The pioneering physician explains why there are no good or bad drugs, just good or bad relationships with drugs. There’s no one who has shaped my own thinking about drugs so much as Andrew Weil. Andy is famous as the force behind integrative medicine – the synthesis of traditional and alternative medicine – but he first became known to me and many others for his writing on drugs and consciousness, with books like The Natural Mind, From Chocolate to Morphine and The Marriage of the Sun and the Moon.

Our conversation covers an incredible diversity of drugs and topics: the wonders of the cannabis plant, the implications of psychedelics going mainstream, the potential of placebo medicine in better understanding chronic pain, the value of kava in treating anxiety, the psychoactive pleasures of eating a ripe mango, even the ways in which cannabis and dogs have evolved similarly in their relationships to human beings. There are, Andy explains, infinite ways of altering consciousness. Psychoactive drugs can show us possibilities, but how we foster those possibilities is up to us.

Listen to this episode and let me know what you think. Our number is 1-833-779-2460. Our email is psychoactive@protozoa.com. Or tweet at me, @ethannadelmann.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.