Dr. Carl Hart is a brilliant Columbia University professor of psychology and neuroscience who chairs the psych department at the prestigious university and appears in Netflix’s documentary on the history of Crack Cocaine’s rise in the 1980s. He is also a self-professed heroin user.
According to the New York Post, Hart is very open and honest about his fondness for heroin – not only as a subject of study but also as a substance he uses.
The 54-year-old, married father of three openly admits to snorting small amounts of heroin for as many as 10 days in a row.
In his new book “Drug Use For Grown Ups: Chasing Liberty In The Land of Fear”(Penguin Press), he discusses the mild withdrawal symptoms he experienced “12 to 16 hours after the last dose.”
“There aren’t many things in life that I enjoy more than a few lines by the fireplace at the end of the day,” he wrote. Hart described that snorting heroin left him feeling “refreshed” and “prepared to face another day.”
Hart equated his drug use with alcohol use saying it’s “as rational as my alcohol use. Like vacation, sex and the arts, heroin is one of the tools that I use to maintain my work-life balance.”
The professor who studies the effects of psychoactive drugs on humans says he is open about his drug use because he wants to advocate for decriminalizing possession of recreational drugs.
His publishers believe Hart’s controversial approach and his book make the case “that the demonization of drug use – not drugs themselves – [has] been a tremendous scourge on America, not least in reinforcing this country’s enduring structural racism.”
