Carl L. Hart is the Mamie Phipps Clark Professor of Psychology in the Departments of Psychology and Psychiatry at Columbia University. He is also a Research Scientist at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. He has published numerous scientific and popular articles in the area of neuropsychopharmacology. He has served on multiple National Institutes of Health grant review committees and on multiple Editorial Boards of scientific journals, including Progress in Neurobiology and Addiction Neuroscience. He is the co-author (with Charles Ksir) of the market-leading textbook “Drugs, Society and Human Behavior” . His book, “High Price: A Neuroscientist’s Journey of Self-Discovery That Challenges Everything You Know About Drugs and Society,” was the 2014 winner of the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award. His most recent book,“Drug Use for Grown-ups: Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear,” has sparked a more nuanced national conversation on the topic. Professor Hart has appeared on numerous podcasts, radio and television shows and is frequently invited to lecture on topics related to drug science. His essays have been published in several popular publications including The New York Times, The Guardian, Scientific American, The Nation, Le Temps (Switzerland), and Folha de S. Paulo (Brazil).

I’ll recount my journey of becoming a mainstream drug scientist in the skin of America’s outcast.