Joe Rogan Experience #1379 - Ben Westhoff

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   Hello, Ben. …

   1. JRJoe Rogan0:05

      Hello, Ben.

   2. BWBen Westhoff0:06

      Thank you for having me, Joe.

   3. JRJoe Rogan0:07

      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?

   4. BWBen Westhoff0:20

      Yeah, I have a book about NWA and Tupac-

   5. JRJoe Rogan0:23

      (laughs)

   6. BWBen Westhoff0:23

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

   7. JRJoe Rogan0:31

      Ah.

   8. BWBen Westhoff0:31

      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."

   9. JRJoe Rogan0:43

      Yeah, yeah.

   10. BWBen Westhoff0:43

       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.

   11. JRJoe Rogan1:24

       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?

   12. BWBen Westhoff1:33

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

   13. JRJoe Rogan1:42

       But doesn't morphine work really good?

   14. BWBen Westhoff1:44

       Well, it does.

   15. JRJoe Rogan1:45

       (laughs)

   16. BWBen Westhoff1:45

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

   17. JRJoe Rogan1:53

       Oh.

   18. BWBen Westhoff1:53

       ... he wanted something that came on really fast and it lasted a long time.

   19. JRJoe Rogan1:57

       Mm-hmm.

   20. BWBen Westhoff1:58

       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.

   21. JRJoe Rogan2:28

       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?

   22. BWBen Westhoff2:37

       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.

   23. JRJoe Rogan2:44

       And it was from China then as well?

   24. BWBen Westhoff2:46

       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.

   25. JRJoe Rogan3:38

       What?

   26. BWBen Westhoff3:39

       To, like, um, so they would withstand more pain and would go longer and faster and could-

   27. JRJoe Rogan3:44

       Really?

   28. BWBen Westhoff3:45

       ... 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.

   29. JRJoe Rogan4:09

       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?

   30. BWBen Westhoff4:19

       I guess so. Yeah, I don't know all the details of it. But, you know, it's performance enhancing, basically.
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   Uh-huh. …

   1. JRJoe Rogan15:00

      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.

   2. BWBen Westhoff15:16

      Uh-huh.

   3. JRJoe Rogan15:16

      But I had, like... Yes.

   4. BWBen Westhoff15:17

      And did you got, like, full, full-

   5. JRJoe Rogan15:18

      Oh, yeah.

   6. BWBen Westhoff15:19

      ... everything back?

   7. JRJoe Rogan15:19

      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.

   8. BWBen Westhoff15:26

      Uh-huh.

   9. JRJoe Rogan15:26

      You know, and you gotta catch it before that happens.

   10. BWBen Westhoff15:29

       Yeah.

   11. JRJoe Rogan15:29

       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-

   12. BWBen Westhoff15:36

       Mm-hmm.

   13. JRJoe Rogan15:36

       ... 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.

   14. BWBen Westhoff15:46

       Uh-huh. Yeah.

   15. JRJoe Rogan15:46

       They can just fucking fill you up with stem cells and go like (imitates fanfare)

   16. BWBen Westhoff15:49

       Yeah.

   17. JRJoe Rogan15:49

       And everything starts regenerating.

   18. BWBen Westhoff15:51

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

   19. JRJoe Rogan15:59

       Mm-hmm.

   20. BWBen Westhoff15:59

       ... who are, you know, may- getting towards their teenage years, right?

   21. JRJoe Rogan16:03

       Mm-hmm.

   22. BWBen Westhoff16:03

       Yeah, and, like, that's the thing I worry the most about is-

   23. JRJoe Rogan16:06

       Yeah, partying.

   24. BWBen Westhoff16:06

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

   25. JRJoe Rogan16:12

       Right, especially if you're drinking. If you're a young kid and you're drinking, you're not gonna make-

   26. BWBen Westhoff16:16

       Yeah.

   27. JRJoe Rogan16:16

       ... 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."

   28. BWBen Westhoff16:31

       Yeah.

   29. JRJoe Rogan16:32

       "I definitely shouldn't be taking any pills."

   30. BWBen Westhoff16:34

       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.
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   Mm. …

   1. BWBen Westhoff30:00

      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.

   2. JRJoe Rogan30:11

      Mm.

   3. BWBen Westhoff30:11

      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.

   4. JRJoe Rogan31:21

      Your phone's ringing.

   5. BWBen Westhoff31:22

      Ooh, fail. Um, and-

   6. JRJoe Rogan31:25

      (laughs)

   7. BWBen Westhoff31:25

      ... and yeah. (laughs)

   8. JRJoe Rogan31:28

      You really were a music editor. (laughs)

   9. BWBen Westhoff31:31

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

   10. JRJoe Rogan31:37

       Right.

   11. BWBen Westhoff31:37

       These were, like, smart kids-

   12. JRJoe Rogan31:38

       Jesus.

   13. BWBen Westhoff31:38

       ... who said, "Oh, LSD has never killed anyone. Let's get that, this new thing."

   14. JRJoe Rogan31:42

       Right.

   15. BWBen Westhoff31:42

       And it killed them.

   16. JRJoe Rogan31:43

       And so, it wasn't really LSD, it was just some-

   17. BWBen Westhoff31:45

       No, it totally, no, no, nothing in common at all.

   18. JRJoe Rogan31:48

       ... no relation at all?

   19. BWBen Westhoff31:48

       Yeah.

   20. JRJoe Rogan31:50

       (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."

   21. BWBen Westhoff32:10

       Yeah.

   22. JRJoe Rogan32:10

       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-

   23. BWBen Westhoff32:16

       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-

   24. JRJoe Rogan32:27

       Mm-hmm.

   25. BWBen Westhoff32:28

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

   26. JRJoe Rogan32:35

       Right.

   27. BWBen Westhoff32:36

       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.

   28. JRJoe Rogan33:20

       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-

   29. BWBen Westhoff33:49

       Nah-ah.

   30. JRJoe Rogan33:49

       You're not buying some fake Chinese spice jam-
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   Think about that, folks.…

   1. BWBen Westhoff45:00

      more than-

   2. JRJoe Rogan45:01

      Think about that, folks.

   3. BWBen Westhoff45:01

      ... that's more than the, uh, that's more than the peak of the AIDS crisis.

   4. JRJoe Rogan45:04

      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.

   5. BWBen Westhoff45:22

      It's insane.

   6. JRJoe Rogan45:22

      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-

   7. BWBen Westhoff45:43

      Hmm.

   8. JRJoe Rogan45:43

      ... it'd be like, "Holy shit."

   9. BWBen Westhoff45:44

      Yeah.

   10. JRJoe Rogan45:44

       If Kool-Aid-

   11. BWBen Westhoff45:45

       If Kool-Aid was killing two people a year.

   12. JRJoe Rogan45:46

       Yeah.

   13. BWBen Westhoff45:47

       Yeah.

   14. JRJoe Rogan45:47

       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.

   15. BWBen Westhoff45:54

       It's, you know, a lot of people in the margins. Um...

   16. JRJoe Rogan45:57

       Yeah.

   17. BWBen Westhoff45:58

       It's, uh, I wanna hear the presidential candidates talking about it.

   18. JRJoe Rogan46:02

       Yes.

   19. BWBen Westhoff46:02

       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."

   20. JRJoe Rogan46:15

       Mm-hmm.

   21. BWBen Westhoff46:16

       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."

   22. JRJoe Rogan46:49

       They were joking around about this?

   23. BWBen Westhoff46:50

       They were making jokes about that.

   24. JRJoe Rogan46:51

       While people were dying?

   25. BWBen Westhoff46:52

       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?

   26. JRJoe Rogan47:39

       Yeah. Yeah.

   27. BWBen Westhoff47:40

       People on the margins. But they're, like, barely talking about it at all.

   28. JRJoe Rogan47:43

       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-

   29. BWBen Westhoff48:11

       Yeah.

   30. JRJoe Rogan48:11

       ... 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?
5. 1:00:00 – 1:15:00

   Right. …

   1. JRJoe Rogan1:00:00

      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."

   2. BWBen Westhoff1:00:15

      Right.

   3. JRJoe Rogan1:00:16

      And this is something that you've sort of stored away in the back of your brain-

   4. BWBen Westhoff1:00:19

      Right.

   5. JRJoe Rogan1:00:20

      ... 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.

   6. BWBen Westhoff1:00:25

      Right.

   7. JRJoe Rogan1:00:25

      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-

   8. BWBen Westhoff1:00:34

      Mm-hmm.

   9. JRJoe Rogan1:00:34

      ... 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-

   10. BWBen Westhoff1:00:49

       Mm-hmm.

   11. JRJoe Rogan1:00:49

       ... fester in your subconscious.

   12. BWBen Westhoff1:00:51

       Yeah.

   13. JRJoe Rogan1:00:51

       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.

   14. BWBen Westhoff1:01:02

       Oh, that's amazing.

   15. JRJoe Rogan1:01:03

       Which, which DMT is a part of normal human neurochemistry, it's produced by-

   16. BWBen Westhoff1:01:07

       Right.

   17. JRJoe Rogan1:01:07

       ... by the human body.

   18. BWBen Westhoff1:01:08

       I've heard that.

   19. JRJoe Rogan1:01:08

       Yeah.

   20. BWBen Westhoff1:01:09

       And, and I've heard that, like, ayahuas- you know, ayahuasca is, like, 12 hours or whatever experience.

   21. JRJoe Rogan1:01:14

       It's a long experience, yeah.

   22. BWBen Westhoff1:01:15

       And I've heard that DMT is basically the very-

   23. JRJoe Rogan1:01:17

       20 minutes.

   24. BWBen Westhoff1:01:18

       ... peak of that-

   25. JRJoe Rogan1:01:18

       Yeah.

   26. BWBen Westhoff1:01:19

       ... like, distilled down.

   27. JRJoe Rogan1:01:20

       Yeah. It's, uh, the way I describe it is mushrooms times a million plus aliens.

   28. BWBen Westhoff1:01:24

       Uh-huh. (laughs)

   29. JRJoe Rogan1:01:25

       Yeah. It's, it's-

   30. BWBen Westhoff1:01:26

       Did it have, like, a profound, like, lasting impact on you?
6. 1:15:00 – 1:17:34

   Yeah. …

   1. BWBen Westhoff1:15:00

      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.

   2. JRJoe Rogan1:15:09

      Yeah.

   3. BWBen Westhoff1:15:09

      And, uh, like, Biggie is clearly the best ever. And then-

   4. JRJoe Rogan1:15:13

      I got one for you. Uh, let me find out-

   5. BWBen Westhoff1:15:14

      Oh, go for it, yeah.

   6. JRJoe Rogan1:15:15

      Find out if you're real. Kool G Rap.

   7. BWBen Westhoff1:15:17

      Oh, yeah. He's the... I mean, he's the original. He's the best. He's undisputed.

   8. JRJoe Rogan1:15:21

      He's undisputed.

   9. BWBen Westhoff1:15:22

      Yeah.

   10. JRJoe Rogan1:15:22

       Underground guy. Like, people don't know.

   11. BWBen Westhoff1:15:24

       Yeah.

   12. JRJoe Rogan1:15:24

       Like, you list, like, some of the greats of all time, people don't say Kool G Rap.

   13. BWBen Westhoff1:15:29

       They should, yeah.

   14. JRJoe Rogan1:15:29

       Go back and listen to Cock Blocking. That is one of the best fucking songs-

   15. BWBen Westhoff1:15:34

       (laughs)

   16. JRJoe Rogan1:15:34

       ... ever. To this day, I'll go listen to that song, and it'll make me laugh.

   17. BWBen Westhoff1:15:38

       Yeah. That was, uh... Yeah, I mean, that, that, like, '80s New York stuff is so... So much of it-

   18. JRJoe Rogan1:15:44

       Hill Street Blues.

   19. BWBen Westhoff1:15:45

       ... so, like, so intellectual, so amazing wordplay.

   20. JRJoe Rogan1:15:49

       Yes, yes.

   21. BWBen Westhoff1:15:50

       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-

   22. JRJoe Rogan1:16:27

       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?

   23. BWBen Westhoff1:16:36

       Oh, yeah.

   24. JRJoe Rogan1:16:37

       24 or something.

   25. BWBen Westhoff1:16:37

       They both were, yeah, yeah.

   26. JRJoe Rogan1:16:38

       I mean-

   27. BWBen Westhoff1:16:39

       Tupac was 25.

   28. JRJoe Rogan1:16:40

       And one of my favorite-

   29. BWBen Westhoff1:16:41

       (laughs)

   30. JRJoe Rogan1:16:41

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

Episode duration: 1:56:02