At AIHP, we believe that our people are what make us truly special. Today, we’re excited to introduce you to one of the amazing individuals who gives their time and talent to the Institute. Meet Benjamin Michael Johnson, one of our three summer interns.
Hailing from Dodgeville, WI, Benjamin is an undergraduate senior at the University of Wisconsin majoring in history. He aspires to pursue a PhD program following his graduation from the university.
Get to Know Us: An Interview with Ben Johnson
What excites you about your internship at AIHP?
What most excited me about AIHP was being able to work with a lot of information concerning the history of psychoactive compounds, primarily psychedelics, with people who are experts in the field. So far it’s been a very valuable experience, and the rest of this internship over the course of the summer should yield a lot of good information and help me refine my skills in various ways.
What is special to you about our current collections projects?
I’ve been mostly working with the Sterling Collection, which contains many one of a kind documents related to the War on Drugs and government policy concerning psychoactive drugs, and many of these documents are very revelatory to me. The history of America’s relationship with scheduled substances is very interesting and much more important than many people would likely suspect.
Have you encountered anything in the collections that you found to be particularly exciting to work with or want to share with the public?
There’s a lot to talk about here. A couple things concerning psychedelics I’ve been working with have been my favorites thus far, I think. As well, some documents have info pertaining to government strategy related to the War on Drugs, both on the domestic and foreign fronts. That’s the kind of stuff that draws me in the most, for sure.
The AIHP is over eighty years old, and you can still see the traces of people who have contributed time and effort into its mission. What mark do you hope to leave on the Institute?
I hope to be able to bring the knowledge contained in the Sterling Collection to light for people to learn about. This could be a means for me to help more people better understand what’s actually going on with drug policy, especially psychedelics, if even in a small way. Further, I think some of the information within could show people how valuable these compounds can be if utilized responsibly in therapeutic contexts, if only such practice was more widely permitted legally.
Bonus: Any fun fact(s) you’d like to share?
I was in the Army National Guard for 6 years and got out last March. Interesting learning experience. Some of my interests include martial arts like boxing, muay thai and some other things, that’s usually the kind of thing I do to stay in shape and keep active. My academic interests aside from my recently developed fascination with the history of pharmacy include military and scientific history, theology/mythology, philosophy, and while I could never do the work involved with it I’ve been trying to learn about quantum physics recently, at least at the conceptual level. I was also in choir in middle and high school, so music and singing have always been pretty important to me.
