bridges medicine, meaning, and spiritual inquiry.

🏆 Final Takeaways
A grounded, deeply human conversation on ibogaine as both medicine and catalyst—examining safety, science, compassion, and the conditions required for true, lasting transformation.

✨ Support this work and unlock exclusive interviews with leaders in healing, neuroscience, and culture on Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/c/thelastalchemist

🔗 Subscribe for more conversations at the intersection of psychedelics, medicine, ethics, and transformation.

Support the show

🎙️ JLS Podcast

Hosted by William Leonard Pickard

🚀 About Norman Ohler
International bestselling author of Blitzed and Tripped, Norman Ohler is a historian and cultural investigator whose work exposes the hidden role of drugs in shaping 20th-century war, fascism, and modern consciousness. His research has reframed how we understand the Third Reich, LSD’s origins, and the pharmacological forces behind power and control.

🧠 Drugs, War, and the Third Reich
Ohler unpacks his groundbreaking archival discoveries revealing the widespread use of methamphetamine (Pervitin) within the Nazi military—and Adolf Hitler’s personal dependence on opioids and other substances. The conversation explores how stimulants, sedatives, and drug control fueled aggression, obedience, and catastrophic decision-making at the highest levels of the regime.

🧪 LSD, MKUltra, and the Dark Origins of Psychedelic Research
Tracing LSD’s early history, Ohler reveals its links to Nazi experimentation, post-war U.S. intelligence programs, and the pursuit of a so-called “truth drug.” Pickard and Ohler examine the ethical failures of MKUltra and the lasting implications for neuroscience, policy, and psychedelic medicine today.

🌈 Psychedelics, Trauma, and Healing
Moving beyond the shadows of war, the discussion turns toward healing—exploring LSD microdosing, ibogaine, and their potential roles in addressing trauma, addiction, and neurodegenerative disease. Ohler shares the deeply personal story of his mother’s Alzheimer’s and how psychedelics opened moments of clarity, presence, and connection.

🌍 From Nation States to Planetary Consciousness
Ohler reflects on the future of humanity in an age of AI, collapsing hierarchies, and unresolved collective trauma. He argues for the necessity of ritual, community-based psychedelic access, and a cultural shift away from extractive systems toward simplicity, compassion, and planetary responsibility.

📚 Stone Sapiens & the Drug History of Humanity
Looking ahead, Ohler introduces his forthcoming work Stone Sapiens—a sweeping re-examination of human history through the lens of psychoactive substances, from early hominids to modern civilization, revealing drugs as inseparable from culture, religion, power, and control.

🏆 Final Takeaways
A wide-ranging and unflinching conversation on drugs and domination, psychedelics and healing, fascism and freedom—offering rare historical insight into how chemistry has shaped human behavior, and how consciousness may yet shape our future.

✨ Support this work and unlock exclusive interviews with pioneers in psychedelic history, science, and culture on Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/c/thelastalchemist

🔗 Subscribe for more conversations at the intersection of psychedelics, history, power, and transformation.

Support the show