Hamilton Morris on Pharmacological Creations, Myths & Heroes

I think the two most important issues when anybody uses a drug are knowing what the drug is, the chemical identity of what they are consuming—knowing that it actually is the drug in question, and knowing what dosage of that drug they have consumed.

Sometimes people will approach me and they'll act like I'm some kind of, you know, super advanced psychonaut who has great powers of being able to withstand psychedelic experiences. And I assure you, that is not the case. The only power I have is being a neurotic Jew who is too afraid to use unmeasured doses of things. And that one, small protective attribute of not wanting to consume unmeasured doses of unknown substances has made all of my experiments infinitely more safe and comfortable.

When you go to a psychedelic conference or you read an article about psychedelics, the chances are every single person that is there and interested in psychedelics has used them illegally, and the psychedelics they have used have been produced by somebody who risked their freedom to make them.

I think that people dramatically overestimate their ability to distinguish these things, and that's normal ... You take LSD one time, and you have a great experience. And you take LSD another time, you have a bad experience. And maybe you think, 'Oh, that was bad LSD,' because you're not recognizing your own contribution to the experience.

One of the reasons that I stopped making [Hamilton's Pharmacopoeia] was because it was so complicated and my fear that something might go wrong. I feel that I was very lucky to have done all the things that I did and to have done it in such a way that not only were people not hurt, but many people benefited from it. But I think that it was maybe only a matter of time before something bad happened.

This year, I've lost four dear friends in either drug overdoses or drug-adjacent circumstances, and it's been immensely painful for me. And it gives me some empathy for the way people respond in the wake of these terrible tragedies. It's horrendously painful to lose someone you love, and I understand why that makes people anti-drug. I get it. I get it completely.

When I say low dose, I'm talking about 20 milligrams of ibogaine hydrochloride or something of that nature, but I have used low-dose ibogaine for long periods of time in the past. And I did feel that it was beneficial.

When I was a freshman in college, I got a prescription for Adderall, and I took it as prescribed every day. And by the end of my freshman year, I was completely emaciated. I weighed 20 pounds less than I weigh right now ... I realized there is no way that this is sustainable. This is going to probably kill me if I keep doing it, so I had to stop.

I even would go so far as to say I became a journalist as a reason to talk to Alexander Shulgin.