Hamilton Morris


Hamilton Morris is an American journalist, documentarian, and scientific researcher. He is the creator and director of the television series Hamilton's Pharmacopeia, in which he covered the chemistry, history, and cultural impact of various psychoactive drugs. Morris is considered to be among the world's leading psychoactive drug journalists.

Biography

Hamilton Morris was born in New York City, the son of Julia Sheehan, an art historian, and documentary filmmaker Errol Morris. He was raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts. As a teenager, Morris appeared in television commercials, notably a 2002 advertisement for the first-generation iPod. He attended the University of Chicago and The New School, where he studied anthropology and chemistry. He earned a bachelor of science degree in liberal arts from The New School.
Morris's interest in psychoactive substances blossomed in his late teens when he began reading pharmacology information hosted on websites such as Bluelight and Erowid. He began writing for Vice magazine as a college sophomore. He wrote a piece called 'The Magic Jews' in 2008 documenting his experience taking LSD with a group of Hasidic Jews. Vice later hired him to write a monthly print column titled "Hamilton's Pharmacopeia" in 2009 that evolved into a series of articles and documentaries for VBS.tv focused on the science of psychoactive drugs.
Morris was a correspondent and producer for Vice on HBO until 2021, and is a contributor to Harper's Magazine. Morris frequently consults with media on the subject of psychoactive drugs and conducts pharmacological research at Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia with an emphasis on the synthesis and history of dissociative anesthetics.
In September 2021, Morris left Vice to work as a full-time chemistry consultant at the biotechnology startup, Compass Pathways. In October 2021, it was reported that Morris was working as a chemist in Jason Wallach's lab at the University of the Sciences's Philadelphia College of Pharmacy. He is said to have worked with Wallach studying the chemistry and pharmacology of psychedelics for more than a decade. Wallach's lab has a contract with Compass Pathways to develop novel psychedelic therapeutics. Morris has coauthored scientific papers on hallucinogens with Wallach, including a 2014 review on dissociatives and a 2023 study identifying serotonergic psychedelics as mediating hallucinogenic-like effects via activation of the serotonin 5-HT2A receptor Gq signaling pathway. Although Morris left Vice, he said that he plans to continue to write, podcast, and potentially make additional films in the future.
Morris has reported, based on self-experimentation and along with Jonathan Ott, that bufotenin is active as a psychedelic. According to Morris, its effects are like a cross between those of dimethyltryptamine and 5-MeO-DMT.

Projects

Some notable projects of Morris include: