Joe Rogan Experience #1379 - Ben Westhoff

Joe Rogan 0:05 Hello, Ben.

Ben Westhoff 0:06 Thank you for having me, Joe.

Joe Rogan 0:07 My pleasure. Um, this is a subject that scares the shit out of me. Um, you, y- and how did you stumble upon the story of fentanyl? Because weren't you, at one point in time, didn't you write about, like, rap music?

Ben Westhoff 0:20 Yeah, I have a book about NWA and Tupac-

Joe Rogan 0:23 (laughs)

Ben Westhoff 0:23 ... and I interviewed, like, Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, all those people. Yeah. But I was the LA Weekly music editor.

Joe Rogan 0:31 Ah.

Ben Westhoff 0:31 And I started looking into this story about why people were always dying at raves. So, like, I don't know if you remember a few years back, every time there was a rave, they were like, "One person died, two people died or more."

Joe Rogan 0:43 Yeah, yeah.

Ben Westhoff 0:43 And they always said it was from ecstasy. But I knew that ecstasy was really not that dangerous of a drug. You know, MDMA, pure MDMA, very few people die from that. So I was like, "What is going on here?" And I looked into it, and it turned out it was all adulterated. It wasn't real ecstasy. It wasn't real molly. It was adulterated with all these new drugs. And I kind of went down the rabbit hole, and I found out that all these new drugs were made in China, they were all synthetic, and there were, like, hundreds of them. And then it turns out that the most, you know, the worst of them was fentanyl. And that's how I got onto the topic.

Joe Rogan 1:24 And fentanyl, m- most people think of fentanyl, they think of it as being a new thing. But it's not really a new thing, right? It was, wasn't it, it was invented in the '50s or something?

Ben Westhoff 1:33 Yeah. Yeah, it was invented by a Belgian chemist. Um, he was trying to find something that worked better than morphine in hospitals.

Joe Rogan 1:42 But doesn't morphine work really good?

Ben Westhoff 1:44 Well, it does.

Joe Rogan 1:45 (laughs)

Ben Westhoff 1:45 But for things like, um... Yeah, traditionally people have gotten a lot of mileage outta morphine. But, um, for things like open heart surgery-

Joe Rogan 1:53 Oh.

Ben Westhoff 1:53 ... he wanted something that came on really fast and it lasted a long time.

Joe Rogan 1:57 Mm-hmm.

Ben Westhoff 1:58 And so he manipulated the chemical structure of morphine, came up with fentanyl. It was a blockbuster drug, you know, and still is used in hospitals all the time. Um, it's used, you know, there's the fentanyl patch for people with cancer, chronic pain. And then when you get a, like, a colonoscopy, they give you fentanyl before that. And then, uh, women who have epidurals during childbirth, that, I believe, is usually fentanyl. So it's still an important hospital drug.

Joe Rogan 2:28 And so how did it come to be that this drug from the 1950s sort of reemerges? And it reemerged during the rave scene, is that what it was?

Ben Westhoff 2:37 It was actually before that. It first started killing people a little bit at the beginning of the '80s, and, uh, nobody knew what it was.

Joe Rogan 2:44 And it was from China then as well?

Ben Westhoff 2:46 No. The, back then, um, it was these kind of mystery chemists, these guys who... There was this one guy in particular called George Marquardt, and he was, like, a, a genius maniac who read all the chemical literature. He learned about fentani- fentanyl. He's like, "I should try to make this. I bet it would be a hit with, um, recreational users." And so he started making it, um, and it stumped authorities because these people would die. They would have track marks in their arms like it was heroin. They would have syringes, but they tested them afterwards and there was no heroin in their system. And so they're like, "What is this?" And the only way they finally found out was that there was this, uh, scientist testing racing horses, and apparently fentanyl was being used to dope horses.

Joe Rogan 3:38 What?

Ben Westhoff 3:39 To, like, um, so they would withstand more pain and would go longer and faster and could-

Joe Rogan 3:44 Really?

Ben Westhoff 3:45 ... train harder. Yeah. And so, so this guy made the connection. He's like, "Oh, this is fentanyl. This is this new thing." And he actually predicted what was gonna happen. He's like, "We are in trouble now, because not only is there fentanyl, you can make a new... If you ban fentanyl, you can adjust the molecule, make another type of fentanyl. When they ban that, you can make another one, ad infinitum," basically.

Joe Rogan 4:09 Wow. So the, the thing with horses would be that they would be in pain so they wouldn't run as hard? So they would force them to run harder by dulling the pain?

Ben Westhoff 4:19 I guess so. Yeah, I don't know all the details of it. But, you know, it's performance enhancing, basically.

Joe Rogan 4:24 Doesn't it seem kind of counterintuitive? You would think that, like, an opiate would, like, make them sleepy, right?

Ben Westhoff 4:28 Well, I don't know all the details, yeah.

Joe Rogan 4:30 Right, maybe it just has a different effect on horses.

Ben Westhoff 4:33 That's fair.

Joe Rogan 4:33 So then the internet comes along, and through the internet people started scouring the medical literature and scientific literature and chemical literature, and then they find fentanyl.

Ben Westhoff 4:47 Exactly. Yeah, because back in the old days, um, you, you know, scientists would publish a paper. They're trying to find a new drug that they can patent. Say the drug isn't a hit, no one wants to buy it. It goes on some dusty university shelf, never is heard from again. But in the internet age, all of these papers start going online. And so these rogue chemists that I reference in the title of my book, they start finding particular scientists who work on the type of drugs they're interested in, and then they start going through all of their papers and they pick out drugs that, uh, they think would work recreationally. And so when fentanyl first came out, it was totally legal. People, you could walk around with a giant bag of it. They couldn't do anything. And so it set in motion this sort of cat and mouse game between law enforcement and drug chemists, which really still persists to this day, although mostly in China now.

Joe Rogan 5:46 Have you ever experienced any opiates personally?

Ben Westhoff 5:49 I've taken... Yeah, like tramadol and like Tylenol 3 and stuff like that.

Joe Rogan 5:55 Tylenol 3 has opiates in it?

Ben Westhoff 5:56 I think it's codeine-

Joe Rogan 5:58 Hmm.

Ben Westhoff 5:58 ... which is a low-level opioid. And I don't know, to me, it, it always gets me stoned, but it never seems to, like, deal with the problem. I don't really like opioids, you know what I mean? It, like, I can't sleep and it's just not my thing.

Joe Rogan 6:09 It's not your thing. Yeah. I, uh, had s- the old NyQuil had codeine, didn't it?

Ben Westhoff 6:13 Did it?

Joe Rogan 6:14 Didn't it? Did we, we've been over this, haven't we?... didn't we try to figure this out? I, I remember I took NyQuil in the '90s, in the late '90s. I was sick. It was, like, the last time I ever took it. And, uh, it was wonderful. I was lying in bed-

Ben Westhoff 6:27 Uh...

Joe Rogan 6:27 ... going, "This is amazing. I don't even give a shit if I'm tired or sick."

Ben Westhoff 6:30 Yeah. (laughs) A lot of people say that. It's like-

Joe Rogan 6:32 I just sank into the bed. I was like, "Ah." And another time, I had a morphine drip. I had knee surgery and they gave me a little morphine drip and any s- every time I, I wanted, I could just hit this button.

Ben Westhoff 6:43 Uh-huh.

Joe Rogan 6:43 And get a little bit more mor- I was just hammering that button-

Ben Westhoff 6:45 Uh-huh. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 6:45 ... just lying in bed.

Ben Westhoff 6:47 (laughs) Well, that's, like, the irony of, uh, the opioids. It can produce the greatest pleasure-

Joe Rogan 6:52 Yeah.

Ben Westhoff 6:53 ... and the greatest pain. You know, I think Sam Quinones said that. Like, um, "How can one molecule p- give you the greatest pleasure imaginable and the worst pain imaginable?"

Joe Rogan 7:04 Yeah, Lenny Bruce had some crazy quote about it, something about that it was like getting hugged by God. I forget what the quote was. But, um, I, I, I've never had experience with heroin. Um, but I knew, I've known people that were addicts, quite a few, and a couple of them that died. And one of them that I knew, there was this guy who was a pool hustler, back in my pool playing days in New York. And, uh, his nickname was Water Dog. I forget his real name. I think it was Bill. (coughs) But, oh no, that was Buffalo Bill, was his other nickname. I don't remember his real name. But anyway, this guy was a, an elite pool player, big time gambler. But the thing was, he had to do heroin first. So, like, they would play games for, like, $10,000, these huge games. And all these guys would come from the tri-state area. They would come around to watch these matches and bet on the side. And, uh, Water Dog would go to the bathroom and everybody knew what was going on. He would go and shoot up, and then he would come and he would sit on a chair like this. Just sit there for, like, a half an hour. Just sit there.

Ben Westhoff 8:12 Wow.

Joe Rogan 8:12 And then, and then when it was over, when the half hour was over, he would just, like, "Okay." And then he would go and play.

Ben Westhoff 8:18 He was in the zone.

Joe Rogan 8:18 And he couldn't miss. And he was playing this guy, um, this, this dude that I knew named George, who was also a big time gambler. And he was just screaming and yelling that, "This motherfucker, when he's on this stuff, he can't miss. He can't-"

Ben Westhoff 8:32 Uh-huh.

Joe Rogan 8:32 He had no nerves. Like, nothing bothered him. You could scream in his face, he would look at you like an alien. Like, it didn't, didn't bother him at all. Like, like an insect would look at you. And he had this incredible ability to play, like, uh, uh, at the very best while he was fucked up on heroin.

Ben Westhoff 8:50 Uh-huh.

Joe Rogan 8:51 And I remember thinking, "What a bizarre drug." I mean, think about all the amazing artists that it's claimed.

Ben Westhoff 8:57 Yeah, I think about jazz and all the great improv-

Joe Rogan 9:00 John Coltrane. Yes.

Ben Westhoff 9:00 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 9:01 Lenny Bruce. So many people. I mean, you go down the line, all these different folks. I mean, that, uh, mugshot that I have out there of Hendrix.

Ben Westhoff 9:09 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 9:09 That was heroin.

Ben Westhoff 9:10 Oh, it was? Okay.

Joe Rogan 9:11 Got caught with heroin in Toronto. I mean, fucking-

Ben Westhoff 9:12 Yeah, I mean, people like, people prefer heroin to fentanyl. Like, I've heard it described as more soulful, people say.

Joe Rogan 9:20 Mm...

Ben Westhoff 9:21 But the thing is, you can't even get heroin in most parts of Amer- like, pure heroin anymore. It's all cut with fentanyl.

Joe Rogan 9:28 Well, you gotta go straight to Afghanistan, right? (laughs)

Ben Westhoff 9:30 Um, that's probably, uh, probably Mexico. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 9:34 Yeah. Jesus Christ. Now, the, it, it, can you grow poppies? Like, can that be grown in the, uh, North American climate?

Ben Westhoff 9:41 Yeah, I've heard that, like, if you just walk around on the stre- like, nice neighborhoods, you'll see poppies all the time. You just don't even know you're looking at them.

Joe Rogan 9:49 And that's actually heroin? Like, you could get heroin-

Ben Westhoff 9:51 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 9:51 ... from those poppies?

Ben Westhoff 9:52 Yeah. It's like, if they grow-

Joe Rogan 9:54 That's strange.

Ben Westhoff 9:55 ... na- you know, uh, organically and you're not doing it on purpose, it's no big deal. But if you start cultivating it, that's when it becomes-

Joe Rogan 10:01 You just got a place

Ben Westhoff 10:02 Uh... (laughs)

Joe Rogan 10:03 ... to be like, "I don't know, they're beautiful. Look how pretty."

Ben Westhoff 10:05 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 10:06 "Do you also have San Pedro cactus on your lawn, sir? Oh, those are pretty too." (laughs)

Ben Westhoff 10:10 Right. Yeah. You, um, yeah. I mean, those cactuses, I can't imagine there are a lot of trained (laughs) police who know what to look for. I, I feel like if you're gonna grow some mescal, you know, mescaline cacti or whatever, you-

Joe Rogan 10:24 That's the move, yeah.

Ben Westhoff 10:25 ... you're probably gonna be all right.

Joe Rogan 10:26 Just mix it up with regular cactus. Pretend you're a cactus enthusiast.

Ben Westhoff 10:29 (laughs) Yeah.

Joe Rogan 10:30 Just have it all over your lawn.

Ben Westhoff 10:31 Some succulents.

Joe Rogan 10:31 "Yeah, I'm just really into cactus, man. They're pretty."

Ben Westhoff 10:34 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 10:34 "I have to water them. I go out of town a lot."

Ben Westhoff 10:35 Yeah, exactly. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 10:38 (laughs) So, uh, when, you know, what, what scares me is, you know, I mean, I just know people that party. I know people that take pills. And it seems like fentanyl is... Things are getting cut with fentanyl a lot.

Ben Westhoff 10:54 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 10:54 It's not, you know, it's not a, an uncommon thing for all sorts of different drugs. Like, how many different drugs are cut with fentanyl, street drugs?

Ben Westhoff 11:02 Oh, man. It is, like, an awful time to be a young person on the party scene. Um, you know, like, when I was coming up, and probably when you were coming up, they said... The DARE program and all that, Say N- Just Say No, they made it sound like every drug could kill you, right?

Joe Rogan 11:17 Yeah. Right.

Ben Westhoff 11:18 Now, unfortunately, that's, like, almost reality, that basically any pill or any powder, if you didn't get your pill from CVS, you know, your pain pill, or from a pharmacy that's legit, it could be cut with fentanyl. And that's how, uh, Prince died, that's how Tom Petty and the rapper Mac Miller all died, is that they were ta- thought they were taking legitimate pain pills.

Joe Rogan 11:43 Is that really what happened?

Ben Westhoff 11:44 That is really what happened, yeah.

Joe Rogan 11:45 So, Prince got his from this, the black market?

Ben Westhoff 11:48 Yeah, well, the guy who supplied Prince has been... He refuses to really say exactly where he got it. But he-

Joe Rogan 11:55 He's still alive?

Ben Westhoff 11:56 The, the guy who got him for Prince? Yeah.

Joe Rogan 11:58 Where is he?

Ben Westhoff 11:59 I don't know. I think in Minneapolis or something, yeah.

Joe Rogan 12:01 They should find that fucking guy.

Ben Westhoff 12:03 Well, the doctor is also, um, like, settled, uh...... or something. I think the doctor might have been involved somehow. It's a mystery where he got these pills, but, you know, Prince was, like, doing the splits on stage at age, you know, 58 or whatever, and he was definitely a guy who walked around with a lot of pain. He was a Jehovah's Witness. He was not a recreational drug user as we think about it, you know. He was... He wanted pain, and I'm sure for years his handler or whatever was buying them off the dark net-

Joe Rogan 12:34 Mm-hmm.

Ben Westhoff 12:35 ... or whatever, and, and they were fine for years. But, but then a drug dealer trying to save some money, increase profits, cut it with fentanyl and-

Joe Rogan 12:44 (imitates explosion)

Ben Westhoff 12:44 ... that's, that's how he died. And I heard Tom Petty actually, um, s- suffered an injury or hurt himself at one of his concerts, and he just literally walked outside and asked, like, the first sketchy guy he saw if he had any pain pills, and that's what killed him.

Joe Rogan 13:03 Jesus Christ. Oh. God. And, and-

Ben Westhoff 13:10 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 13:10 ... Prince needed hip replacement surgery, didn't he?

Ben Westhoff 13:12 I think that's right.

Joe Rogan 13:13 Yeah.

Ben Westhoff 13:14 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 13:14 It's so common, for some reason, with people who perform on stage, who do a lot of, like, jumping around and going crazy. My friend Maynard, uh, lead singer of Tool.

Ben Westhoff 13:23 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 13:23 He was... He does jujitsu. He's really into jujitsu. And he's like, "Man, I just have no movement in my hip. My hip is, like, so locked up." And the doctor went to look at it, and they're like, "Hey, bro, you've... You got no hip left." Like, "It's just shot." And it was from stomping on stage.

Ben Westhoff 13:37 Oh, really?

Joe Rogan 13:37 Because when he sings, he fucking stomps all the time.

Ben Westhoff 13:40 Uh. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 13:40 And that one hip, he just wore that hip out.

Ben Westhoff 13:43 Yeah, my mom has these issues with her neck. It's, like, degenerative disc disease.

Joe Rogan 13:48 Mm-hmm.

Ben Westhoff 13:48 And, you know, you- you've got this, like, cushy, spongy, uh, you know, substance in between-

Joe Rogan 13:54 Well, they can do something about that now.

Ben Westhoff 13:56 Can they?

Joe Rogan 13:56 Yeah. Before your mom goes and gets her neck cut open, there's, uh, uh, several options. One ju- the, the co-... First of all, as it's been explained to me, the concept of degenerative disc disease, it gives you this... Im- it, it implies that there's a disease.

Ben Westhoff 14:11 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 14:12 Like you caught a flu, or you got a-

Ben Westhoff 14:13 That's what I thought too, yeah.

Joe Rogan 14:14 It's not. What it is, is bad posture-

Ben Westhoff 14:17 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 14:17 ... wearing down, compression, uh, you carrying weight. If people carry a lot of things, their discs get smooshed over time. There's a lot of different factors. A lot of athletes get it. A lot of fighters get it. A lot of wrestlers, jujitsu guys, they all get it. I got it. And what-

Ben Westhoff 14:32 Oh, you did? Where did you-

Joe Rogan 14:33 Yes.

Ben Westhoff 14:33 Where did you get it?

Joe Rogan 14:34 My neck.

Ben Westhoff 14:34 Okay.

Joe Rogan 14:35 And it was from getting my neck yanked on, you know, just getting it-

Ben Westhoff 14:38 Uh-huh.

Joe Rogan 14:38 ... cranked on and, and using it to, like, move people around when you're doing jujitsu and grappling. Um, but I found a thing called Regenakene. And what... Regenakene is what Peyton Manning used. Uh, he actually went to Germany to go do it, but now you can do it here in America. Um, uh, Kobe Bryant went and got it done as well. It's great for people with back issues, disc issues, and with bulging discs in particular. It helps relax the area around the disc. It's... It's your own blood, and there's a, there's a... some sort of a strange procedure they do, but they take your own blood. It's like a very advanced form of platelet-rich plasma. And there's a place called Lifespan Medicine in, uh, Santa Monica that did it for me.

Ben Westhoff 15:16 Uh-huh.

Joe Rogan 15:16 But I had, like... Yes.

Ben Westhoff 15:17 And did you got, like, full, full-

Joe Rogan 15:18 Oh, yeah.

Ben Westhoff 15:19 ... everything back?

Joe Rogan 15:19 Everything back, yeah. I mean, uh, depending upon how far gone it is. You know, some people, it's already bone on bone. There's no disc left.

Ben Westhoff 15:26 Uh-huh.

Joe Rogan 15:26 You know, and you gotta catch it before that happens.

Ben Westhoff 15:29 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 15:29 Um, and then another thing they're doing is they're shooting stem cells directly into the discs, and they're having some really good results with that-

Ben Westhoff 15:36 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 15:36 ... where the stem cells... But a lot of that's they'll be doing that in other countries because it's... The- they're, uh... They're a lot looser with their regulations, if they have any regulations at all.

Ben Westhoff 15:46 Uh-huh. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 15:46 They can just fucking fill you up with stem cells and go like (imitates fanfare)

Ben Westhoff 15:49 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 15:49 And everything starts regenerating.

Ben Westhoff 15:51 Yeah. But, um... But, yeah, and it's not just these pills either. It's like, um... And, like, you have daughters, I know-

Joe Rogan 15:59 Mm-hmm.

Ben Westhoff 15:59 ... who are, you know, may- getting towards their teenage years, right?

Joe Rogan 16:03 Mm-hmm.

Ben Westhoff 16:03 Yeah, and, like, that's the thing I worry the most about is-

Joe Rogan 16:06 Yeah, partying.

Ben Westhoff 16:06 ... our kids too. And just... Yeah, because I used to... You know, I wasn't discriminate. I didn't care.

Joe Rogan 16:12 Right, especially if you're drinking. If you're a young kid and you're drinking, you're not gonna make-

Ben Westhoff 16:16 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 16:16 ... wise decisions. You don't even know what you're doing. If you're a young kid, you're 18, 19 years old, and you have a th- three or four drinks in you, you don't even know what that experience is like. You don't, you don't have the wisdom and the knowledge and the, the history to go, "Okay, I've got three drinks. I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. I should get out of here."

Ben Westhoff 16:31 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 16:32 "I definitely shouldn't be taking any pills."

Ben Westhoff 16:34 Yeah, I'm... And so I'm already, like, trying to think about how I'm going to talk to my kids who are younger. But, like, you know, I hate to say it, it seems like marijuana, if you can smell the buds, if you can see them... You know, there have been kind of some scaremongering on the internet and certain police departments saying that there's been marijuana cut with fentanyl. But if you go on Snopes.com, they sort of debunk all that.

Joe Rogan 16:59 They-

Ben Westhoff 16:59 So I think marijuana is... If you can smell it, it smells like weed-

Joe Rogan 17:03 Mm.

Ben Westhoff 17:03 ... you're probably pretty safe.

Joe Rogan 17:04 Well, there are a lot of people that are growing marijuana that are using pesticides and chemicals-

Ben Westhoff 17:11 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 17:11 ... that are, that are dangerous. And there was one... What was the company that got caught recently, Jamie? They, they tested their stuff.

Narrator 17:18 Kushy Punch, I believe, yeah.

Joe Rogan 17:21 Say that again? (laughs)

Narrator 17:21 Kushy Punch, with the microphone that I fucked up with.

Joe Rogan 17:24 Oh, Kushy Punch. Um, we had a guy named John Norris on the podcast, and he wrote a book called Hidden War. And he started off his career as a game warden, you know, um, investigating people that caught too much fish-

Ben Westhoff 17:36 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 17:36 ... things along those lines. And he thought, "Hey, what a great job this would be. I'm gonna get an- get a job in the great outdoors. I love the outdoors, and, you know, I'll get to do some good for the wildlife." Well, turns out along the way, they started stumbling upon these public land Mexican cartel grow operations-

Ben Westhoff 17:57 Oh.

Joe Rogan 17:57 ... where they would grow these marijuana plants, just giant...... plots of them and they would use these extremely toxic pesticides.

Ben Westhoff 18:05 Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 18:06 And also, they would use poison to keep animals out. And they had vats of this shit laying around, and some of the marijuana was actually infested with this shit-

Ben Westhoff 18:15 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 18:15 ... or infected.

Ben Westhoff 18:16 Yeah. My friend, uh, Amanda Chicago Lewis is this great journalist, focused on, focused on marijuana. And yeah, she put the fear of God in me about those pesticides and carcinogens. And, um, the other thing is just, like, these, you know, these different oils that people are smoking, some of them are marketed as, like, all natural-

Joe Rogan 18:37 Mm.

Ben Westhoff 18:38 ... but they find synthetic cannabinoids in them.

Joe Rogan 18:40 Mm-hmm.

Ben Westhoff 18:41 And, um, basically, you know, synthetic cannabinoids like K2 and Spice are what they're known as sometimes, and those are, people call it synthetic marijuana. But the big difference is that, um, THC is known as, like, a partial agonist. So it will, like, these receptors, it will s- it will activate them to an extent, you're chilled, it's relaxed. But the cannabinoids, they also, uh, interact with the cannabinoid receptors same as THC, but they're full agonists. And so, they make you basically, like, go crazy and your heart starts beating fast, you start, um... People overdose and die on these, these cannabinoids. And, um, they, these are all made in China too. I, I went into a lab-

Joe Rogan 19:28 In China?

Ben Westhoff 19:29 ... in China where they made these, and they made fentanyl analogs.

Joe Rogan 19:32 They let you in?

Ben Westhoff 19:33 Yeah. I mean, it was, it was a whole thing. I, like, wrote them on the internet. I made a fake email address and I said, um, "I'm a drug dealer. I'd like to visit your lab. May I do that when I come to China?" And they said, "Yeah."

Joe Rogan 19:45 What? (laughs)

Ben Westhoff 19:47 Yeah. That's like-

Joe Rogan 19:47 Did you have a fake drug dealer name?

Ben Westhoff 19:49 Um, I called myself... What did I call myself?

Joe Rogan 19:52 (laughs)

Ben Westhoff 19:52 Uh, I tried, I had this, like, Skype avatar picture where I looked like a bro, like a 23-year-old dude with, like, big hair, like, kind of a stoner look. And, uh, they just, um, they said, "Yeah, come by." And so, so I went to Shanghai, and, uh, I met this guy at the train station and he owned his own lab. And he asked me if I was a journalist actually, like, pretty straight away. He was like, "A- are you a journalist though?" And I was like, "No." (laughs) I was like, "No, crazy question. Do I look like a journalist?" No.

Joe Rogan 20:25 (laughs)

Ben Westhoff 20:26 And so, he didn't, he didn't know whether to trust me, so we went to his apartment. It was, like, the top floor of this fancy high-rise. He's a total family man. He had, like... He lived there with his wife and kid and, uh-

Joe Rogan 20:37 Stranger, brings a stranger to his home.

Ben Westhoff 20:40 Yep, yep. Um-

Joe Rogan 20:41 Meets a guy who says he's a drug dealer.

Ben Westhoff 20:42 Yeah. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 20:42 Picks him up at the train station, says, "Hey, come to where my kids sleep."

Ben Westhoff 20:46 Yeah, exactly.

Joe Rogan 20:47 Wow.

Ben Westhoff 20:48 And so, then he showed me 'cause he had... They had the website. A lot of these companies in China, they make legitimate chemicals and recreational chemicals, and they specialize in drugs that are legal in China, but banned in the West, so banned in the US. So all of these-

Joe Rogan 21:05 What is illegal in China?

Ben Westhoff 21:06 Well, in the US we have this thing called the Federal Analog Act. And so, that bans all these drugs even before they're invented. So anything that's similar to marijuana structurally or in effect, anything that's similar to opioids, it's just automatically banned, automatically scheduled. But in China, they have to do it one by one by one by one. And so, fentanyl itself was scheduled in China, was banned in China decades ago. But these chemists spe- like this one I met, specialize in this window when something is banned in the US, but it's still legal in China, but it's become popularized on the internet. So there's all these websites, these web forums where these, like, drug nerds basically are like, "You can't get fentanyl, but you can get this thing that's kind of like fentanyl." And that's what this guy said.

Joe Rogan 21:57 That's a hilarious term by the way, drug nerds.

Ben Westhoff 22:00 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 22:00 (laughs)

Ben Westhoff 22:00 Yeah, that's what they are.

Joe Rogan 22:02 Jeez.

Ben Westhoff 22:02 And like Psychonauts, I'm sure you've heard of Psychonauts, right?

Joe Rogan 22:05 Sure, yeah.

Ben Westhoff 22:05 They specialize in these new, uh, usually psychedelics they tend to prefer-

Joe Rogan 22:10 Mm-hmm.

Ben Westhoff 22:10 ... that have never been tested on human subjects. But this guy was entirely specialized in, um, fentanyl analogs and synthetic cannabinoids. And so he took out... You know, he had his, like, fake list on his website of all the legitimate, you know, like Cialis and, you know, legitimate pharmaceuticals, things like that. But as, uh, at his apartment, he showed me the real list. And that had all these, you know, it was, uh, cannabinoids, fentanyl. It was, like, fake Valium, like, different types of Xanax. And he showed me the prices and I was like, "All right. Um, looks good. Can I, can I go see your lab?" And so finally, he decided he trusted me. He called up his driver on the phone, and, um, the driver showed up. And he was kind of this big, like, muscular dude who didn't speak any English, and I was a little worried. I was like, "Oh, this is the dude who's gonna break my kneecaps if... when he finds out I'm a journalist." You know? But I just, uh, got in the car and we drove like 30 minutes to the outskirts of Shanghai. And we got to the lab, and it just looked like a regular office park, like a suburban office park. There was a fountain in, in front of the building. There was like, you know, you use the key card to, to get in the parking lot. And then it, it looked like kind of a new construction building. It smelled like cement. We went inside. Um, we went up to, to the labs. All the windows were open. It was the middle of the winter, and it was kind of a strong chemical smell. Um, but it looked kind of just like Breaking Bad, like-

Joe Rogan 23:45 (laughs)

Ben Westhoff 23:45 ... you know, like, industrial-sized glassware, um, you know, beakers, Bunsen burners, all that stuff from high school chemistry. And, um, he would point, he points out... Like, basically I had my recorder, you know, on my phone, and I had it, um, in my jacket pocket just on record. And so, he told me I couldn't take pictures, and so to take notes I would just say stuff aloud. I'd be like, "Oh, that's, um, uh, orange-ish, uh, a light orange mixture that's being mixed up by a mechanical arm." And you say, "It's benzofentanyl, very interesting." And so, but, but the language barrier was such that he, you know, didn't think I was being too much of a weirdo.

Joe Rogan 24:29 (laughs)

Ben Westhoff 24:30 (laughs) But, uh...

Joe Rogan 24:31 (laughs)

Ben Westhoff 24:31 You're not. Clearly was.

Joe Rogan 24:33 Mm.

Ben Westhoff 24:34 But so- but the cannabinoids would- were crazy. There was, like, a table like this, like almost exactly this size, that was piled up with the cannabinoids that were there for drying. And it was a- they were mounds like this high, just sitting right out in the open.

Joe Rogan 24:49 What'd they look like?

Ben Westhoff 24:50 Uh...

Joe Rogan 24:50 Does it look like- like pot?

Ben Westhoff 24:52 No. Because it's not a plant, you know?

Joe Rogan 24:55 Oh.

Ben Westhoff 24:55 It's just basically- it's a chemical that's sprayed onto plant matter, like dried sage and stuff like that.

Joe Rogan 25:02 Really?

Ben Westhoff 25:03 So, they try to make it look like pot and, you know, you can smoke that stuff out of a pipe or even roll it into a joint, but it- if you look closely though, it's very clearly not pot.

Joe Rogan 25:13 Wow. So... And so they're drying this stuff?

Ben Westhoff 25:16 That's what I think that- I- you know, they also had, like, um, drying machines. It looked like, uh... My editor didn't like it when I used this term, but you know when you go into Subway and there's the bread baking machines right there?

Joe Rogan 25:28 (laughs) Yeah.

Ben Westhoff 25:29 It looked exactly like that.

Joe Rogan 25:30 Why did he not like that term, if that's what it looked like?

Ben Westhoff 25:32 I don't know. I think he thought Subway would sue us or something.

Joe Rogan 25:35 (laughs)

Ben Westhoff 25:35 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 25:36 Jesus Christ.

Ben Westhoff 25:37 But, uh, but they had those and then they had, like, big buckets of one-pound bags of these- these cannabinoids and these fentanyl analogs just ready for shipping. He said they were sending them to Russia, to Belgium, to the Netherlands. And then I think a lot of times, it's repackaged there. And so I don't know if you knew that the cannabinoids, like, used to be sold legally in head shops, like, 10 years ago?

Joe Rogan 26:01 Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Ben Westhoff 26:02 And they would always be in these colorful packets. They almost looked like a Pop Rocks package.

Joe Rogan 26:07 Right, yeah.

Ben Westhoff 26:07 They'd say, like, you know-

Joe Rogan 26:09 Spice.

Ben Westhoff 26:09 ... Spice and-

Joe Rogan 26:10 Yeah.

Ben Westhoff 26:10 ... Laugh Out Loud and stuff. And so I think in Europe, that's where they do that. They put it in this colorful packaging. They, um, and then they ship it to the US. And, um, but yeah. He was saying that, like, he kept, like, really close track of the law in all these countries, especially China. Like, "They're scheduling this next week, so we're gonna take all this and throw it away." And I thought at first he was, like, probably just putting me on, but I think they actually do that. Like, these guys are businessmen first.

Joe Rogan 26:42 Mm-hmm.

Ben Westhoff 26:42 They wanna make money and going afoul of the law, it just doesn't, you know-

Joe Rogan 26:48 It's not good.

Ben Westhoff 26:48 It's not conducive.

Joe Rogan 26:49 This is where bath salts came from, right?

Ben Westhoff 26:52 Exactly, yeah. Bath salts tend to be cathinones, so synthetic cathinones. They're- have you ever heard of the khat plant, K-H-A-T?

Joe Rogan 26:59 Yes. Yes.

Ben Westhoff 27:00 Yeah, so the-

Joe Rogan 27:01 That's, uh, the- the, um, hijackers, uh, pirates in Somalia-

Ben Westhoff 27:04 They- they take that, yeah.

Joe Rogan 27:05 They love to take that stuff, yeah.

Ben Westhoff 27:06 It's really popular in the Middle East. It's like a- it's a stimulant.

Joe Rogan 27:09 Mm-hmm.

Ben Westhoff 27:09 It gets you really, um...

Joe Rogan 27:11 Have you tried it?

Ben Westhoff 27:12 No, I- I never have, yeah. But I, uh, grew up in Minnesota, though, and there's a big Somali population. And so a lot of- there was a big controversy in Minnesota whether or not to ban khat leaves from being sold in regular stores.

Joe Rogan 27:25 Is it legal?

Ben Westhoff 27:26 I think it is, um, I think it's not legal in the US now, if I'm not- but I don't know for sure.

Joe Rogan 27:31 Hmm, interesting. It's K-H-A-T, is that-

Ben Westhoff 27:34 Yeah, exactly. And so the synthetic cathinones are the synthetic version of that, like made in a lab, but they're- they're, you know, there's tons of different kinds. You don't know how strong it is. And the bath salts, um, they, of course, it has nothing to do with, like, salts for your bath, you know?

Joe Rogan 27:53 Mm-hmm.

Ben Westhoff 27:53 This was a misnomer and they also wrote- called them, like, incense.

Joe Rogan 27:58 Mm.

Ben Westhoff 27:58 Sometimes plant food. And on the back of all of them, it would say, "Not intended for human consumption." So, that was, like, the way they got around, they thought they could get around the Federal Analog Act because part of the law says that something is automatically illegal if it's intended for human consumption.

Joe Rogan 28:17 Mm.

Ben Westhoff 28:17 So, these guys were like, "Not intended for human consumption."

Joe Rogan 28:19 Right. Just put it in your bath.

Ben Westhoff 28:21 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 28:22 Your bath smells like fucking toxic chemicals.

Ben Westhoff 28:24 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 28:25 Do you remember when the homeless guy ate someone's face? Remember that? And they said he was on bath salts.

Ben Westhoff 28:29 Yeah, but that was actually disproven. There was none found in his system.

Joe Rogan 28:33 He was just crazy?

Ben Westhoff 28:33 Yeah, the cannibal, C- the Causeway Cannibal, I think they called him.

Joe Rogan 28:36 Yeah.

Ben Westhoff 28:37 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 28:37 And he was just crazy, right?

Ben Westhoff 28:39 I think he may have, like, smoked some weed, but yeah, I don't think he had anything else in his system, yeah.

Joe Rogan 28:43 He was just high on life.

Ben Westhoff 28:45 Yeah. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 28:47 (laughs)

Ben Westhoff 28:48 Oh, man. Florida.

Joe Rogan 28:49 No. You know- (laughs)

Ben Westhoff 28:49 The original Florida man.

Joe Rogan 28:52 Yeah. It is- it's funny that one state is so synonymous with fuckery.

Ben Westhoff 28:56 Yeah. And they also had this thing called flakka. Have you ever heard of that?

Joe Rogan 29:00 Yes, I have, but I don't remember what it is.

Ben Westhoff 29:02 It's more cathinones.

Joe Rogan 29:03 Oh.

Ben Westhoff 29:03 And, like, if you, uh, look it up on YouTube, there's all these people just going crazy. That killed, like, I think maybe 100 people in Florida during a time. And, um, the problem is, you know, like the prohibition on drugs causes people to do really stupid things, right? So, you have this cathinone like flakka and as bad as that was, once they banned flakka, the chemists started manipulating the chemical structure. So, they change one little thing. They add, like, a chlorine group, for example. So, like, a- a chlorine, like, molecule ha- you know, it has nothing to do with the drug, but they just add it on there to make it so it's- becomes legal.

Joe Rogan 29:45 Mm.

Ben Westhoff 29:46 But then it becomes more difficult for your body to, like, digest it. So, it becomes worse for you and the high becomes worse. And then they ban that and then they make something new that's even worse for you, and it's just, like, down the line. And, um, and these Chinese... So- so that's what all these new drugs have in common. My- my book is about, uh, they're called NPS, novel psychoactive substances.

Joe Rogan 30:11 Mm.

Ben Westhoff 30:11 So, fentanyl is the most famous and the most dangerous, but these include basically, like, synthetic new versions of every drug. So, there's, you know, marijuana, the nu- the NPS version is the synthetic cannabinoids. Heroin, the NPS version is fentanyl. There's LSD. So, you take LSD, it's like a wonder drug, right? No one has ever died of an LSD overdose. You know, people may have, um, thought they were a bird or whatever and jumped off a roof, but no one has ever overdosed on the drug itself. But- but once they started banning, once they started really cracking down on LSD, these Chinese chemists started manufacturing this new-... type of psychedelic that was sold as acid. And so, if you went on the dark web, this was like, in the, like 10 years ago or so, 10, five, 10 years ago, you would search for acid and it, you would think you were buying LSD, but you were buying this new psychedelic that could kill you, and did kill you. These drugs are called N-bombs. It's like the worst name of all time. Um, these, these N-bomb drugs, and they started killing people in, like, the suburbs in Dallas.

Joe Rogan 31:21 Your phone's ringing.

Ben Westhoff 31:22 Ooh, fail. Um, and-

Joe Rogan 31:25 (laughs)

Ben Westhoff 31:25 ... and yeah. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 31:28 You really were a music editor. (laughs)

Ben Westhoff 31:31 (laughs) Yeah. So, so these kids all, um, thought, they just want, they, they did their research.

Joe Rogan 31:37 Right.

Ben Westhoff 31:37 These were, like, smart kids-

Joe Rogan 31:38 Jesus.

Ben Westhoff 31:38 ... who said, "Oh, LSD has never killed anyone. Let's get that, this new thing."

Joe Rogan 31:42 Right.

Ben Westhoff 31:42 And it killed them.

Joe Rogan 31:43 And so, it wasn't really LSD, it was just some-

Ben Westhoff 31:45 No, it totally, no, no, nothing in common at all.

Joe Rogan 31:48 ... no relation at all?

Ben Westhoff 31:48 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 31:50 (inhales deeply) Now, the crazy thing is that this probably could be fixed with legalizing all drugs, but nobody wants to legalize all drugs. It's such a catch-22 because, like, if you had heroin available at the corner store, um, you would have no need to buy fentanyl. And if it was, like, at a reasonable price where they couldn't undercut you, like, "Hey, heroin's five bucks. I'll sell you fentanyl for a dollar."

Ben Westhoff 32:10 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 32:10 I mean, it's, it's a terrible thing to even say. I don't want people to be able to just go buy meth. But-

Ben Westhoff 32:16 Yeah. Well, the way to think about it, I think, is like, um, decriminalization, a lot of times, is, like, a better alternative, in my opinion, in my, you know, my research-

Joe Rogan 32:27 Mm-hmm.

Ben Westhoff 32:28 ... than legalization, right? So, like, the presidential cand- candidate Andrew Yang talks about decriminalizing opi- opioids.

Joe Rogan 32:35 Right.

Ben Westhoff 32:36 And so when I first heard about that, I was like, "What?" I was like, "That is a bridge too far." But the more you think about it, it's like, people get arrested for using fentanyl. They go to jail, and then the recidivism rate is, like, through the roof. People, like, get out and they start using again. They don't get the treatment they need. You know? And so, the opiod, you know, like, people don't realize that fentanyl is killing more people than any drug in American history, ever, on an annual basis. More than heroin, more than pills, more than meth, more than crack. And so things just get worse and worse every year. People aren't talking about it that much.

Joe Rogan 33:20 But how is decriminalization gonna stop that? Because decriminalization will just make fentanyl more available. Uh, the, the point of legalizing all drugs, and I, again, this is a very, very messy subject, and I'm not a proponent of legalizing all drugs. I'm, I'm sort of agnostic on it. I'm like, "Hmm, I don't know. I don't know what the fuck is it, uh, what, what is the answer?" But if you legalize them and you can buy them from reputable sources, you would know that you're actually buying cocaine. You're not-

Ben Westhoff 33:49 Nah-ah.

Joe Rogan 33:49 You're not buying some fake Chinese spice jam-

Ben Westhoff 33:53 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 33:53 ... thing, whatever the fuck they call it. You're buying actual cocaine. And you, look, we know if you buy whiskey, right, you get a, a thing on the label that tells you what proof it is. You know that if you have-

Ben Westhoff 34:05 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 34:05 ... you know, three drinks, you're gonna be fucked up. And we can regulate that. We could sort of adjust. Like, "I, I had two already, I'm good." You know? But if you don't know what's in it, you don't know what the dose is, so you don't know what you're okay with and what you're not okay with. One, one of the good things about alcohol, like you get a beer, that's a beer.

Ben Westhoff 34:24 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 34:24 You know what that is.

Ben Westhoff 34:25 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 34:25 You know, you know how much alcohol's in there.

Ben Westhoff 34:27 Yeah. Well, in some countries in Europe, they actually give, um, free heroin-

Joe Rogan 34:33 And needles.

Ben Westhoff 34:33 ... to addicted users.

Joe Rogan 34:34 Yeah.

Ben Westhoff 34:35 Yeah. And so that, you know, it's often not the heroin that kills people at all.

Joe Rogan 34:39 Mm-hmm.

Ben Westhoff 34:39 It's the dirty needles. It's, um, the criminal lifestyle used to, like, pay for the money to buy, prostitution, things like that. And so, um, I went and visited these places, uh, called supervised injection facilities. Have you heard about these?

Joe Rogan 34:54 Yes.

Ben Westhoff 34:54 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 34:55 Where would these, where do they have them in this country?

Ben Westhoff 34:56 Well, they, they don't have any in this country.

Joe Rogan 34:59 They, wouldn't they try to do something like that?

Ben Westhoff 34:59 It's totally, they're trying to do one in Philadelphia.

Joe Rogan 35:01 Philadelphia.

Ben Westhoff 35:01 Yeah. And there was a court case in its favor recently. The former governor, Ed Rendell, is, like, spearheading that. But I went to one in Barcelona. And so these are places where drug use is totally legal inside the facility. They have clean needles. They have doctors and nurses supervise it. And, um, and they even, like, so they have, like, um, this, the smoking room where you can go and do, do anything you want. They have crack pipes, like, that the government provides, they're, like, government funded and created crack pipes that they'll hand out to people. Um, and they've never had an overdose death in one of these places. They, they have, they're connected to, uh, treatment centers. They give out methadone, Suboxone, all these treatment drugs. It brings people into the system so that they're accounted for. And these have been, like, super successful. But in the US there's, like, federal crackdowns on them.

Joe Rogan 36:01 Yeah. I, again, it's, uh, I think there's an issue politically, right? 'Cause nobody wants to be the one that says, "Hey, we're gonna open a place where people can come and shoot up."

Ben Westhoff 36:10 Right. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 36:11 And people are like, "Well, fuck this guy. My, my son's hooked on heroin. This piece of shit wants to help him."

Ben Westhoff 36:16 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 36:16 "You know, we, what we need is detox centers. What we need is treatment. We don't need a place where you can go and shoot heroin." You know? But like many things in life, this whole heroin thing, fentanyl thing, all these different dr- it's very messy.

Ben Westhoff 36:29 Yeah. Well, so even if you're not gonna go that far, there are simple steps we can take to help stop the opioid crisis. And one thing I'm a big advocate for is called fentanyl testing strips. And so that's, the weird thing about fentanyl is it's not a demand-driven drug. Like, every other drug, it's out there 'cause people want it.

Joe Rogan 36:51 People want cocaine, people want heroin. People don't want fentanyl. They're sneaking it into other things.

Ben Westhoff 36:56 Exactly.

Joe Rogan 36:57 Right.

Ben Westhoff 36:57 And so studies have shown that if users know fentanyl is in their cocaine or their meth or their heroin or their pills, they will be much less likely to use it and overdose from it. And so fentanyl testing strips, they're, they look kinda like pregnancy tests.... they're really cheap, just these paper strips. You mix up your solution of whatever you think you have, heroin-

Joe Rogan 37:20 (laughs)

Ben Westhoff 37:20 ... and you dip the strip in there. And if there's two stripes, that means that you have fentanyl. And if there's one, it means you don't, or else the other way around.

Joe Rogan 37:29 Mm-hmm.

Ben Westhoff 37:30 And so, it's, it's simple, it's immediate, but, but again, US laws are so insane that these are actually banned in certain states like Pennsylvania.

Joe Rogan 37:42 (sighs) So, that could be done to help people understand that there's fentanyl in the drugs that they're looking for? They're looking for cocaine, they're looking for heroin, turns out there's fentanyl in there. What other steps do you think can be taken to sort of alleviate, or at least somewhat mitigate this awful crisis?

Ben Westhoff 38:02 Well, of course, there's Narcan. You know what that is, it's the, um, like the miracle opioid overdose reversal drug.

Joe Rogan 38:11 Mm-hmm.

Ben Westhoff 38:11 It's a nasal spray usually. And so, if someone has a overdosed on opioids, fentanyl, heroin, pills, whatever, you know, if y- get these sprays, it'll bring them back to life, literally.

Joe Rogan 38:21 Right.

Ben Westhoff 38:22 And so, you know, that, it's available in some places-

Joe Rogan 38:25 How does this stuff work?

Ben Westhoff 38:26 Oh, man, I am not smart enough to know that. Um, I do not know the chemical pathway-

Joe Rogan 38:31 See if we can find out-

Ben Westhoff 38:32 ... works.

Joe Rogan 38:32 ... Narcan. See if we can find out how Narcan works. How does Narcan work? Um, that's amazing, though. That they figured out something that can stop people-

Ben Westhoff 38:41 I know.

Joe Rogan 38:41 ... from-

Ben Westhoff 38:41 Like, where else-

Joe Rogan 38:42 ... in the middle of an overdose.

Ben Westhoff 38:42 Where, what else is, do we have that in-

Joe Rogan 38:44 Pulp Fiction, remember?

Ben Westhoff 38:45 ... like, yeah.

Joe Rogan 38:45 With the needles in the heart. Remember that? Woo, what a scene. (laughs)

Ben Westhoff 38:48 You know what? I was asking someone about that recently, and that is total bullshit. That is like Quentin Tarantino just making something up. That's not a real thing.

Joe Rogan 38:55 I'm glad he did. I'm glad he did.

Ben Westhoff 38:56 (laughs) It's a dramatic scene.

Joe Rogan 38:57 'Cause it was, it was fucking awesome.

Ben Westhoff 38:58 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 38:58 Yeah, it was pretty crazy. I mean, if, if you could shove a fucking needle in the middle of your heart-

Ben Westhoff 39:03 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 39:03 ... and pump that stuff in, like, whoa, and she pops up to life with a needle out of her chest.

Ben Westhoff 39:07 Yeah. That's, in real life, it would have been a nasal spray to the nose. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 39:11 But this is 1994, they didn't have that.

Ben Westhoff 39:13 They di- yeah.

Joe Rogan 39:14 Yeah.

Ben Westhoff 39:14 And so, nowadays, it's like firefighters, librarians, these are the people who are encountering opioid overdose victims. You know?

Joe Rogan 39:25 They're encountering them in the library-

Ben Westhoff 39:26 In the library.

Joe Rogan 39:27 ... 'cause they come to the library to do drugs or ... Firefighters or EMTs react to people that are overdosing, right?

Ben Westhoff 39:32 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 39:33 And isn't it the case that some fentanyl overdoses, the, the people actually have it on their skin, so these people that are helping them, whether they're police officers or first responders-

Ben Westhoff 39:43 That's actually another thing that's kind of a, a Snopes.com thing. They started that-

Joe Rogan 39:47 It's fake?

Ben Westhoff 39:47 Yeah, no, that's ... You can't get it from, you can't get an overdose by touching fentanyl. It won't go into your skin. If someone like, there was a, you know, a mound of fentanyl and someone sneezed and it was in the air, you could get it by breathing in, but by just touching it, no.

Joe Rogan 40:02 Oh, well, that's good to know. Narcan reversing an overdose. It says, "Narcan has a strong affinity to the opiate receptors, uh, a stronger affinity to the opiate receptors than opiates-"

Ben Westhoff 40:15 Ah.

Joe Rogan 40:16 "... opioids like heroin or Percocet. So it knocks the opioids off the receptors for a short time. This allows the person to breathe again and reverses the overdose." Holy shit.

Ben Westhoff 40:26 That's amazing. That person needs a Nobel Prize, whoever-

Joe Rogan 40:28 Yeah.

Ben Westhoff 40:28 ... came up with that.

Joe Rogan 40:29 They need the exact opposite as the guy who sold the drugs to Prince.

Ben Westhoff 40:33 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 40:34 (laughs)

Ben Westhoff 40:34 Yeah, exactly.

Joe Rogan 40:36 You know, they need love and respect. Yeah, that's an amazing discovery. Um, so that's good to know because we've actually, I think we probably repeated that. Someone told me that. Did I ever repeat that on the show? That people have to wear drugs- Mmm.

Ben Westhoff 40:47 ... or gloves when they're handling people with drug overdoses?

Joe Rogan 40:50 Uh, I don't know. I don't remember. No, probably not. I probably saved that joke.

Ben Westhoff 40:54 I mean (laughs) -

Joe Rogan 40:54 (laughs)

Ben Westhoff 40:54 Have you ever heard of carfentanil?

Joe Rogan 40:57 What is that?

Ben Westhoff 40:57 Uh, it's 100 times stronger than fentanyl.

Joe Rogan 41:00 Oh, I have heard that.

Ben Westhoff 41:01 It's an analog.

Joe Rogan 41:02 Recently.

Ben Westhoff 41:02 It's used as like an elephant tranquilizer.

Joe Rogan 41:05 Ugh.

Ben Westhoff 41:05 And so, in the, one of the Jurassic Park movies, that's what they used to, uh, tranquilize the dinosaurs.

Joe Rogan 41:10 Oh, yeah.

Ben Westhoff 41:10 Um-

Joe Rogan 41:10 That's right.

Ben Westhoff 41:11 And so, I, I interviewed a bunch of dark web dealers for the book. I even actually, like, met one in person.

Joe Rogan 41:17 What'd he look like?

Ben Westhoff 41:18 Um, well, he asked me not to say, but I, he-

Joe Rogan 41:20 You don't have to say what he looked like, but-

Ben Westhoff 41:21 ... he came with his daughter. He came with, he looked, he was like a buff dude. He was like a, he, um, was like-

Joe Rogan 41:27 Whoa, you're saying too much.

Ben Westhoff 41:28 ... in his 30s. He was like-

Joe Rogan 41:28 You're already saying too much. We're gonna find him now.

Ben Westhoff 41:30 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 41:31 Like, like when you were recording like, "Oh, what is that orange vat of-"

Ben Westhoff 41:35 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 41:35 ... you know, like, "Did you do that kinda same shit" when you were talking to him?

Ben Westhoff 41:38 No, no, because he knew I was a journalist.

Joe Rogan 41:40 Right.

Ben Westhoff 41:40 I told him I was. And he wanted to say-

Joe Rogan 41:42 And he met you?

Ben Westhoff 41:42 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 41:43 Wow.

Ben Westhoff 41:43 He just, he's like, "People think of us as scum, but I wanna tell my story." And that's, that's what journalists like live on.

Joe Rogan 41:51 Hope for, right.

Ben Westhoff 41:51 You know?

Joe Rogan 41:51 What is, what is his story?

Ben Westhoff 41:53 Well, he was a, um ... He's probably listening to this, man.

Joe Rogan 41:56 Hey, bro.

Ben Westhoff 41:57 That's crazy. (laughs) He was a-

Joe Rogan 41:59 What's up, dark web drug dealer? (laughs)

Ben Westhoff 42:01 (laughs) Total family man with his daughter. He was like feeding her french fries and stuff. But, uh, he had, he was addicted to, uh, meth at one point. He had a lot of sort of, uh, depression, self-esteem issues. But then he tried the opioids and he wa- said it was like an antidepressant. It, it, it, you know, so he became hooked. And so, he started selling fentanyl on the dark web because it, um, he didn't want his kids to have to live in poverty. He didn't wanna, his, his drug addiction to interfere. And so, not only that, but he, he claims that, um, he's helping addicted users more affordably maintain their habit. So, he has this big like, "Fuck," you know, "Purdue Pharma, anti-government, anti-big pharma mentality." So he blames like Purdue Pharma made, uh, OxyContin pills and got, that's how the whole opioid epidemic began. So, it was first it was the pills, then people switched to heroin, and now it's fentanyl is in all the heroin.

Joe Rogan 43:04 Mm-hmm.

Ben Westhoff 43:04 And so, this guy says that because his ... He makes a nasal spray too. And he says that people can buy his fentanyl nasal spray on the dark web for like 60 bucks-... take one spray, it's equivalent to one OxyContin pill, and that's enough to maintain their addiction. And so he says, you know, instead of paying money to the big pharmaceutical companies, people buy this, it's much cheaper. And, um, so he had a whole moral justification-

Joe Rogan 43:34 Hmm.

Ben Westhoff 43:34 ... of, of how he did it, of-

Joe Rogan 43:36 So he's an ethical drug pusher?

Ben Westhoff 43:38 That's, that was his case. The problem is that, um, this stuff, fentanyl, is so potent and, and to make it into a, a nasal spray you have to use this whole thing, it's called volumetric dosing-

Joe Rogan 43:51 Hmm.

Ben Westhoff 43:51 ... with the water. And you gotta get the exact right proportions, and he's not a trained pharmacist.

Joe Rogan 43:58 Right.

Ben Westhoff 43:58 You know, so-

Joe Rogan 43:59 So he's buying it, he's a middle man.

Ben Westhoff 44:00 No, no, no. He does it-

Joe Rogan 44:02 He makes it.

Ben Westhoff 44:02 He has a whole process how he does it, yeah.

Joe Rogan 44:05 Oh, Christ.

Ben Westhoff 44:05 But he's not a trained pharmacist. He doesn't, you know-

Joe Rogan 44:08 How does he know he's doing it right?

Ben Westhoff 44:09 That... Well, and so I told him that. I said that to him, and he's like, "Well basically I test it on myself, so if I'm doing it wrong I would die. So my customers therefore know I've tried it." So...

Joe Rogan 44:19 That guy sounds like he's got a great pitch-

Narrator 44:21 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 44:22 ... but I'm not sure.

Ben Westhoff 44:23 Yeah. I mean, pe- you gotta justify...

Joe Rogan 44:26 Yeah. I get it, but so many people who sell drugs and so many people who are involved in drugs, they're always... They, they, people who have fucked up lives like to paint the best version-

Ben Westhoff 44:37 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 44:38 ... of what they're doing.

Ben Westhoff 44:39 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 44:40 That's what that sounds like.

Ben Westhoff 44:41 Yeah.

Narrator 44:42 That's a good point.

Joe Rogan 44:42 I mean, I feel like if you're selling fentanyl, someone's probably died because of what you sold them. I mean, it's just, it's one of those things where it's so deadly. I mean, what are the numbers in terms of, uh, annual deaths from fentanyl in the United States?

Ben Westhoff 44:55 Well, it's up over 30,000 a year and that's-

Joe Rogan 44:59 (sighs)

Ben Westhoff 44:59 ... that's more than-

Joe Rogan 45:01 Think about that, folks.

Ben Westhoff 45:01 ... that's more than the, uh, that's more than the peak of the AIDS crisis.

Joe Rogan 45:04 Think about that while people are trying to ban flavored vapes, which is fucking preposterous. You know? It's, it's terrifying. 30,000 people. Goddamn. That is so many.

Ben Westhoff 45:22 It's insane.

Joe Rogan 45:22 That's a lot of people. (exhales) And there's many, many, many, many people listening to this that know someone who's been affected by this. That's the, the horrific thing, is that it's... And it sort of snuck up on us, where it's... This is not a big thing in the news. You don't hear about fentanyl deaths in the news. You would think that if there was, like, uh, Kool-Aid, if Kool-Aid was killing 30,000 people a year-

Ben Westhoff 45:43 Hmm.

Joe Rogan 45:43 ... it'd be like, "Holy shit."

Ben Westhoff 45:44 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 45:44 If Kool-Aid-

Ben Westhoff 45:45 If Kool-Aid was killing two people a year.

Joe Rogan 45:46 Yeah.

Ben Westhoff 45:47 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 45:47 But the fact that this fentanyl stuff... And it's all happening because it's illegal, it's all happening in this sort of weird gray area.

Ben Westhoff 45:54 It's, you know, a lot of people in the margins. Um...

Joe Rogan 45:57 Yeah.

Ben Westhoff 45:58 It's, uh, I wanna hear the presidential candidates talking about it.

Joe Rogan 46:02 Yes.

Ben Westhoff 46:02 You know? Like, there's so little... At the Democrat debate, they were asked, like, "What would you do about the fentanyl crisis, the opioid crisis?" And they all said basically, "We gotta sue the pharmaceutical companies."

Joe Rogan 46:15 Mm-hmm.

Ben Westhoff 46:16 Like Purdue Pharma. Now, I have sympathy for that argument. I mean, Purdue Pharma and places like Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals, no one's heard of that. They're from St. Louis where I'm from. They actually made a ton more pills. They made like 29 billion pills a year, opioid pills, at the height of the opioid crisis. So these company- And they made jokes about it. There were these emails that were found that people were like, "It's almost like people are addicted to these pills." You know? Like, "It's just like Doritos. If you keep eating them, we'll make more."

Joe Rogan 46:49 They were joking around about this?

Ben Westhoff 46:50 They were making jokes about that.

Joe Rogan 46:51 While people were dying?

Ben Westhoff 46:52 While people were dying. So, so I have total sympathy that these, we should sue these companies just like the big tobacco lawsuits in the '90s. The money will go towards care, treatment, all that. But that does nothing to stop the fentanyl crisis. The pill deaths are already starting to drop, which is great. Heroin deaths are starting to drop, which is great. But fentanyl deaths are still rising and besides, you know, this guy Andrew Yang who I said, the candidate with Duke, he, he talks... He has a lot of good solutions. You know? Elizabeth Warren had some, some good, some good ideas in her proposal, wants to put more money. But for the most part, like, these should be the Democrats' people. You know what I mean?

Joe Rogan 47:39 Yeah. Yeah.

Ben Westhoff 47:40 People on the margins. But they're, like, barely talking about it at all.

Joe Rogan 47:43 I think it's one of those things where just being president, right, being president is an impossible job. There's no way one person can really control every single aspect of our, our civilization. It's just not possible. And I think that's the same thing about running for president. No person running for president really can address every single issue that this nation is dealing with, so they stick with the big ones like jobs and, you know, inequality and all... The, the things that are just gonna get people to push the button-

Ben Westhoff 48:11 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 48:11 ... when they, when they get into the booth. I mean, that's all they're doing. This is just a, "I hope you like me," sort of pitch. You know?

Ben Westhoff 48:18 Yeah. And I mean, you know, it's killing more people than car accidents, more than guns even. Did you know that?

Joe Rogan 48:23 I did not know that.

Ben Westhoff 48:24 Fentanyl kills more people than guns.

Joe Rogan 48:25 Makes sense. I mean, but what kills me is I just don't see a logical first step where someone can st- do something about... I mean, other than legalization of drugs. And this is, this is also the step... I'm sure you probably heard what happened in, um, uh, Northern Mexico yesterday.

Ben Westhoff 48:45 Uh, yesterday? No.

Joe Rogan 48:46 It was a-

Ben Westhoff 48:47 Not with El Chapo's-

Joe Rogan 48:48 ... family.

Ben Westhoff 48:48 ... son, was it?

Joe Rogan 48:48 No. No. It was a new one.

Ben Westhoff 48:50 Oh.

Joe Rogan 48:50 A family. A woman and, uh, her children were gunned down, a Mormon woman. They, you know, they have these Mormon compounds in Northern Mexico.

Ben Westhoff 48:58 Oh, no. I didn't know that.

Joe Rogan 48:59 And, uh, 10 people were murdered, w- just women and children, by cartels.

Ben Westhoff 49:04 Oh, really? Geez.

Joe Rogan 49:05 And just gunned them down. They, and more people were injured, 10 people and a little, a little kid, a little girl was shot in the back and she's in a hospital. It's like they just gun these people down, and this is all just this inhuman violence from the cartels.

Ben Westhoff 49:20 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 49:20 And the cartels that have-... roan- rose to power and prominence because of the fact that there was an illegal drug trade.

Ben Westhoff 49:28 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 49:28 So, there's money to be made. So, instead of that money being made by pharmaceutical companies, that money is being made by these ruthless, murderous cartels.

Ben Westhoff 49:34 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 49:35 And this is, uh, uh, this is exactly what happened during Prohibition in the United States. When they made alcohol illegal in the 1920s... Was it '30s? What was it? 20s? I think it was the 20s.

Ben Westhoff 49:46 The 20s, yeah.

Joe Rogan 49:47 When they made alcohol illegal, it, it didn't stop people from drinking. It just made people sell it illegally.

Ben Westhoff 49:53 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 49:53 And so, organized crime rose, and then Al Capone and all these different organized crime members, they, they d- made insane amounts of money and developed insane amounts of power. And we're seeing the exact same thing happening in Mexico. And again, uh, I mean, it's... Alcohol is simple, right? Yeah, make it legal. We're adults. It's not s- this... Uh, the pills are not simple, right?

Ben Westhoff 50:15 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 50:15 It's a scary one. It's scary.

Ben Westhoff 50:17 Well, the, you know, um, the, the war on drugs stuff, it, it's, it's increasingly gonna be turned towards China, you know? And in fact, Trump, um, has been meeting with the Chinese president and all the trade war stuff, the increasing the tariffs, this is now tied into fentanyl. And so, supposedly, in a couple of days, this might be out by then, but there's this announcement of a new partnership. China says they're finally gonna crack down on these drug labs.

Joe Rogan 50:46 Hmm.

Ben Westhoff 50:46 And, um, we'll see if it happens. But the point is, like, we can do everything we want to try to, you know... We can go to war with China over this issue. But, uh, you know, what is our past record in this realm? Like, the DEA helped kill Pablo Escobar, right? But since then, there's more cocaine coming out of Colombia than there ever was before, you know, nowadays. Um, El Chapo was arrested, tried. That's doing nothing to stop, um, the drugs, the cartels, the drugs coming into the US. And, and, um... Uh, and there's every indication that if we do get China to stop this insane... Like, 90% or more of the illicit fentanyl comes from China. That if we do get them to crack down on it, the industry is gonna go to India. And India is already starting to see these huge busts. Like, there's these Mexican cartel members getting busted in India-

Joe Rogan 51:48 Really?

Ben Westhoff 51:49 ... for buying fentanyl.

Joe Rogan 51:50 In India?

Ben Westhoff 51:51 Yeah. Uh, the thing is, like, China and India have the, the two biggest, um, chemical industries when it comes to generics, um, kind of low- lower level chemicals and pharmaceuticals. The US has the most profitable pharmaceutical industry 'cause we make, like, the brand name drugs, things like that. But when you're talking about generics and stuff like vitamin C, acetaminophen, which is the drug in Tylenol-

Joe Rogan 52:18 Mm-hmm.

Ben Westhoff 52:19 ... these are all made in China, a place like India. And so, they have this huge kind of brain trust of, uh, chemists. You know, people go to university, they, they learn how to be chemists. And then a certain amount of them get into the illicit industry, right? So, Mexico doesn't have that. Mexico doesn't have its own chemical industry and, uh, a bunch of scientists who can make fentanyl, who can make these new drugs. So, so that makes India so, um, susceptible to it. And, and the biggest problem is actually not even the fentanyl itself. It's the fentanyl precursors. And do you, do you know what those are?

Joe Rogan 52:59 Yes. The chemicals that are used to make fentanyl.

Ben Westhoff 53:02 Exactly.

Joe Rogan 53:02 Yeah.

Ben Westhoff 53:03 And so, that was sort of the main investigation in my book. Like, almost, like, um, 80 pages of the book are dedicated to this one company. Um, they're called Yuancheng, this Chinese company that makes more fentanyl precursors than any company in the world. You know, they, um, they, they're legit-... An- and not only that, they sell them to the Mexican cartels. And they're totally, um, sanctioned. Not only sanctioned by the Chinese government, but they get tax breaks from the Chinese government. They get, um, subsidies. They get their land subsidized, their staff training, things like that. And that was sort of the most jaw-dropping, uh, revelation that I had, was that the Chinese government is not only failing to crack down, but they're encouraging this industry.

Joe Rogan 53:55 Wow. They're encouraging the industry. That's insane. So, it's just... The, the, the idea is, "Look, it's making a lot of money. Let's just keep making money."

Ben Westhoff 54:04 Yeah. It's, um... A lot of people ask me if they think this is a blatant conspiracy to, to try to, like, inflict harm upon the US, a subversive form of warfare. And so, I think it didn't start out that way. I think that these, these benefits were given so that China could increase its exports, could grow its economy, particularly when it comes to chemical exports. So, that's why these tax credits started. They're called value-added tax rebates. And so, what that means is, any chemical that you use to, to, um... Any, uh, ingredients you use to make a chemical for exports, you can write off the cost of those, of those ingredients when you export it. So basically, it's like a 16% tax rebate.

Joe Rogan 54:57 Hmm.

Ben Westhoff 54:58 And so, they originally did that just to try to, like, improve their economy, improve their exports. But what's crazy to me now is that, um, last year, in the middle of the trade war, this was, um, at the height of when you heard about the trade war every day. You know, Trump was raising tariffs and doing this and that. Right at the height of that, China increased the tax rebate for fentanyl from 9% to 10%. So, it was almost like a... It seemed like a thumb in the eye.

Joe Rogan 55:28 Right.

Ben Westhoff 55:29 You know? Like...... for fentanyl-

Joe Rogan 55:31 Yeah.

Ben Westhoff 55:31 ... it's, I don't know. It's-

Joe Rogan 55:33 Yeah, it definitely seems like a big fuck you.

Ben Westhoff 55:35 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 55:35 Yeah. Wow. Um, n- this is what's crazy about this, is that, what you said before, no one running for president is talking about it. The, the president has talked about it briefly, you know? It's, but it's not, I don't see any movement. I don't see any big steps being taken. I mean, I don't, I don't know what big movements could be taken. I mean, how do you eradicate this stuff?

Ben Westhoff 55:59 Well, have you heard of, uh, medication-assisted treatment? This is, like, what I was talking about, Suboxone, methadone, and there are these opioid blockers too.

Joe Rogan 56:10 Mm-hmm.

Ben Westhoff 56:10 So, so there are all these drugs for low level, you know, low level opioids. So, you take your daily Suboxone shot and you don't crave fentanyl, you don't crave heroin anymore. But it, but it can't just be the drugs. You know, you see in TV shows or whatever, just this line of people and, you know, they go back out on the street and then they're, you know, get back to whatever they were doing. But medication-assisted treatment combines that with traditional counseling and therapy. Because a lot of times it's not just, um, it's not just chemical hooks, you know what I mean? It's people's lives, they have problems, they're, like, out of work.

Joe Rogan 56:53 Right.

Ben Westhoff 56:54 They got terrible family problems, they have trauma in their past. And if you can unran-, you know, unravel those problems, really get to the heart of things, people can quit, and they do it all the time.

Joe Rogan 57:07 There's another method that is not widely discussed but it's incredibly effective, and that's ibogaine.

Ben Westhoff 57:13 I've heard about that. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 57:15 Yeah. Well, I know many people that have kicked pills because of ibogaine, kicked booze, uh, kicked, uh, destructive, self-destructive habits because of it. And it's-

Ben Westhoff 57:24 And is it a root or something?

Joe Rogan 57:25 It's a plant from Africa, I believe. It's from the Iboga plant, uh, and I, I believe it's from... See if that's from Africa, I don't wanna be wrong about this, um, it's legal, uh, in Mexico. And, uh, a friend of mine, my friend, Ed Clay, went down to Mexico because he had an issue with pills, he hurt himself.

Ben Westhoff 57:44 Oh, really?

Joe Rogan 57:44 Got on pills, was real- really fucking up his life, went down there, got treatment, was so stunned by it that he started, he opened up his own place down there to try to help people.

Ben Westhoff 57:53 Oh, really?

Joe Rogan 57:53 Yeah.

Ben Westhoff 57:53 Wow. What part of Mexico?

Joe Rogan 57:55 So, uh, iboga- I don't know, substance derived from the plant, yeah, African shrub called tabernanthe... Is that right? Tabernanthe iboga, which is known for-

Ben Westhoff 58:05 Oh.

Joe Rogan 58:05 ... its psychedelic qualities and used in African spiritual ceremonies. Some claim it's something of a miracle cure for opiate addiction with minimal withdrawal symptoms. Um, th- there's something that happens with ibogaine when you take it, that it does something to re- rewire the areas-

Ben Westhoff 58:23 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 58:23 ... of the brain that re- uh, respond to opiates and that sort of, uh, are hardwired for addiction. It rewires them in a way that they have a very low recidivism rate.

Ben Westhoff 58:34 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 58:34 A very, very ro- low, y- you know, repeat addiction rate.

Ben Westhoff 58:38 Yeah. Like, psychedelics seems to be-

Joe Rogan 58:41 Yeah.

Ben Westhoff 58:41 ... so much potential.

Joe Rogan 58:42 Yes.

Ben Westhoff 58:43 There's, um, this, um, professor that I, uh, write about, his name is David Nichols, and he basically spent his whole career studying psychedelics as a way to help people beat cocaine addictions, alcohol addictions, even fight things like PTSD. And, um, it was actually found that, uh, MDMA, ecstasy, is like this amazing drug for PTSD.

Joe Rogan 59:09 Mm. Yeah, I've heard this. The, that maps is in the middle of.

Ben Westhoff 59:12 Yep, exactly.

Joe Rogan 59:13 Yeah.

Ben Westhoff 59:13 Yeah, they're doing these, they're finally have gotten clearance to do these studies, and in some cases, just using MDMA one time-

Joe Rogan 59:21 Mm-hmm.

Ben Westhoff 59:21 ... is enough. And, and the term you used, it, like, rewires the brain, it's like resetting the hard drive-

Joe Rogan 59:27 Yes.

Ben Westhoff 59:27 ... or, like, turning the computer off, turning it back on again.

Joe Rogan 59:30 Yes. And it, I think it also changes the ways people l- think about drugs because th- these are not escape drugs in the same sense as, uh, heroin is or fentanyl is or cocaine is.

Ben Westhoff 59:42 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 59:42 These are drugs that sort of just g- give you a refocused perspective on reality itself.

Ben Westhoff 59:47 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 59:48 And-

Ben Westhoff 59:48 And I, I don't need to tell you about DMT.

Joe Rogan 59:50 Yeah. Yeah, it's another one. It's the same, but I mean, that's also, uh, ayahuasca is also very successful for people to quits using the- to quit smoking, using it to quit alcohol, people that have, uh, real issues. It sort of gets to the heart. It lets you understand, like, "Hey, we're gonna take you on a little journey into the mind and show you through dimethyltryptamine, show you what, what's fucking with you."

Ben Westhoff 1:00:15 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:00:16 And this is something that you've sort of stored away in the back of your brain-

Ben Westhoff 1:00:19 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:00:20 ... and it's rotten, and it's, you're, you're always ignoring it, but it's always there, so it flavors everything you do.

Ben Westhoff 1:00:25 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:00:25 And psychedelics, one of the things that they do is they shine a bright light on all of those weird parts of the mind that we all have. We all have-

Ben Westhoff 1:00:34 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:00:34 ... weird memories or weird feelings or weird f- you know, thoughts of inadequacy or self-hate, whatever it is, that cause us to be self-destructive and make poor choices. And a lot of times we're not even aware of it. These, these things sort of-

Ben Westhoff 1:00:49 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:00:49 ... fester in your subconscious.

Ben Westhoff 1:00:51 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:00:51 And, uh, DMT, psilocybin, a lot, a lot of different psychedelic drugs, which, um, oddly enough, the most potent ones, they mirror normal human neurochemistry.

Ben Westhoff 1:01:02 Oh, that's amazing.

Joe Rogan 1:01:03 Which, which DMT is a part of normal human neurochemistry, it's produced by-

Ben Westhoff 1:01:07 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:01:07 ... by the human body.

Ben Westhoff 1:01:08 I've heard that.

Joe Rogan 1:01:08 Yeah.

Ben Westhoff 1:01:09 And, and I've heard that, like, ayahuas- you know, ayahuasca is, like, 12 hours or whatever experience.

Joe Rogan 1:01:14 It's a long experience, yeah.

Ben Westhoff 1:01:15 And I've heard that DMT is basically the very-

Joe Rogan 1:01:17 20 minutes.

Ben Westhoff 1:01:18 ... peak of that-

Joe Rogan 1:01:18 Yeah.

Ben Westhoff 1:01:19 ... like, distilled down.

Joe Rogan 1:01:20 Yeah. It's, uh, the way I describe it is mushrooms times a million plus aliens.

Ben Westhoff 1:01:24 Uh-huh. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:01:25 Yeah. It's, it's-

Ben Westhoff 1:01:26 Did it have, like, a profound, like, lasting impact on you?

Joe Rogan 1:01:29 Oh, yeah.

Ben Westhoff 1:01:30 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:01:30 It changes who you are.It just cha- you, you, you were, you were pre that thing and then you are now you know. Now you know that there's a whole nother dimension to, uh, understanding and to experience. It's just, it's very, very, very different than the normal static world that we all live in.

Ben Westhoff 1:01:47 Yeah, there's this guy, um, called Sasha Shulgin who, uh-

Joe Rogan 1:01:51 Sure.

Ben Westhoff 1:01:51 Yeah, you know Sasha Shulgin?

Joe Rogan 1:01:52 Yeah.

Ben Westhoff 1:01:52 So I got to go to the farm where he designed all his drugs. And, um, you know, he dedicated his whole career to trying to, um, you know, discover new psychedelics that could be used as medicine.

Joe Rogan 1:02:07 Mm-hmm.

Ben Westhoff 1:02:07 And so he took like the, the chemical structure of mescaline, was one of his most, um, often used, they're called, uh, the scaffolding effects. So it's like that's the chemical scaffolding, and so he would tweak little bits to try to come up with new drugs, sample a tiny bit himself. If it did nothing, took a little more, little more, little more till it, till it had an effect. And he invented over 100 new drugs. He, he was working for, um, Dow Chemical, uh, the people who invented Agent Orange, um, at the start of his career, and he invented like psychedelics while working there that have like the Dow, you know, Dow was like pat- patented. Um ...

Joe Rogan 1:02:51 Wow.

Ben Westhoff 1:02:51 And so he invented this drug that was known as, uh, STP, is a psychedelic, it stood for serenity, tranquility, and peace I think. And so this was like a hippie era drug and there was, um, the Hells Angels actually got into selling it and distributing it. It was a, it was this, this crazy story. But they, but the problem was the Hell Angel- Hells Angels got the dosage wrong, so they gave everybody way too much, and there was this big, um, this big protest in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, in San Francisco, it was called the Human Be-In, and they were protesting the banning of LSD that year. It was 1967. And so everybody went to the Golden Gate Park, took this stuff, this STP in these really high dosages, and they all like lo- (laughs) they all like freaked out and ended up in the hospital. And so ...

Joe Rogan 1:03:44 What's it made out of?

Ben Westhoff 1:03:45 I don't know. It's, it's, it's some kind of now related LSD. Has a diff-

Joe Rogan 1:03:50 Is it available now?

Ben Westhoff 1:03:52 I'm sure it is. Yeah, on the dark web you can de- I'm sure you could get it. Yeah. Um, I don't know, it doesn't sound that great even in its regular proper dose. Sasha Shulgin has those books called PCAL and TCAL which are basically cookbooks in uh, how to make all the psychedelics, and even he like wasn't that crazy about this one. But, but anyway after all these people in Golden Gate Park started freaking out did Dow Chemical realize that it was their guy doing this, they're like, "All right, all right, that's enough."

Joe Rogan 1:04:21 Shut him down.

Ben Westhoff 1:04:22 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:04:23 Um, have you ever heard of, uh, Hamilton Morris?

Ben Westhoff 1:04:25 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:04:26 Yeah.

Ben Westhoff 1:04:26 He's great. He's OG.

Joe Rogan 1:04:27 Yeah, Hamilton's Pharmacopoeia, he's great. Yeah.

Ben Westhoff 1:04:29 I've seen him on here, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:04:30 Yeah. He's the most knowledgeable person that I know in terms of-

Ben Westhoff 1:04:34 For sure, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:04:34 ... like the history of these things. And he interviewed Sasha before he died.

Ben Westhoff 1:04:38 Yeah. He loved Sasha.

Joe Rogan 1:04:39 Yeah. Yeah, he did.

Ben Westhoff 1:04:40 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:04:41 Yeah. Yeah, he's, he takes a scientific but yet, uh, uh, a connoisseur's approach-

Ben Westhoff 1:04:46 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:04:46 ... to drugs. I mean, he's very scientific about like the what's happening-

Ben Westhoff 1:04:51 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:04:51 ... but yet, you know, he'll talk about it like the way, uh, Somal Ye would discuss a fine wine.

Ben Westhoff 1:04:55 Yeah. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:04:55 (laughs)

Ben Westhoff 1:04:55 Yeah, I remember he was talking about it. He took a cannabinoid and he's like, "It's my crown chakra is feeling uh ..."

Joe Rogan 1:05:00 Mm-hmm. Yeah, his, he's hilarious when he's blitzed on that show, Hamilton's Pharmacopoeia.

Ben Westhoff 1:05:05 And you know his dad, right?

Joe Rogan 1:05:06 Yes.

Ben Westhoff 1:05:07 Yeah, it's amazing. Earl Morris is such an amazing documentarian.

Joe Rogan 1:05:10 Yes. Yeah.

Ben Westhoff 1:05:12 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:05:12 Um, we did a podcast, we've done two, but the first one we did, we got way too high. We were useless.

Ben Westhoff 1:05:17 Uh, yeah, I remember you guys talking about that. Yeah. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:05:19 We were useless. (laughs) I mean, we were useless. It's like, "Hey, Hamilton Morris is on the show." That was the early days of the podcast too, the early days of the podcast, we often got way too high.

Ben Westhoff 1:05:28 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:05:28 I had to figure out how to dial it in. (laughs)

Ben Westhoff 1:05:30 Yeah. That's the number one thing people ask me when I said I was going on this show, they're like, "Are you gonna get high with Joe?"

Joe Rogan 1:05:35 (laughs)

Ben Westhoff 1:05:35 I'm like, I would be so useless and impart no information. And, and plus it's like the opioid epidemic, I gotta like get my-

Joe Rogan 1:05:42 Right.

Ben Westhoff 1:05:43 ... facts right. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:05:44 Well, it doesn't seem like appropriate time to get fucked up.

Ben Westhoff 1:05:47 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:05:47 Yeah. Um, what are you trying to do with this book besides let people know the history of fentanyl? Do you th- do you feel like with education y- you, you can do some good because people will be armed with facts and, and understanding and they can make better choices?

Ben Westhoff 1:06:05 Yeah, all of the above. Um, the gov- like all branches of the US government have been reaching out to me about this book, but, um-

Joe Rogan 1:06:13 Oh, that's great. That's good to hear.

Ben Westhoff 1:06:15 Yeah. People want to... Like this China stuff, nobody knew anything about what China was doing and why. And, um, and so I'm, you know, like the left and the right are sort of like, like this book-

Joe Rogan 1:06:28 Mm-hmm.

Ben Westhoff 1:06:28 ... which is a rare consensus 'cause the, the right wing is really into like China is fucking with us, and the left wing is really into this, uh, this idea of harm reduction. And that's my big sort of talking point-

Joe Rogan 1:06:41 Yeah.

Ben Westhoff 1:06:41 ... is like the war on drugs stuff is ... I always compare it to sex education, right? I mean, we can teach abstinence, believe that kids aren't gonna have sex, stick our heads in the sand, or we can do- understand kids are always gonna have sex, kids are always gonna take drugs, let's try to help them do it more safely.

Joe Rogan 1:07:00 Right.

Ben Westhoff 1:07:00 And so, you know, if I- I've been in rooms where it was like hardcore law and order Republicans and I just try to like make my point, like, you know, we can keep doing things the way we have, we're failing miserably, why not give these other methods a chance?

Joe Rogan 1:07:20 Mm-hmm.

Ben Westhoff 1:07:21 You know? And a lot of times they have a proven track record of success in places like Europe. Like, what are we waiting for?

Joe Rogan 1:07:28 Right. Yeah. We, we have this Puritan ideal...... you know, this, the, the abstinence ideal, and then we apply that to drugs. And I just think it's so foolish. It really is. And I, uh, and it- it's also so politically dangerous to say anything other than that, you know?

Ben Westhoff 1:07:45 Yeah. I think it's ... You know, the good news is, like, the optimistic thing is that that's slowly changing, you know.

Joe Rogan 1:07:52 Yeah.

Ben Westhoff 1:07:52 And a lot of people say, "Well, during the crack era..." There's a lot of racism people say. Like during the crack era, it was all about, like, lock these people up, you know, criminalize the users. But now that it's like the white politicians' kids who are dying from opioids, now all of a sudden this is a, um, this is a health problem, and this is something we need to address as a disease, you know. And so, that's, there's no doubt that that's true, but at the same time, the positive is that, like, this is spilling into other realms too. So, I went to North Dakota, this small town, Grand Forks, where this 18-year-old kid overdosed and died on fentanyl. And it just shocked the town. Everyone freaked out. But it inspired all these new reforms, so now they have all these new laws in North Dakota, like, things like the Good Samaritan Law, where if someone is with you and they die from drugs, you can call the police and they won't arrest you. You know what I mean?

Joe Rogan 1:08:51 Mm-hmm.

Ben Westhoff 1:08:51 'Cause that, that happens in a lot of places still.

Joe Rogan 1:08:54 Right.

Ben Westhoff 1:08:54 If, you know, they, they blame the person who were there with. And, um, and they have things like, they can use Skype, like a Skype-type service when they live in these small rural towns to get a prescription from a doctor far away. They c- they can use these services. And, um, and what they told me in Grand Forks is that this system is, um, it's spilling over to other ... Even like alcoholism now, people are starting to think of that as a disease. And so, I think there is slow progress being made.

Joe Rogan 1:09:26 Well, that's, that's good to hear. I mean, it just takes time, right, for people to understand that this is a, this is a real issue that's affecting everyone. I think you're right about the racism in terms of, like, the attitude about crack versus cocaine, and that could clearly be demonstrated by sentencing.

Ben Westhoff 1:09:44 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:09:44 You know, people were sentenced the mandatory minimums for crack, crack use-

Ben Westhoff 1:09:49 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:09:49 ... it was so much higher. If, when people got caught with crack or selling crack, I mean, they went to jail for a long fucking time. Whereas people got caught with cocaine, they didn't go to jail for as long, and the, the treatment, the, the, the, the sentence is much smaller. And Dr. Carl Hart, do you know who he came from?

Ben Westhoff 1:10:04 Yeah, yeah. He's great.

Joe Rogan 1:10:05 He's great as well. I've had him on here. And he was explaining, he's like, "Look, there is no difference."

Ben Westhoff 1:10:11 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:10:11 He's like, "It is cocaine." I mean, this is cocaine.

Ben Westhoff 1:10:14 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:10:14 If you, if you wanna break it down to the drug effect on the body, they are the same thing. And-

Ben Westhoff 1:10:19 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:10:19 ... one of them sends you away for a long time, one of them doesn't.

Ben Westhoff 1:10:22 Yeah. Well, for my book, um, about West Coast hip hop called Original Gangsters, I interviewed, uh, Freeway Ricky Ross.

Joe Rogan 1:10:29 Yeah.

Ben Westhoff 1:10:30 Has he been on here?

Joe Rogan 1:10:30 Yes.

Ben Westhoff 1:10:30 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:10:30 A couple times.

Ben Westhoff 1:10:31 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:10:32 Yeah.

Ben Westhoff 1:10:32 So, he, um-

Joe Rogan 1:10:33 The original Rick Ross.

Ben Westhoff 1:10:34 The original Rick Ross.

Joe Rogan 1:10:35 The real Rick Ross.

Ben Westhoff 1:10:35 Yeah, the real Rick Ross. Exactly.

Joe Rogan 1:10:37 Who-

Ben Westhoff 1:10:37 And he, his, sort of the innovation of their era was, uh, was called Ready Rock. And so before people would ... People preferred to smoke cocaine even before crack was invented. Pre-

Joe Rogan 1:10:49 Freebase. That was-

Ben Westhoff 1:10:50 Right, exactly.

Joe Rogan 1:10:51 ... what Richard Pryor got in trouble with.

Ben Westhoff 1:10:52 Th- Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:10:53 Yeah.

Ben Westhoff 1:10:53 Exactly. So, the innovation was to make it so you didn't have to freebase. It was ready to smoke, so they called it Ready Rock. And, um, Eazy-E's, uh, first record label, it was called ... Or his record label was called Ruthless, but they were gonna call it Rock House Records, you know, for, for that reason.

Joe Rogan 1:11:12 Mm.

Ben Westhoff 1:11:12 And so, he was a, he was a crack dealer-

Joe Rogan 1:11:15 Right.

Ben Westhoff 1:11:15 ... before he bec- he got in the music industry.

Joe Rogan 1:11:18 Yeah. Um, the Rick Ross story is pr- the real Rick Ross story, I should say, and Rick Ross-

Ben Westhoff 1:11:24 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:11:24 Freeway Ricky, which is what they used to call him, was making millions and millions of dollars, did not have any idea that he was involved in that whole all over the North-

Ben Westhoff 1:11:33 Oh, the Diane Ross Contra scandal.

Joe Rogan 1:11:34 Yeah.

Ben Westhoff 1:11:34 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:11:34 Which is incredible.

Ben Westhoff 1:11:35 Yeah. It's-

Joe Rogan 1:11:35 Like, they were using the cocaine money to fund the, the war with the-

Ben Westhoff 1:11:40 The Contras.

Joe Rogan 1:11:40 ... the Contras and the Sandinistas.

Ben Westhoff 1:11:42 Yeah. Yeah, it's ... Yeah, Rick Ross is, uh, I, I wrote about him. And so, I ended up actually playing tennis with him, because I heard-

Joe Rogan 1:11:48 He's a really good tennis player.

Ben Westhoff 1:11:49 Yeah, I heard he was a ... And I was a big high school tennis player too.

Joe Rogan 1:11:52 All right.

Ben Westhoff 1:11:52 So, I was like, "Let's do this." And he's, you know, he's got some years on me. I don't know how old he ... I think he's maybe late 50s. But he was, he was holding his own. We played in, like, a South Central tennis court somewhere, and he, he took some games off me, definitely.

Joe Rogan 1:12:04 Well, his story is incredible, because they sent him away on the three strikes rule for life. And then while he was in jail, he learned how to read.

Ben Westhoff 1:12:12 Oh.

Joe Rogan 1:12:12 Then he learned how to understand the law, and he started, like, literally taught himself to be a lawyer, and then realized, like, no, the way they used the law was incorrect and unlawful. They, they ... Three strikes means you get arrested for larceny. You get out, you get arrested for larceny. You get out, you get arrested for larceny.

Ben Westhoff 1:12:32 Ah.

Joe Rogan 1:12:32 They did it in one swoop. So, they gave him two charges at the same time.

Ben Westhoff 1:12:38 Oh. That's crazy.

Joe Rogan 1:12:38 And then put him in for three strikes. And he was able to successfully prove that that was wrong, and that's why he's out right now.

Ben Westhoff 1:12:45 Wow. He, he's so, so smart. One of the things he taught me that, um, you know you always used to hear about crack babies all the time in the '80s?

Joe Rogan 1:12:53 Yeah, it's-

Ben Westhoff 1:12:53 Like, cover of Newsweek, "Crack Babies."

Joe Rogan 1:12:56 Crack Babies.

Ben Westhoff 1:12:56 He was like, "You know, crack babies aren't real. That's not a real thing." He, he said that his ... I believe ... I hope I'm not speaking out of school. I think, like, his wife, like, maybe smoked crack while his son, um, was in utero and never had any problems. And he's like, "Yeah, look around. Do, do your research, 'cause crack babies is not a real thing."

Joe Rogan 1:13:13 That's crazy, because I remember hearing that as well, like crack babies were the thing we were all worried about in the '80s. Oh my God, wait till the year 2000, all these crack babies are 20 years old.

Ben Westhoff 1:13:22 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:13:23 That was the thing.

Ben Westhoff 1:13:23 Where are they now? Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:13:24 Where are they now? Maybe they're mumble rappers.

Ben Westhoff 1:13:26 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:13:27 Maybe that's what's going on.

Ben Westhoff 1:13:30 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:13:30 Maybe that's it.

Ben Westhoff 1:13:30 Oh, I shouldn't laugh at that, yeah. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:13:32 You did though, 'cause, 'cause you understand real rap music.

Ben Westhoff 1:13:36 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:13:36 (laughs)

Ben Westhoff 1:13:37 Oh, man. I'm just worried that I'm becoming like that.

Joe Rogan 1:13:38 You wrote about real hip-hop. I'm now the old man, right?

Ben Westhoff 1:13:40 I know. It's just so lame-

Joe Rogan 1:13:42 Yeah. I'm definitely that.

Ben Westhoff 1:13:42 ... to be, like, the kids th- these days.

Joe Rogan 1:13:44 Oh, I'm definitely that. That's who I am.

Ben Westhoff 1:13:45 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:13:46 That's... I'm, I'm embracing it.

Ben Westhoff 1:13:47 Are you into hip-hop? I was, uh, I was actually talking to someone.

Joe Rogan 1:13:49 Yes, love hip-hop. Yeah, sure. Yeah.

Ben Westhoff 1:13:49 Okay. Who is, who is your kinda generation?

Joe Rogan 1:13:51 Nas, huge Nas fan.

Ben Westhoff 1:13:53 Uh-huh.

Joe Rogan 1:13:53 Uh, Gang Starr. Love, love Gang Starr. Um, of course, Biggie, Tupac, you know, the, the classics, you know. I mean, Big Daddy Kane.

Ben Westhoff 1:14:02 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:14:02 I'm a b- I love EPMD.

Ben Westhoff 1:14:04 Yeah, that's the old, old school East Coast stuff, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:14:06 I love... Yeah. Just... I... You know, um, God, there's so many. There's, i- i- it's just, that era was like... I mean, there's c- couple errors in, that I just listed, but it's lyrical. Like, Nas is my favorite, I think.

Ben Westhoff 1:14:20 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:14:20 Because his lyrics, they're so intricate, you know. He's, he... The way he words things.

Ben Westhoff 1:14:26 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:14:26 Like, you just go, "Oh, shit." You know.

Ben Westhoff 1:14:28 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:14:28 You, you hear his lyrics, you just go, "Oh."

Ben Westhoff 1:14:30 Nas is like the king of... He's like the oh-shit king.

Joe Rogan 1:14:33 Yes.

Ben Westhoff 1:14:33 Yeah, yeah, yeah. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:14:34 For lyrics, man, he's the best. What was the... Was it Rewind? What was the one where he, he played the whole song backwards?

Ben Westhoff 1:14:40 Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:14:41 Like, from-

Ben Westhoff 1:14:41 I know what you're talking about, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:14:42 From the bullet going back into the gun, all the way through the entire story. He starts at the end and then backs up the story.

Ben Westhoff 1:14:49 Amazing.

Joe Rogan 1:14:50 Hippe had some fucking classics. I think he's the best writer in all of hip-hop.

Ben Westhoff 1:14:56 Yeah. Well, you know, it's just his beats don't always hit me the right way. But he's got so many classics. He's earned, like, the right. But, um... But my big thing... 'Cause I did live in New York, and I was an East Coast, you know, like, music snob.

Joe Rogan 1:15:09 Yeah.

Ben Westhoff 1:15:09 And, uh, like, Biggie is clearly the best ever. And then-

Joe Rogan 1:15:13 I got one for you. Uh, let me find out-

Ben Westhoff 1:15:14 Oh, go for it, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:15:15 Find out if you're real. Kool G Rap.

Ben Westhoff 1:15:17 Oh, yeah. He's the... I mean, he's the original. He's the best. He's undisputed.

Joe Rogan 1:15:21 He's undisputed.

Ben Westhoff 1:15:22 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:15:22 Underground guy. Like, people don't know.

Ben Westhoff 1:15:24 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:15:24 Like, you list, like, some of the greats of all time, people don't say Kool G Rap.

Ben Westhoff 1:15:29 They should, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:15:29 Go back and listen to Cock Blocking. That is one of the best fucking songs-

Ben Westhoff 1:15:34 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:15:34 ... ever. To this day, I'll go listen to that song, and it'll make me laugh.

Ben Westhoff 1:15:38 Yeah. That was, uh... Yeah, I mean, that, that, like, '80s New York stuff is so... So much of it-

Joe Rogan 1:15:44 Hill Street Blues.

Ben Westhoff 1:15:45 ... so, like, so intellectual, so amazing wordplay.

Joe Rogan 1:15:49 Yes, yes.

Ben Westhoff 1:15:50 But see, when I came to LA though, everyone's like, "Tupac, Tupac, Tupac." And I was like, "I don't get it, man. He's... His flow is not that great, you know. I just don't get it." But, but the more I, I, I, like, listened to his lyrics, the more I saw he was more than just a rapper. He was, like, a cultural influence. He was, like, a political leader to a lot of people. And finally, I'm like, "Yes, I get it. He stood for something." And now, like, I just don't hear Biggie the same way, you know. 'Cause so many of his songs are about, you know, partying and crime and stuff. And the, the bigger message of Tupac just really won me over. And then-

Joe Rogan 1:16:27 Well, I don't think it's a competition, but I know what you're saying. I mean, Tu- Tupac definitely had a different vision. But Biggie... You also have to realize, Biggie was like... How old was he when he died?

Ben Westhoff 1:16:36 Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:16:37 24 or something.

Ben Westhoff 1:16:37 They both were, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:16:38 I mean-

Ben Westhoff 1:16:39 Tupac was 25.

Joe Rogan 1:16:40 And one of my favorite-

Ben Westhoff 1:16:41 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:16:41 ... videos of Biggie is Biggie standing on a street corner when he was, like, 16, 17 years old, rapping. Do you ever see that?

Ben Westhoff 1:16:48 Um, I think I have.

Joe Rogan 1:16:50 Oh, Jesus.

Ben Westhoff 1:16:50 In Bedst- uh, with the lumberjack stuff?

Joe Rogan 1:16:52 Yeah. He's got a fucking... I, I, I think he might even have a piece of paper in his hand.

Ben Westhoff 1:16:56 Uh-huh.

Joe Rogan 1:16:56 Where he's, like, reading the rap off, or he's got it, like, in case he fucks up.

Ben Westhoff 1:17:00 Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:17:00 But his-

Ben Westhoff 1:17:01 Forget it.

Joe Rogan 1:17:01 ... flow was so good, even as a little kid.

Ben Westhoff 1:17:06 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:17:06 He was a fucking kid, man.

Ben Westhoff 1:17:08 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:17:08 And he was, like, a- as good as any rapper alive. What? D- Can you find that? Can we play that?

Narrator 1:17:13 We can play it.

Joe Rogan 1:17:13 We'll get in trouble? I'll play it for you afterwards.

Ben Westhoff 1:17:15 (laughs) Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:17:15 We'll play- after the podcast, we'll play it.

Ben Westhoff 1:17:17 And his b- his breath control and, like, his weight.

Joe Rogan 1:17:20 Yes.

Ben Westhoff 1:17:20 Sometimes I feel like you gotta be, like, fat almost-

Joe Rogan 1:17:22 Yeah. Sometimes.

Ben Westhoff 1:17:23 ... to be an amazing singer or rapper.

Joe Rogan 1:17:25 Well, comedians too.

Ben Westhoff 1:17:26 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:17:26 A lot of fat comedians, like Patrice O'Neal, one of the greatest of all time, there was something about his girth when he was on stage.

Ben Westhoff 1:17:32 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:17:32 He had, like, power. And the... It was, like, this whole thing.