#1854 - Rick Strassman

Rick Strassman (0:04)

The Joe Rogan Experience.

Joe Rogan (0:13)

What's up, Rick? Good.

SPEAKER_2 (0:15)

It's great seeing you.

Joe Rogan (0:16)

It's great seeing you, too. It's been a long time.

Rick Strassman (0:18)

Well, you know, we started...

Joe Rogan (0:20)

Try to keep this, like, a fist from your face. That's probably the best way to... Yeah.

Rick Strassman (0:26)

Yeah. I think we first met... some random person sent me an email, probably 2005, 2006, and he said, Oh, you know, Joe Rogan is talking about your book.

And I hadn't heard of you.

Joe Rogan (0:41)

This is before I did a podcast.

Rick Strassman (0:43)

I think it was before the podcast. I think you were still doing stand up.

Yeah. And he gave me your number, I think. And I called you and you were at the airport. And you said, hey, man, I'm reading your book. I love it.

Joe Rogan (0:57)

Yeah. The book was fascinating because your book was, you need to adjust cameras. Good.

Your book was fascinating to me because it was, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but it was the first time that they ever, that the FDA ever allowed real studies to be done on schedule one drugs.

Rick Strassman (1:19)

It was the first new American study in 20 years.

Joe Rogan (1:23)

On psychedelics.

Rick Strassman (1:24)

Yeah. Yeah. On many human psychedelic research.

Joe Rogan (1:28)

And how did you, first of all, why did you want to do it? And how did you get the permission to do it?

Rick Strassman (1:36)

Well, I wanted to do it because of my interest in chemistry and my interest in altered states, my own altered states. Like the first time I smoked marijuana, I was 18 years old, and it was a fully psychedelic experience. There were purple clouds coming out of the speakers. I was flying over this, you know, the college town and I was living in at the time.

And my friend was, too. It was a shared hallucination on very strong hash.

Joe Rogan (2:08)

So you felt like you were out of body?

Rick Strassman (2:10)

No. I was, we were on a carpet.

Joe Rogan (2:15)

And you felt like you could, you were, so you both saw like a city below you?

Rick Strassman (2:19)

Yeah, the floor disappeared.

Yeah, it was the first time I smoked marijuana. And I thought, wow, this is interesting.

Joe Rogan (2:27)

And now hash is, the way they create hash is they take the, what is it called, the crystals off of THC? Is that how they do it?

Rick Strassman (2:34)

They shake out the resin from the flower.

Joe Rogan (2:39)

Just shake it, that's how they do it?

Rick Strassman (2:42)

Well, there's different ways to do it, like in the old country, you get really sweaty, and you just agitate a lot of putt, and the resin accumulates on your skin, and you scrape it off. Really?

Joe Rogan (2:58)

And that's how they make hash?

Rick Strassman (3:00)

Well, you know.

Joe Rogan (3:01)

That's so funky. You're getting someone's funk along with the hash.

Rick Strassman (3:04)

Yeah, yeah, that's called pre-industrial hash.

Joe Rogan (3:08)

I was watching or was looking at something online the other day where they were talking about repurposing, it was in Morocco. They were repurposing, it was Steve D'Angelo. He was talking about how they were repurposing machines in Morocco to make hash.

I mean, how they've been doing it this way, and making hash in this part of the world for, you know, who knows how many years. Is this it?

Rick Strassman (3:37)

I wonder what the machines are.

Joe Rogan (3:39)

Yeah, this is Steve D'Angelo, Steve D'Angelo's hemp activist, cannabis activist. So it looks like some kind of a press or something like that. I don't know what that thing is.

Rick Strassman (3:50)

Yeah, interesting.

Joe Rogan (3:51)

I think it's like it has something to do with automobiles. He's going to say it right here.

SPEAKER_2 (3:58)

Things that can't break down, things that don't need electricity, things that can be improvised, and just so much cleverness has been shown here today. So much ingenuity in working with what you have. I mean, this press is a great example of it. And take a look here. It's just basically an automobile jack that's been put into a frame.

Had a couple of springs put on there. And then, you know, these iron casing boxes made.

And it works. It works really well. And this is the way that the hash that's smoked by most people around the world, the largest quantity of cannabis that's made anywhere, is made still by this legacy method. And the great thing about it is, this could really be done anywhere, right? I think about folks in Mexico or Colombia who could take this method and repurpose it and adapt it and be making quite a very nice high quality hash. Just about anywhere.