Biography
Hamilton Morris was born in New York City, the son of Julia Sheehan, an art historian, and documentary filmmaker Errol Morris. [3] [4] He was raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts. As a teenager, Morris appeared in television commercials, notably a 2002 advertisement for the first-generation iPod. [5] He attended the University of Chicago and The New School, where he studied anthropology and chemistry. [6] [7] [2] He earned a bachelor of science (BSc) degree in liberal arts from The New School. [1]
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. [8] 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. [9] [10] 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. [2] [3]
Morris was a correspondent and producer for Vice on HBO until 2021, and is a contributor to Harper's Magazine . [11] Morris frequently consults with media on the subject of psychoactive drugs and conducts pharmacological research at Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia [3] [12] [13] with an emphasis on the synthesis and history of dissociative anesthetics. [14] [15] [16] [17]
In September 2021, Morris left Vice to work as a full-time chemistry consultant at the biotechnology startup, Compass Pathways. [2] 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. [18] He is said to have worked with Wallach studying the chemistry and pharmacology of psychedelics for more than a decade. [2] Wallach's lab has a contract with Compass Pathways to develop novel psychedelic therapeutics. [18] Morris has coauthored scientific papers on hallucinogens with Wallach, including a 2014 review on dissociatives [14] and a 2023 study identifying serotonergic psychedelics as mediating hallucinogenic-like effects (i.e., the head-twitch response) via activation of the serotonin 5-HT2A receptor Gq signaling pathway. [19] Although Morris left Vice, he said that he plans to continue to write, podcast, and potentially make additional films in the future. [2]
Morris is notable in asserting, based on self-experimentation and along with Jonathan Ott, that bufotenin is active as a psychedelic. [20] [21] According to Morris, its effects are like a cross between those of dimethyltryptamine (DMT) and 5-MeO-DMT. [21] [20]
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