Background and Family
Hamilton Morris was born on 14 April 1987 in New York City. His father is Errol Morris, the acclaimed documentary filmmaker known for The Thin Blue Line (1988) and The Fog of War (2003); his mother, Julia Sheehan, is an art historian. Morris grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, surrounded by an atmosphere of intellectual rigour and cinematic storytelling that would shape his own distinctive approach to drug journalism.
Morris studied anthropology and chemistry at the University of Chicago and The New School, where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree. Even as an undergraduate, he displayed the unusual combination of scientific curiosity and narrative ambition that would define his career. He began writing for Vice magazine as a college sophomore.
Early Journalism at Vice
Morris's first major piece for Vice, published in 2008, was titled "The Magic Jews" and documented his experience taking LSD with a group of Hasidic Jews. The article was notable for its lack of sensationalism: where drug journalism had long traded in lurid cautionary tales or breathless advocacy, Morris adopted a coolly empirical, anthropological tone. The piece caught the attention of Vice's editorial team, and in 2009 the magazine hired him to write a monthly print column called "Hamilton's Pharmacopeia."
The column evolved into a series of articles and short documentary segments for VBS.tv (Vice's video platform), in which Morris travelled the world investigating the chemistry, history, pharmacology, and cultural contexts of psychoactive substances. His subjects ranged from obscure tryptamines synthesised in clandestine laboratories to traditional plant medicines used by indigenous communities in South America and Africa. In each case, Morris brought the same combination of firsthand investigation, chemical literacy, and deadpan curiosity.
