It’s always interesting to me to see which drugs get thrown under the bus. Most of them are the ones that are illegal but the reality is, as you’ve heard on this show, that drugs are used for all kinds of reasons. Some of which are “pharmaceutical” and have to do with capitalistic interest and some are “recreational” and have to do with spiritual or social interest. The use of all those drugs has everything to do with the intent of the person or company behind it. That’s why I wanted an episode dedicated to GHB, often labeled the date-rape drug. As you’ll hear, there have been many date-rape drugs. GHB has some amazing benefits to it that has nothing to do with it’s date-rape branding. I wasn’t sure, at first, who to reach out to to have this conversation and then I remembered Dan Pardi, a personal friend and one of the smartest people I know. His work is focused on health from very different but interconnected points-of-view, given his research background in the Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences department at Stanford as well as the Departments of Neurology and Endocrinology at Leiden University in the Netherlands (where he investigates how lifestyle factors, like sleep, influence decision making, cognitive performance, and metabolism) he’s the perfect person to lean into this topic. He’s done a number of studies on diet and all dimensions of health that don’t fall into your typical buckets. I love the way he brings those things together in a lot less industry-specific ways. He’s had to dig into things like GHB as he’s looked into the research informing everything from elite fighters in the Naval Special Warfare divisions, to aging, sleep, and overall health performance. It’s this holistic perspective that I thought would be really cool to bring to the conversation and really identify just how hard it is to pull these things into separated, illuminated little buckets and try to analyze them as if they stand alone in the world. I hope this episode on GHB demystifies some of it for you and opens your brain to all the different kinds of applications that this drug could have. If anythig else, you’ll definitely think about GHB differently. Link: http://www.growbigalways.com/episodes/dan-pardi