I almost feel as if there's been some sort of conspiracy against making chemistry interesting. And it's a shame because it's one of the most fascinating subjects in the world, and there's no reason everyone shouldn't know at least a little bit about it. But it's such a powerful realm of knowledge that it's been sterilized in both high school and college education because, the fact of the matter is, that it's dangerous knowledge. If you know too much or you know the wrong things about chemistry, you're capable of making all sorts of drugs; you're capable of making all sorts of weapons, explosives, nerve agents, and on, and on, and on.

I do think that the kind of primary axis that a lot of drug use operates on is one of mitigating suffering. And how we conceptualize our own suffering is, ultimately, the fundamental question in how we use drugs ... Drugs are very, very useful for mitigating all sorts of suffering; that's why people love them—whether it's boredom, physical pain, emotional pain, depression, insomnia, whatever. They do that very effectively.

If you take the exact same dose of LSD every year, I would be amazed if it's the same. I would bet against any resemblance between these experiences because you will be different; you will be in a different mood; you will be thinking about different things. You change all the time—much more than the drug.

I actually think that one of the best ways to reduce problematic relationships with drugs is to have people make their own drugs and grow their own plants. And I think the same is also true of food, by the way. I think if more people grew their own food and prepared their own food, they'd have much, much healthier diets. No one would be eating gummy worms. There would be a lot less obesity.

Anesthesiologists that have examined xenon clinically, they've concluded that it has a number of attributes that make it, essentially, the perfect anesthetic. It is not metabolized in any way. It can be recycled indefinitely. It's extremely potent—more potent than nitrous oxide. When it's given to a patient, they recover, very, very rapidly after the xenon gas is removed within seconds ... It has no known toxicity. So, it is, arguably, the perfect anesthetic and maybe even the perfect drug. It's incredibly incredibly euphoric.

When you take ketamine, it can give you a delusional sense of possibility. The aperture of possibility expands dramatically, and suddenly, all of the restrictions that you once thought existed disintegrate.

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.

I think one of the unfortunate things about 5-MeO-DMT is its name. So, people think '5-MeO-DMT—that must be a version of DMT. It must be similar to DMT.' But it's more distant from DMT than psilocin and psilocybin.

It's funny that these drug laws were ostensibly drafted to protect us from drugs but may have actually had the only benefit of protecting drugs from us.

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.

After smoking a very high dose 5-MeO-DMT last year, there was a period where I completely, without logic or reason, suddenly had a sense of God. This is something that is very alien to me ... It wasn't that I logically believed in it or even that I strongly believed it, I just had this nebulous sense of God.

And because LSD is so safe, it makes other things less safe because it raises the bar. It gives people this impression that all psychedelics must be safe at 50 times the desirable dose. Well, I guess, in that case, it's almost unfortunate that LSD is so safe because it creates a standard that almost no other drug can live up to.

It's sort of like when people say 'Well how could you possibly do cocaine? You're supporting the cartels.' And I understand the point, but the issue isn't doing cocaine; the issue is the prohibition of cocaine that makes it a black market commodity that has to be sold by cartels. It could just as easily be a regulated market like anything else, like aspirin.