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Enjoy Drugs? You'll Like 'Hamilton's Pharmacopeia'

Luckily for you, it's now available to watch for free.
Hamiltons Pharmacopeia

We have chemistry to thank for many of life's great joys: successfully baking cakes, being able to clean our clothes, processing oxygen and remaining alive. Also: drugs.

You probably don't think about it when you're halving a pinger and waiting patiently for the blissful onset of flicker-eye, but that 3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine had to be synthesised somewhere. Perhaps, the following morning, when you can't really move and you're searching your cupboards for that leftover 5-HTP, you might enjoy learning about exactly that – the history of clandestine MDMA production. Luckily for you, we made a documentary about it.

No one appreciates the molecular structure of drugs quite like Hamilton Morris, and in his VICE series Hamilton's Pharmacopeia he gets to explore that passion, meeting the shamans, users, dealers and chemists involved in the world's favourite mind-altering substances.

In the Sonoran Desert, he smokes the venom of the trippy Bufo alvarius toad, and wonders whether love can be a cookie ingredient. Exploring the medical ketamine labs of India, Hamilton meets the late Timothy Wyllie, an artist who believed the drug helped him find angels in another dimension. Then there's the story of salvia divinorum, the herb that helped Miley Cyrus establish herself as Someone Who Does Drugs in 2010. He also samples a fish that gets you high.

Watch the Hamilton's Pharmacopeia box sets for free on All 4, right here.