Grinspoon on Drugs – 2024 and beyond

The year in review.

Thanks to you my readers, 2024 has been an incredibly successful and meaningful year for my blog “Grinspoon on Drugs”. My writings are unique in that they are scientifically referenced, hand-written, and informed by my 25 years as a general doctor, who has always been, in one way or another, multidimensionally immersed in drug culture.

This blog is about all drugs – those with great potential for human advancement, to advance our health, to evolve our consciousness and give us better ways of connecting with each other - or those drugs with potential for abject misuse. We discuss what goes wrong when drug use starts out as helpful or enjoyable and descends into addiction.

There is still tons of work to do, starting with dismantling our nightmarish War on Drugs which needlessly ruins so many lives. My family, starting with my father, the legendary Harvard psychiatrist Dr. Lester Grinspoon, has been working on this for more than half a century. We need to stop arresting people for nonviolent drug charges, such as simple possession of cannabis, and we need to get all nonviolent drug offenders out of prison. We need to expunge records, so that people can start to rebuild their lives again. This context provides the background many of the blogs I write.

In Grinspoon on Drugs, we discuss prescribed drugs, street drugs, pharmaceutical drugs, over the counter drugs, gray market drugs, experimental drugs, ancient potions, the different psychedelics, and, of course, my first love, cannabis. I will discuss any drug you can utilize with benefit, along, of course, with any resultant harms and traumatic experiences. I will discuss any drug which has been misunderstood, which has potential benefit, or which has been wrongly stigmatized during the War on Drugs.

I examine the drugs which has been hypocritically accepted within our society, such as caffeine and alcohol, despite having many of the same potential levels of harms as the other drugs. For example, few people realize that the most dangerous drug of all is lurking within our homes! It is alcohol – implicated in 172,000 deaths last year (accidents, cancer, liver damage, heart disease, etc.), which is significantly more than opioids. But, sigh…alcohol is socially acceptable, so there is less of a spotlight on it, with a hyper-focus on various purported harms of cannabis, which does have harms, but not in the same ballpark as alcohol.

Finally, Grinspoon on Drugs is also about addiction, as I am 17 years in recovery from a vicious addiction to prescription opioids. It is about real recovery, allowing people to find their own pathways back to themselves, about being “Cali sober”, incorporating methadone, Suboxone and other lifesaving medications, and utilizing cannabis and psychedelics in recovery, not simply the abstinence-only AA and NA cult-like nonsense that we’ve been subject to for almost a century.

I am interested in the therapeutic benefits, and the appeal, of these “forbidden” substances, not just the harms.

Key highlights from 2024

In 2024, we covered a wide range of fascinating topics, including a few highlights:

Kratom and ketamine – weird, accessible drugs with vast potential benefits as well as harms.

Addictions - Do they last a lifetime? How on earth do you get good treatment in our broken systems? What treatments are bogus? How do you help loved ones who are addicted? How do you meet people where they are, to increase their chances of success?

We covered a wealth of cannabis related topics such as:

Does cannabis help with autism?

How to use cannabis safely.

How to buy medical marijuana at a dispensary.

The dangers of cannabis use during pregnancy and breast feeding.

How addictive is cannabis? This is a controversial topic!

Finally, we have a piece on “The Miraculous Endocannabinoid System”, which is truly miraculous, and which we should all know more about, especially healthcare providers.

My blog, “Doobie No Harm” is about how doctors have been on the wrong side of the War on Drugs, especially the War on Cannabis, for half a century, and how they can do much, much better for their patients, who often know more about cannabis than they do.

We covered tons of issues related to psychedelics, including some general topics, such as the evidence (or lack thereof…) in favor of microdosing (which is all the rage these days…) and the many potential harms of psychedelics, which people tend to gloss over. We did quite a bit of telescoping into the wonders and potential harms of specific psychedelics such as MDMA, DMT, Ayahuasca, and Ibogaine.

In the throes of my daily, caffeine-induced hypomania, I thoroughly discuss both caffeine use disorder (which doesn’t exist as an actual diagnosis because caffeine is so socially accepted…) and Uppers (including how I utterly failed to get addicted to them despite best efforts).

Finally, we give our thoughts (and prayers…) to the stupidest program ever created by humans, the Drug Abuse Resistance Education, the DARE program. DARE vastly increased my drug use as a teen and disqualified any anti-drug message I would hear for decades. It also discredited adults in general, which I am still getting over.

Media hits

2024 was another fantastic year for media hits. To name a very few of them, I had a piece in CNN about cannabis and psychosis:

I was cited in the New York Times several times including,

I was in Rolling Stone slamming Andrew Huberman’s pseudoscientific nonsense about cannabis as “word salad”,

I was on NPR,

I was in US magazine,

I had an article in Psychiatric Times about physicians and addiction,

I was featured in a Medscape article,

I was on CBS news and MSN news about our drive to unionize my hospital’s doctors:

And, I had a great debate with Kevin Sabet (meaning that I slaughtered him):

What the future holds

In addition to future blogs, I am particularly excited for two things. First, I have a new book coming out next year about safe cannabis use in seniors. The placeholder, jokey title for this is “Grandma on Drugs”. It will be a clear, concise book which helps seniors decide if cannabis might be helpful for whatever condition they are suffering from, and, if they decide to use it, how to use it most safely and effectively.

Secondly, I am now working at the Addiction Clinic at Man’s Greatest Hospital (MGH), on track to become “addiction certified” next year. This is a great way to save lives. I also hope to cleanse the field of Addiction Medicine of its antiquated, overly fearful beliefs on medicinal cannabis.

Future blogs will include:

• Synthetic cannabinoids/bath salts (danger! Insane drugs! But, they are everywhere...)

• Novel psychoactive agents (some of these are mind-blowingly interesting, and difficult to detect)

• The Stoned Ape Theory – did psychoactive plants impact the development of human consciousness?

• Harm reduction – how we save lives in clinic, and on the streets.

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We also sell merch such as this nice ‘Grinspoon on Drugs’ mug. Click here for the catalogue.

From,

Your humble Servant,

Peter Grinspoon, M.D.

Grinspoon on Drugs (GOD)