I cast a very wide net, using all my senses. I listen, and I look and I read and when I come across things that are interesting I follow them up and see what I can find out about them. If I come across something that doesn't fit with accepted conceptions, it really catches my interest, it's something that I want to know about.

It is consumer demand which is forcing change within the medical profession right now.

Look at what happens when you cut your finger. You don't have to go to a finger healer, you don't have to pray for your finger to heal, all you have to do is make sure it's clean and it will heal. That's all the evidence you need that the body has the capacity to repair itself.

Often I'm on talk shows and hosts will ask, "How do you feel about it, when people say, you're controversial?" And I say that, "I think if I stop being controversial I wouldn't be doing my job." I mean, this is just the kind of things that I hone in on. I'm interested, as I said, in what doesn't fit established conceptions, in looking at things that don't fit accepted models. And in trying to determine what's true and useful.

One of the products of that work was my first book, The Natural Mind, which laid out a theory that humans are born with an innate need to alter their consciousness, and considered the psychological and social implications of that. This need can be satisfied in many ways, drugs being just one of them.