COMING OUT OF THE CHEMICAL CLOSET
CARL HART IS a professor of neuroscience and psychology at Columbia University. He served in the United States Air Force, earned a Ph.D., and raised three children to adulthood. As he writes in his new book: “Each day, I meet my parental, personal, and professional responsibilities. I pay my taxes, serve as a volunteer in my community… and contribute to the global community as an informed and engaged citizen.”
So it may surprise some people to learn that not only has Hart been responsibly using heroin regularly for more than five years but he’s willing to tell people about it. He says his experiences with heroin make him a more forgiving and empathetic person, partner, and father.
Hart’s path to drug use started in Miami in the 1980s—not by taking drugs but by trying to get people off them. When the media blamed crack for unemployment and murder in the community where he grew up, Hart decided to study neurobiology to develop medications to help people with drug addictions. Now he realizes that was naive: The crisis wasn’t really about crack.
In his new book, Drug Use for Grown-Ups: Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear (Penguin Press), Hart writes about being one of the millions of Americans who use drugs regularly and lead normal lives. “The vast majority of them are middleclass, responsible folks” who are in the chemical closet, he says. Hart hopes to reach these people and those who already know and love them. Perhaps politicians will eventually come along for the trip. But for now, Hart says, President Joe Biden “doesn’t know this issue, doesn’t care about this issue.”
In January, Reason’s Nick Gillespie spoke with Hart via Zoom about the science of drug use and how the media flub their coverage of addiction and overdose deaths.
Reason: Give me the elevator pitch of your new book.
Hart: Well, the. What I’m trying to do is ask Americans to think about their own liberty, and not in this jingoistic false patriotic sense, but in terms of what the Declaration of Independence guaranteed: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all of us, as long as we don’t disrupt anybody else’s ability to do the same. That means we get to live our life as we see fit. Taking drugs can be a part of that. It is a part of that for a lot of Americans.
