#592: Dennis McKenna — An Ethnopharmacologist on Hallucinogens, Sex-Crazed Cicadas, The Mushrooms of Language, BioGnosis, and Illuminating Obscure Corners

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Tim. Hada had it. A quick disclaimer before we get into the interview, the plants and compounds mentioned in this episode are illegal in many countries, and even possession can carry severe criminal penalties. This episode does not constitute medical advice nor legal advice. And should not be construed as a recommendation to use psychedelics. There are serious legal, psychological, and physical risks.

fatalities. So psychedelics are not for everyone. They can exacerbate certain emotional problems, certain diagnoses, and there have been, as mentioned, in very rare cases, Fatalities. So Thanks for being safe, everybody. Optimal minimal. At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. So now question.

No, we're just seeing it. I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoscal. No Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferris. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris Show. My guest today is a fan favorite, Dennis McKenna. You can find him on Twitter at

Dennis McKenna for Dennis has spent more than 40 years researching the interdisciplinary study of Amazonian ethnopharmacology and plant hallucinogens. He has conducted extensive ethnobotanical field work in the Peruvian, Colombian, and Brazilian Amazon. His doctoral research at the University of British Columbia focused on the ethnopharmacology of ayahuasca. and Ukuhe, two tryptamine based hallucinogens used by indigenous peoples in the Northwest Amazon. He is a founding board member of the Hefter Research Institute, which has helped fund and directly funded a lot of very good science, and was a key organizer and participant in the Waska project. the first biomedical investigation of ayahuasca by the UDV, a Brazilian religious group. He is the younger brother of Terrence McKenna. From 2000 to 2017, he taught courses on ethnopharmacology as well as plants and human affairs at the Center for Spirituality and Healing at the University of Minnesota. In twenty nineteen, in collaboration with colleagues, he incorporated a nonprofit, the McKenna Academy of Natural Philosophy. Currently, the Academy has several projects underway, with the most immediate being preparations for an upcoming conference in the UK, May twenty third to twenty sixth, that's twenty twenty-two. ESPD fifty five, we're gonna talk a lot about this, which will cover a wide range of topics related to psychoethnopharmacology.

Dennis emigrated to Canada in the spring of twenty nineteen with his wife Sheila and now resides in Abbotsford, British Columbia. The website. for the event that I just mentioned at ESPD fifty five dot com. Dennis, welcome back to the show. It's so nice to see you again. Thanks, Tim. It's really great to be here. Thank you for Welcoming me back.

Absolutely. And I want to mention to folks right up front that the first episode covered a lot of ground. I'm gonna try not to duplicate too much. The title of the last episode for people who want to check it out is Dennis McKenna, The Depths of Ayahuasca, 500 plus Sessions Fundamentals, advanced topics, science, churches, learnings, warnings, and beyond. So you get the idea. If you want to do a deep dive on not just ayahuasca, but certainly a lot of your biographical details and more. Listen to the first episode. I'm going to try to deliver on

The promise That I made at the end of the first episode, which was a teaser to a second conversation, which now we are in the very beginning of, during which I said we might get into, quote, the really strange and weird stuff, end quote. So I'm gonna make an attempt to incorporate some strange and weird stuff. I don't think it'll be very hard. And I thought we could start with A number of excerpts, highlights that I grabbed from the Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss, which chronicles many of your life experiences, adventures, and misadventures alongside your brother and the many other people in your life. And I'm just gonna pull out a section here and you can feel free to revise or update

Or now refute anything that I bring up. But here's the line. They were an excellent compliment to the cannabis, we don't have to get into all the context before this, which we smoke constantly, along with the occasional hit derived from the shavings taken from our fresh supply of banisteriopsis copy, the vine added to ayahuasca as a source of the MAO inhibiting compounds, that's monoamine oxidase inhibiting compounds. Here's the part I wanted to hear you expand on a bit. We found that smoking the bark while on mushrooms synergized the closed eye hallucinations in a most pleasant and intriguing way. We dubbed this serendipitous discovery Vegetable Television. So could you speak A bit more, please, about the effect of adding

the smoking of the bark to mushrooms and what that experience Was or is like It was pretty much an accidental discovery. You know, as so many of these things are. This is a good example of what happens, I guess, basically when you start mucking around with plants. You know, and doing stuff that Maybe not be maybe not entirely safe, but you had to experiment. It was just uh it was just we stumbled on it. We were taking a lot of mushrooms.

And that's a whole other story that we may or may not get into, but we were in a situation in the Amazon when we were doing mushrooms pretty much constantly. And when you're doing them constantly, you get a certain tolerance built up, and then you have to do larger doses to get any effect. And We were as as it says there, we were smoking cannabis pretty much constantly through this too. So we decided to just well, what would happen if we smoked some badasteriopsis?

shavings on the mushrooms and It had this amazing effect, you know, which anybody could replicate, and I don't think it's particularly Dangerous, but we found that we could take a hit. And then we would get this efflorescence of visions that would just Gently rise at last.

Two or three minutes and then just kind of fade away. And then you could take another hit and you could repeat that. It was kinda like going up and down in a balloon, you know, you could lose some ballast and go a little higher, or you could come down. It was very pleasant, actually. It was very nice. And if you look at the whole uh history of ethnopharmacology For example, the ayahuasca, we think of ayahuasca as being

Essentially a mixture of two plants. But that's very much a simplification of what ayahuasca is. You know, there's a whole pharmacopeia of plants that sort of This galaxy of plants that that is associated with ayahuasca. Not always taken with it, sometimes taken as admixture, sometimes taken

as components of this dieta, which is very important in the sort of ayahuasca. Tradition, the training of the curderos and so on. And A lot of these plants are Not very well investigated from a scientific point of view.

It's an empirical science. And I guess the point is In some ways these practitioners, shamans, curinderos, and They're really scientists in a certain sense. They're experimental about it. And they don't hesitate to say, Well what if I take this and mix it with that? What's gonna happen? How is that gonna change the effect?

Sometimes they really regret those that survive this process, you know, make discoveries, but there is the potential to uh Take the wrong things. People may think that Ayahuasca's been pretty much figured out in terms of its botany, chemistry Pharmacology and so on, but that's not the case.

There's a lot more to be learned about ayahuasca. There's numerous PhDs left to be done, and particularly these admixture plants are interesting because some of them are psychedelic are by themselves or regarded to be, but they may be used with ayahuasca. So this accumulated knowledge that exists in this sort of Folk traditions, if you will. Is Not explored.

certainly not codified and it's ever changing. That's why There is no such thing as a standardized mixture of ayahuasca. Because Each preparation. Is as different.

as the practitioners the preparer. It has their sort of Idiosyncratic stamp on it. I want to Underscore a few things that you said.

And then raise some additional questions. So first I just want to Reinforce how trial and error over hundreds or thousands of years can produce some very refined approaches to solving different problems. And I think that this is well represented

in areas that are perhaps a little more objectively accessible. By most markers then say psychedelics, if you look at poisons. Used in the Amazon. And I've certainly learned a lot about this from our mutual friend Mark Plotkin, who is an impressive fellow in his own right and has spent a lot of time in Suriname and other places. Mm-hmm. But if you look at Curare for a very long time, for instance Western scientists who later would take that and use it as the basis for a lot of modern anesthesia.

Saw that Various species of pepper. wild pepper were being added as admixtures to this poison and they After failing to do any type of assay that w that produce meaningful results, concluded that it was just primitive superstition

And that was the conclusion for a long time until It was identified that I believe it's bioperine in these constituent sort of molecules found in pepper can actually increase the bioavailability of these poisons such that they're faster acting. And if you're shooting a monkey in the canopy, the last thing you want is for that tail to wrap around a branch when it dies so that it doesn't fall to the floor. Yeah. Uh and uh so lo and behold, it turned out that yes, there is a uh very practical purpose for the inclusion of this ad mixture. And I'm sure there are some false leads and there are things that kind of remain that

Won't be proven out in that same way, but I do think there's an argument to be made that As you said, a lot of PhDs are yet to be earned looking at these ad mixtures. And just to provide a bit of context on the Dieta. And please feel free to to jump in and

add or refute anything that I say. The dieta in many different tribes in many different contexts is the ingestion, in some cases the application of plants that an individual is attempting to better understand or Adopt and integrate as an ally. And the ayahuasca is viewed as a master plant or a teacher plant, you know, effectively

in some capacity a vehicle for getting to understand and know these plants. So over a period of time, and sometimes it's done in a fasting context, other times it's a a very bland diet. These plants may be not ingested at the same time as ayahuasca, but alternated, say one day on, one day off. Or otherwise.

And then in certain cases, as you were mentioning, there are these psychedelics like toy that are Brood with Ayahuasca, which can be Pretty dicey in some cases. I wan ask you about

Another Paragraph. And that'll lead into my question. Here's the paragraph. In the next two or three sessions at Don Fidel's I experienced the same sub thhreshold effects. It couldn't have been Poor quality brew. Others in the group, including Don, were clearly affected. It was something wrong with me. For some reason I wasn't getting it, in quotation marks. Reflecting on those first experiences, I think that ayahuasca a learned experience. If you don't know what to expect, nothing may happen. Also, my uptight hypervigilance may have prevented me from relaxing enough to allow the experience to manifest.

Okay, so this paragraph highlights one brand of sort of a null experience that I find most mystifying about psychedelics because I have also had experiences and many others have where They will

One out of ten, one out of fifteen, one out of every twenty sessions have absolutely no effect. Even from mega doses of ayahuasca and presumably you're You know, serotonin and type two A receptors aren't just out to lunch for that period of time, and it begets all sorts of questions. So could you speak to Ayahuasca is a learned experience. And

Also comment on if you have any thoughts. These Zero Affect experiences because in in each case, I can come up with a plausible explanation for why if it were possible for my psyche to negate an experience, it would have negated those experiences in those settings. But it's hard for me to make heads or tails out of. It's very hard to do any kind of control study on this.

You can't you you can't do that. I think what this speaks to is that Ayahuasca or any Psychoactive drug. Not just psychedelics, but it happens in psychedelics. Is

The experience is A combination of pharmacology Pharmacogenetics the way that your unique body we're all y biochemically unique in the way your body handles The absorption and the

Elimination of the substance. And the circumstances set and setting. This dynamic of the environment that we harp on constantly is as the importance of set and setting. I forget who it was, but some I think maybe it was Antie Weil who once made the observation, psychedelics are a kind of placebo. in a certain way. And if you take them under the wrong circumstances or inappropriate circumstances You're not gonna

Get any effect. Because It doesn't sink with the expectations that you may have or other things. And it just won't happen. You have to surrender to it. You literally have to surrender to it. To let it happen. But I think that

This whole area. Of How the pharmacology and the expectations interact. It's a dynamic process that involves the medicine

Your expectations The dose And your biochemical individuality and all that. I mean it's interesting, for example, there are some people Most of us, for example, smok DMT and were blown away, right? I mean DMT is hard to ignore if you smoke it. It's profound.

Very quick. very intense experience. There are people Who experienced nothing. Which is

Rather strange. So what's that about? And without looking. into well, okay, so what's unique about their serotonin? pharmacology. Maybe these people are like genetic knockouts, natural genetic knockouts. Maybe they don't have high levels of five H T two A receptors, or maybe their MAO is super active or super high.

But you know, the problem, Tim, with studying this stuff is it all comes down to These are case studies. So you can't do a controlled experiment, really. You can't do a group and really study this effectively. It's all about Well, there's this one individual that no matter how much he takes, he or she takes DMT, he's Insensitive to it.

I heard a case of someone who, for example, Was insensitive to DMT. But very sensitive to phymothoxy DMT. Why would this be? It's just a mystery. What also

Just it produces more questions than answers, certainly for me, is when you look longitudinally at the experience of a single person. So Yeah. Like their pharmacogenetics should be reasonably stable, you would think. And let's just say in my case, where I'm extremely sensitive to ayahuasca, generally speaking. And then in a handful of cases have t you know, two or three cups and absolutely Zero discernible effect. And I have my own subjective explanation for why that plausibly

could have happened, but biochemically I don't know how that is possible. Because my expectation was that I would feel the effect. And similarly there are cases where Even if we remove the expectancy effect. There are certainly cases of people being dosed, let's just say, with LSD and any number of Incarnations and they

end up tripping their faces off even though they hadn't planned on spending the rest of their evening in the seventeenth dimension, right? So I should also add just a quick note related to the smoking of The Benisteriaps is copyrighted. bark with mushrooms. I've never experienced that. I find that actually

Incredibly. I'm not recommending it for all of the drug disclaimers and everything else, please revisit episode one, but I will say everything we're discussing Or a lot of what we're discussing can go terribly sideways. Even if you are highly experienced. So we're not recommending you do any of these things, talk to your medical professional, et cetera, et cetera. However All of that having been said, I find what you did more interesting than, say, what someone did who I may or may not know, which is ingesting harmine or harmaline or tetrahydroharmine orally in combination with ground

Sosope mushrooms where you you hit the tennis ball or you hit the golf ball more accurately and you can't unhit it. Mm-hmm. And in that case, just for people wondering, The multiplier effect. on the subjective experience of mushrooms is about a a three to four X. So if you were to take one point five grams of mushrooms and combine it with the MAO

Inhibitors in this way. This sort of subjective feeling is the intensity of four point five, let's just say, grams. You want to be aware of that. But the smoking is super interesting because you can titrate that additive effect up or down. Mm-hmm. Which is the same reason why I found my experiences, some of my experiences with intravenous ketamine very interesting. versus intramuscular, for instance.

Because In real time, you can dial up or down the intensity, assuming you haven't pushed yourself through the looking glass with a huge bolus in the very beginning. In that case, forget about it. All bets are off. But if you're starting at A dose And a drip on a pur kind of milligrams per kilogram basis over sixty minutes.

That you can manage. a conversation with, then you can kind of dial it up and down. Which is extremely, extremely interesting because you're able to better observe The effects at least. Like you say, all the caveats, you know, about

Being careful with Anything like this. Anything you're doing. I think that one should be careful. One thing about the mushroom smoked That a stereopsis. thing is that it does seem very gentle, very easy to control. Again

Your results may vary, you know, your mileage may vary. Everybody's different if you're super sensitive. I've always been a little puzzled why people would want to combine beta carbolades with mushrooms, you know, because they don't require it. They're orally active. That's what sets them aside. That's what sets psilocybin aside. Apart from DMT. It does not require Activation by a monoamine oxidase inhibitor.

And I'm a person that tends to think Avoid combinations if possible. Because every drug you add into the mix Complicates The pharmacokinetic picture and everything else.

Potentially makes it A little more hazardous. So I To the people that say, Well I can take A gram and a half of mushrooms and potentiate it with began harmula.

And get A much higher effect, my question as well. Why not take four grams of mushrooms and let it go with that? You know? Because you're getting that is a much More straightforward approach. Yeah, you'll get to the same place. But this idea about titrating dose is interesting, you know, that's another

approach to DMT that you can take that's interesting, which I haven't worked with it that much, but vaping DMT in a volcano vaporizer. I've had some of the most profound experiences with DMT. that way because you don't have to m mess around with the pipe. You just get the bag full of smoke and then you can deal with it.

If you put Under your tongue sublingually. A little bit of banisteriopsis tincture. Like ten minutes before you do this. Then you can smoke.

the vapor in DMT and again you get this ability to Just gently rise up. into the place and you can kind of maintain that for a while. And then you can sort of drift back down and then you can take another hit and you can go back up there. But you feel this sense of

It's it's very much less threatening. You don't feel this sense of being out of control. You just take three huge hits of DMT it's It's kinda like, you know, okay, we're jumping off cliff here. Open the umbrella, hope for the best. But this is a much more controllable way to approach it. And if it gets scary, well you just

Let yourself down gently and come in for a gentle landing. And if not You can go to twenty eight thousand feet or fifty thousand feet or All the way into orbit if you want. If you you know, so I guess If there's a point to this rep.

Yeah. Rou and dosage and the way that you approach that is gonna That's part of the dynamic, you know, of the set setting. Drug. individual setting and

Dose. And that includes row. Of administration. Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is brought to you by Athletic Greens. I get asked all the time what I would take if I could only take one supplement. The answer is invariably AG1 by Athletic Greens. If you're traveling.

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I have not surprisingly a whole slew of questions that I'd like to ask. And I'm trying to sequence them so we can g in some rational way because I think some could engender just a whole new branch of the conversation. Let me start with one that I've heard you And I just love your help. We're probably gonna get into like phylogenetic trees and all sorts of stuff. But I heard someone talking not too long ago, and they said something along the lines of

Well, if you look at the Fact that we have cannabinoid receptors in our brain. Why else would we have those if it weren't For the fact that we were designed to consume cannabis. You know, something along those lines. I think the logic was was something like that. How would you explain

the prevalence or existence of receptors for these various types of molecules. I mean we could use Is it cannabinoids, is that how you say that correctly? Not even sure if I'm pronouncing it correctly. What would your response to that be, or if you're sitting at a dinner table and someone brought that up, where would you take it? I think it's not that complicated actually. The fact is so we have cannabinoid receptors in our brains. And we have we actually have cannabinoids in our brains. We have these these prostagland like compounds called enandamines.

And other types of things. These serve effectively There. Our brain's own cannabinoids. Similarly you see this with opiates, you know. Opiate receptors in our brain bind to these opiate peptides like endorphin and dinorphin and

And those sorts of things. And they just happen to bind two. The alkaloids from opium. And have that effect. Similarly with serotonin receptors or dopamine receptors.

All of these have their own endogenous the term is in endogenous ligands, and Obviously for serotonin receptors there serotonin is the endogenous ligand. But interesting new findings, Tim, show formerly there was a lot of There was excitement, there still is excitement about Indogenous DMT. You know, and it's all related to the pineal gland and that sort of thing.

Not so much. The current understanding is that the pineal is not so important. But DMT occurs in the brain, in certain parts of the brain. in rather high amounts in the frontal cortex, and this hasn't really been Discussed or studied as much as it

Sure. My friend John Chavez says gotten into this in rather deeply. So DMT is an endogenous like and DMT is a very simple molecule that's only two steps from tryptophan, which isn't everything. Which is one reason why you find DMT in

Plants, animals, fungi, I sometimes in my lectures say nature is drenched in DMT. It's not uncommon at all. Oh how did this come about? Well it came about Because these neural transmitter light compounds

found in the brain are also found in plants and fungi and they have similar Еволюшний орз, байсиклі, а са пои. The fungi, the animals, and the plants split off from each other. There's this concept of the Luca, you know, the last universal Common ancestor.

Which was Nobody knows what it was, but we know that it had to have existed. And probably it Already had the genetic machinery to make these neurotransmitter like compounds and

And just like neural transmitters in the brain What they do is they facilitate signaling, their signal transduction molecules. But plants and fungi and everything else use Very similar molecules. Sometimes the same molecules

For signal transduction. processes In the ecosist. Plants modulate their relationship with other organisms in the environment through signal transduction.

And these messenger molecules the plants make These sort of They're called secondary compounds. And that implies that they're not important. They're absolutely important.

Plants substitute biosynthesis for behavior. Plants. modulate uh optimize their relationship with everything in the environment'cause they can't respond. They can't run away. Right. They're stuck in one place. So they do it through chemistry.

And sometimes this is like my usual rap, but Sometimes the message is very simple. Stay away. Get away from me, I'm poisonous, you don't want to muck with me, you know? Other times the message is Come closer. Let's symbiose. Let's form

Relationships All of this is mediated by these signal transduction processes. Which is a special kind of of signalling process in organisms that involves a receptor and a molecule that comes from Somewhere outside or f some other part of the brain. And actually binds into that.

Receptor. Physical molecular interaction, that's what I mean by signal transduction. As opposed to say electrical Nervous transmission. Which also takes place. That's the mist it's not really a mystery. It's we evolved from the same origins.

Not surprising that our brains have neurotransmitter like compounds that Yeah. resemble those we find in nature. And the interesting thing is something like psilocybin. is a good example. Phylogenetically, we're pretty sure that psilocybin's been around for

At least seventy five million years, the higher mushrooms, the basidiomycides. are very old, long before there were animal nervous systems for them to interact with. But then animals did evolve and they Turns out they have interesting Effects with Silocybin. What was Silocybin doing in nature before them. Well, probably insects. It had to do with insects that it was either an attractant or repellent.

More likely of attract it. And there are some interest We could go down that rabbit hole. Go into the go into the bar for the local insects. Right, yes. Effectively yes. I mean you've heard of the psic and uh cicada story, right? No.

I have not. Oh well How did I miss the Sil Simon Cicada's story? Sounds like a punk band. It does, really. Well I don't know. Do you want to go into it? I do. Yeah, of course I do. You kidding. Came out. A few years ago. You know, so cicadas are those

things that spend like seventeen years underground and then they come out every seventeen years or Different species come out at different times and so on. Well, it turns out I should be able to quote more detail, but if you Google this it'll all come up. So Cicada, there's a fungus, which is not a Silosope. It's called massospora is the fungus, but it makes psilocybin.

And it makes cathinone, which is a stimulant compound. That's found in cart. It's found it's the stimulant uh found in cart. Well, Masaspora infects these cicadas. While they're in the ground. And it they take it over and when they emerge out of the ground Essentially their abdomen has been replaced by Fungal Sparangia.

This is kind of a grisly tale, you know. They emerge out of the ground and instead of having A but basically Their tail is is replaced by these massive spore masses. And They're hypersexual. They try to mate with anything that moves or even that doesn't move.

And they're waving around their butts and spreading spores everywhere. Infecting more sycades and and this is how the fungus Effectively the fungus has taken over the cicada. And enslaved it into a Turn them into sex crazed zombies, if you want to put it that way. And facilitate

Also a good punk rock band. Sex craze zombie. Yes. Also, and this is this is actually known in mycology. There's another group of fungi called the Cordyceps. You've heard of cordyceps. Yeah, cordyceps. Same thing. You know, I mean they don't use psilocybin, but they infect something like an in an ant or a caterpillar or many, many kinds of insects. Many kinds of Species of cordyceps. And they effectively will take over the insect's brain. And

direct its behavior. For example in ants. There are certain kinds of ants. The fungus will infect the ant. Doesn't kill it. But it.

causes it to climb up a blade of grass. to the optimal position for spore dispersal Then it kills it. Then it will explode out of its head with sporangia. And the spores will spread.

Fall to the ground, infect more ants. So Effectively these cordyceps are are taking over the behavior of the ounce. Maybe Silicon is doing something like that to us, except they don't have to Infects our brain.

Ha ha. We happen to like it, so we consume it. Yeah. We're serving the Silas evil agenda, which isn't so evil. It basically wants to reproduce and spread. Nature has some crazy shows sideshows out there. I mean I pulled crazy shit, I pulled up. I just searched Cicada psilocybin.

And the first thing that pops up is an article and the headline is These fungi drug cicadas with psilocybin or amphetamine to make them mate nonstop. The insects keep at it even if chunks of their abdomens fall off. And the uh the fungus is apparently massosporus sicadina, I think it is. I'm probably mispronouncing that. But there are also cases, you know, mammalian cases, I can't recall the exact disease. I should actually be able to recall this, but it causes rodents to become Suicidal. In the sense that they become aggressive towards cats and effectively bait them.

And then the cats eat the rats or the mice and They contract this disease, which then has effects on cats. I mean, it just goes on and on and on. So nature's got a lot going on. It's got a lot going on and and from a standpoint of like human Ethics? This seems bizarre and crazy and actually evil, but it's not, it's just This is nature. Nature in action and and uh

Things try to optimize their survival strategies and for fungi. Spreading and sporulating and all that. That's all they really want to do. That's what they want to do. If you want to s attribute a desire to them. They're optimized for reproduction and they'll do anything. They don't care if They have to take over primates and control look at how Silicybans Symbiosis. It lost to be symbiosis with humans.

has been beneficial for us. For them and for the mushrooms because everybody's growing them. They're growing'em all over the place. And that's true of many plants and fungi. If you domesticate something generally, if humans domesticate. A plant. Or fungus.

That's like going on easy street for the organism, because we're here to take care of it. Until we blow up the planet completely entirely, but until then they have a pretty good free ride about it. Anyway. So let me ask you a question about a comment that you made in uh the Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss about LSD is a potential treatment for dyslexia. Now I don't have all the context, but I pulled this out. And this is gonna lead to a broader question about

Perhaps unusual or unexpected applications uh or indications for psychedelics, but this section here reads it did lead me to speculate about the use of LSD as a potential treatment for dyslexia. We have a limited understanding of neuroplasticity to say nothing of how psychedelics might affect it. So of course I've omitted an anecdote hints at the curious link between psychedelics and language, as do the more prevalent accounts of synesthesia I've discussed earlier. And then I'll actually read one more sentence. Psychedelics have some fundamental relationship. To the way our brains create meaning and understanding out of sounds and images. Convinced that further investigations into this phenomenon would yield new insights. Could you expand on that? Because I

would agree certainly with the assertion of this fundamental relationship. Any thoughts on LSD specifically is perhaps a tool for addressing dyslexia or psychedelics for any other indications that people might not guess. The connection to LSD and language and I think even more so with mushrooms because uh you're probably familiar with an essay I think by uh Henry Munn

That was published in a book called I think it was by Peter First called Hallucinations and Culture. This was around nineteen seventy. There's a wonderful chapter in there called The Mushrooms of Language. It's by Henry Munn. And it makes the point. And again, like I talk about this in the Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss, it makes the point that in this be mushroom state the poetry, the language becomes much more fluid. It just sort of flows out of you. And that's why

These people can chant for hours and they're actually instantiating The mushroom is speaking through them. You know, this gnosis literally this The logos is the word, the true

The pure logos actually flows through them. And then there's the phenomenon of synesthesia. Which psychedelics especially mushrooms can reliably do. And you know I've the association with meaningful images with with sound. Some people

are naturally genetically synesthetic. It's very interesting how their synesthetic experiences Often have to do with words and numbers. And Things like that. Um they'll say things like, Well

The number thirteen is chrome shaped and spiky. Shiny and spiky. What? But for them that's a reality. And I think

You know, I've argued that mushrooms well I have terraps have lots of people have that mushrooms were important in the origin of consciousness, so I think that It is this connection to language that you know consciousness What we understand as true consciousness depends on this

construction of this worldview essentially and that's built on language This artificial reality that we construct for us for ourselves that's a combination of Sentry input. that is filtered and processed in a certain way and linked to associations, memories All of that kind of thing, so we build this

What? The neuroscientist now called the default mode network. Which is kind of ordinary consciousness, our ordinary state of consciousness. Long before I heard of the default boat network, I was calling it the reality hallucination.

Effectively we live in a hallucination. We live in an artificial world. reality that our brains construct. And it must reflect whatever is out there because we're not wandering around stepping in front of buses and things like that. So it does map to reality in some ways. But it's

a it's actually an impoverished version of reality. What the a lot of what the brain does is filter things out. You know, and Huxley had this insight. He talked about the reducing valve. that you know, to make the world comprehensible you have to selectively filter

What Gets in. You inhabit this filtered almost use the word curated version of reality. Otherwise it would just be a blooming buzzing confusion. You wouldn't

Be able to navigate. And then you can take a psychedelic, you can disable those mechanisms you could disable this default mode. mechanism. Open the gates of the reducing valve.

And That can be very beneficial. In terms of helping you get outside of your reference frame. And that's very useful. I think that that's what psychedelics I think that's where the therapeutic effect really for many of the things it's indicated for, it's this ability to step outside your reference frame temporarily.

and look at your situation from a different perspective. But you wouldn't want to be there all the time. Right, because you wouldn't be functional. That's again why You have to be very selective about your set and setting. It's a complex topic because I think it does relate to the way

That we link imges. essentially internal images to Sounds and Meaning. Because

I'm here rapping to you. And I'm making effectively small mouth noises. Which are inherently meaningless. Except that we happen to share language. And so when I make these small mouth noises Chances are your brain is reflecting it in terms of

Images. I say chair, you see a chair. I say star, you see a star. I mean it's more complex than that, but I think That's the basis of cognition. Really. And and if you look at Culture if you look at if if you look at consciousness, it's all based on this relationship between

Sound Image and and meaning or what they sometimes call portentousness. Yeah, an ascribed meaning, right? It's a learned Association.

That is not automatic, right? I think about this a lot with Yeah. say infants and language, and I'm sure there's someone who could comment on this much more intelligently than I can, but When

an infant, let's say before they develop full depth perception and so on, if they were to look at what's in front of me, they wouldn't see laptop, webcam Microphone. wood table, et cetera. pile of papers as discrete objects until they have Likely, uh, at least not to that level of fidelity until they have labels for those things. Right. It might just be

A flattened sort of two dimensional sheet of colours and shapes and shadows. I think about that quite a bit also as You mentioned in the last episode that you've Done.

Who knows how many sessions with ayahuasca, you know, five hundred plus and It does seem that people develop some people develop an ability to discern and see in those spaces in the same way that an infinite

Sort of. develops the ability to To discern between these discrete things that we have labels for as adults, if that makes any sense at all. I'm not sure if that resonates at all. But I do think about that a lot. And I wanted to come back to something you said, which was You know, adopting a new reference point.

And how that can be applied to many different say conditions or issues. And in some ways Yeah, a lot of the outcomes that we see, or even the case studies that we might see in the case of this person with dyslexia or Andy Weill with his allergies, right? So defy

conventional mechanistic explanations for how that could happen, right? Like as far as I know, LSD is not an antihistamine, right? So it raises all sorts of questions. And I wanted to read this is gonna be uh the last section that I wanted to read to you and I realize that the Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss was written quite a while ago. So if this goes to a dead end, I'll take the blame for it. But I pulled this out, which was a segment on Apollo fourteen. It's this is another example of reference point changes. So Apollo 14 is mostly remembered for the two golf balls that Alan Shepard hit with a makeshift club he brought with him. It was also the mission on which and this is the part that I bolted Astra Edgar

Mitchell, I'm guessing that's how that's said, had his famous Savikalpa Samadhi experience or mystical glimpse beyond the self into the true nature of things. Mitchell subsequently became interested in consciousness research, paranormal phenomena such as ESP, and went on to become a founder of the Institute of Noetic Sciences or ions. What happened to Edgar? I don't actually know this story. I think he had a mystical experience, basically. And this was in space while he was in orbit. Yeah, or on the moon, whatever, but I think

You know, we know these things happen spontaneously. I think basically he He got so far out of his reference frame. You know, and who wouldn't be out of their reference frame if they're on the moon or in space, right? And so he had a spontaneous mystical experience, you know. We are all one with the cosmos and all that. Now if he'd been on psychedelics at the same time, he might have really But

I I think that's what happens, you know. And so that speaks to the the idea that This ability to step literally outside your box outside of this default boat network is Probably.

At the center. of the psychedelic experience, at least in terms of It's therapeutic effect and its profundity, if you will, the the mystical experience or However you want to describe that, you know. I mean I mean Roland Griffiths and his people

even though they're the pioneers in looking at suicide and mystical experiences, but they really tone it down because they don't want to alarm people, you know? I mean they talk they don't talk about mystical experiences anymore. They talk about Personally meaningful experiences. Well That's nice. Mm.

They're They're mystical experiences, dammit. I mean they are They are experiences of transcendence, and it's important, I think To acknowledge that. Oh, I agree. I mean they did also develop the I'm probably getting the terminology wrong, but the sort of mystical experience questionnaire which had like the parameters and characteristics which include ineffability and so on.

Right. And some people just get this naturally. I mean, for example, Albert Hoffman. Albert Hoffman. Had Numerous what you might call

quasi or actual mystical experiences in nature. Long before he took LSD. I did not know that. He was a person who was able to do this and it was very meaningful for him. So for people who don't have any contacts, Albert Hoffman The first to synthesize I guess LSD twenty five was that the That was the one that got him off, yes. That was the one that he was called to take before he went on his bike ride. That's right. That's right.

Yeah. There's a wonderful book I should mention. You know what? Like to plug books, I guess others have written you've probably read it called Bicycle B Day by Brian Blomorth. I've heard of it. I haven't read it. It's a uh graphic novel. It's a

Graphic comic novel about His discovery of LSD. I wrote the forward. Oh, amazing. But it's a great book.

People should get it. Bicycle Day. Yeah, bicycle. I also wanted to mention a book that is related to a word and a concept and an experience. A phenomenon. Or phenomenon, I guess, that it's really a set of phenomena. Uh synesthesia. So there are two resources I want to recommend. The first is a book that I first bought in I want to say late high school called The Mind of a Nemanist. So the mind of

as in mnemonic device, the mind of a nemanist, a little book about a vast memory, and it's written by A. R Luria. Or maybe it's with a foreword by uh yeah, Jerome S. Brunner, written by A. R. Luria, but it's effectively a case study. Uh A Rain Man like figure.

who experiences regularly experiences synesthesia, so this intermingling of the senses. So as you mentioned, identifying numbers as shapes or smelling colors. Mm-hmm. Having tastes associated with musical notes or sounds, things like this, which can be either And in some cases both.

An enormous blessing, or The Most difficult curse. Yeah. If it is something that you can't turn off. That's one. There's also a uh I want to say a documentary or may have been a TV series called Brain Man.

Uh young Brit, or at least at the at the time was young. who experiences or claims to experience Synesthesia as I understand it. Also fairly controversial, Daniel Tamat is the figure in this one.

But still makes for a fascinating watch and I think it's Kim Peak, the actual basis for Rainman, who is also featured in that book. who, uh, believe it or not, can read Two pages at the same time, one with each eye. So try that at home and see how far you get.

Right. But those are two points on synesthesia. What I'd love to ask you about Now is ESPD fifty five. So we should probably Also provide some context, maybe you can do this, what ESPD stands for, and just a bit of the history for those who don't have it and didn't hear the first conversation. Sure. And then uh I would love to Sure you

Describe some of what is going to be discussed. The why. To do it, et cetera. Sure. Because as you know I have a collection of these sort of historical anthologies already. ESPD is stands for

Ethno Pharmacologic Search for Psychoactive Drugs. And in nineteen sixty seven The National Institute of Battle Hill sponsored a Conference in San Francisco By that name.

And it was a closed conference. The only thing the taxpayers ever got out of it was this book that they published, The Proceedings Of the conference. Well somehow or other That came onto my radar at the age of eighteen. And you know, the next year, the year after the conference was done, it was

Somehow I got it. And it opened up the world for me of ethnopharmacology. Well, the government staged this conference, published this book. They were supposed to Have follow up. evance every ten years or so to keep abreast of what was going on in the field.

Well that never happened. The war on drugs came along, they that were embarrassed basically, they'd never done anything, even though you could order it from the US government printing office. For many years So I always wanted to Stage of follow up.

And fifty years went by. Circumstances never allowed that to happen, but in twenty seventeen everything came together. I had funding, I had a place, I had people to help me organize it. And you know, I wanna give a shout out to them because it wasn't me that did it. I had a lot of help. And so we did this.

this conference in twenty seventeen. We did ESP D fifty. This commemorative fiftieth anniversary conference. And we published the original Sixty seven volume together with the twenty seventeen volume. As a box set. You put the videos on

The videos are still up there, people can watch'em. And so now it's been five years, so we've decided to do a five year follow up. God knows if I'll be here in ten years. So you know we decided to uh do a five year follow-up, but that's what ESPD fifty-five is. The five year from the twenty seventeen conference, or the fifty-fifth year of the first conference. And That's the origin, that's the whole idea of it. The twenty seventeen conference was pretty much focused on ethyl pharmacology and sort of the unexplored

dark corners or you know, fringes of ethnopharmacology. In other words, the the idea is the search for psychoactive drugs. It's it's a quest We're doing that this year. We have some Really interesting topics. We have, for example, one person that's presenting on Psychedelics found in sponges and you know marine sponges and that sort of thing.

But we've also got a couple forums we have three forums that don't really fit into this pattern. One of them Is uh A forum on Coca. And the need to destigmatize coca, so we've got

Ca's a wonderful medicine as coca. Not as cocaine is horrible. Cocaine is Horrible drug. But cocaine. is beneficial and coca is Just at the center of Andeum.

traditions and medicine and all that. And potentially could be as a nutraceutical, as an herbal medicine, it could be very beneficial. And you know, there are all sorts of aspects'cause it give the people Who grow it. Who formerly were basically just told

By the cartels. Okay, you work for us now, if you don't produce it we'll just kill you. But give those Families mostly. economic benefits and bring coca back as a As a respected medicine. So we've got Wade Davis

participated in this. We've got Andy Wilde there Both of them a long time. advocates of coca as a medicine and a food actually, which it also is. It's very nutritionally beneficial. I want to take a second just to get into some of the logistics of ESPD fifty five. As a sidebar I'll just say the box set of books for ESPD fifty you can find online. You can find them on Amazon. They're beautifully done. I have them on my bookshelf. Absolutely. A joy to read.

For ESPD fifty five, people can find that at ESPD55.com. I'll put that in the show notes. And people can either attend in person in the UK May twenty third to twenty sixth this is twenty twenty two or they can attend online. Are those the two primary options that are available for folks? Yes, that's right. And less and less in person because it's rapidly filling up, basically the in person. But We tend to live stream it and when we did ESP D fifty we had at times we had seventy five thousand people. participated it. We hope to meet or exceed that benchmark this time. There will be another book. There'll be another there'll be a book that comes out of it. Only one this time, but it'll be

Also high quality and it will match the design and everything to the previous one so it'll look good on your shelf. and the person that dis that provided the art that amazing lovely watercolors that were incorporated into the design, she is uh there's a link to her website. She's selling Prints essentially print.

sets of about I think uh about a hundred of her illustrations that people can order if they wish. And they're beautiful. So Dennis, one thing I'd like to do to sell this event, if it's okay with you. And we can cut this out if it ends up. being more than you'd like to reveal, but I just wanna give some teasers for folks. I'm not gonna give away too much, uh or I won't give a lot of the specifics, but let me just give some other samples of sessions. Is that okay with you, Dennis?

Sure. Okay. So there's a there's a session on Kratom. A lot of people have questions about Kratum. Mitrigina speciosa, if I'm pronouncing that correctly, Mitrogenine. Fascinating, fascinating plant. I'm gonna put this in the Little gingerbread trail. So I'm not gonna fill in all the gaps, but a roadmap for sustainable development of ayahuasca production in the Amazon lowlands. Great interest to me. Psychedelic fauna. So to be distinguished from flora, I'll leave that alone. I won't go into that too much. Here's another a history of psychoactive plants and fungi in Chinese medicine. Something you do not hear in

uh at least much that I have at all in mainstream conversations. You mentioned marine sponges yield enhancing lessons from psilicin, which is what psilocybin is quickly metabolized into uh in the human body. I guess that's probably what Maybe first past metabolism through the liver. We've got hunting medicines among the Matsigenka, the Harpy's gift and the Jaguar's curse. Great title. Wachuma, phytochemical profiling Wachuma. Some people might know that as San Pedro cactus. Also very interesting to me personally from a

conservation and sustainability perspective because it grows so much faster than say peyote, which is which is endangered. Severely endangered. Very, very endangered. Added an anthra, we don't we're so uh I'm gonna leave that alone, but p if people have never heard that word, A, it's a lot of syllables, B fascinating history. I mean, there is contemporary use, but that's kind of beyond the scope of What we're talking about right this second. Uh establishing collections of sacred psychoactive medicinal plants. At Wasihuaska, that's in Florida.

You have some amazing speakers, I can just say not as as the leading expert in this field, but as someone who is certainly an avid consumer and spectator slash tourist, do read a lot. You have an outstanding roster of speakers. Here's one you don't see every day. Chemically induced otherworldly experiences of Zoroastrians in Iran. I mean Yes, please. Would love to be part of that. Incredible. I mean, where else are you gonna find that? Answer is probably nowhere. And it just goes on and on and on. So I'll leave it at that. I didn't even cover fifty percent of it. So there's there's a lot here

There are many documentaries, you have people who are very well known. We didn't get into his resume at all, but Wade Davis certainly, who's known for his books. Paul Stamets' Yeah, Paul Stamets. I mean the whole idea, you know, of the ESPD conferences is that They're out of the box in a certain way. It's not just the same stuff. I mean I'm happy that there are all these virtual uh meetings about the therapeutic uses of uh psilocybin and in PTSD and addiction I mean, that's important stuff. But there's a lot of duplication in some of these things. We wanna

Kinda stake out an area, look into the obscure corners but still important and kind of highlight the work that remains to be done. For example, the Wachuma project is very interesting. And I can claim a little bit of credit for it. The Person that's going to

Present. there primarily is uh A student of Wave Davis's actually in uh UBC. She's in the PhD program. And then her partner and colleague, a Peruvian gentleman.

Yo sirve. I Forget his last name, sorry, but they've collaborated on this. And when I was asked to be on Laurel

Lural Sunkton is her name. Has to be under her committee. I Asked them if they you know, asked her if she was interested in In the chemistry side of this, the ethnopharmacology side of it, not just the ethnography. And she

Indicated. That she was that this uh was interesting to her. So we hooked up With a investigator at the Albany College of Pharmacy who's developed an innovative way

non invasive way to sample plants and Do uh like phytochemical Fingerprints essentially. a quick way to look at the variation in the different varieties and species of this cactus. And then using mass spectrometry and other fancy tools.

Actually do a a like a phytochemical fingerprint of these different varieties and so on. So it's gonna be a very interesting Presentation that combines ethnography. Chemistry and pharmacology.

Yeah, and there's others like that. Michael is gonna talk about uh his work with the cultural key so species, Michael Coe. And then as you mentioned, the people from Icer's we've got two people from Icer that are talking about the whole issues related to Yeah. Unintended consequences of ayahuasca tourism.

Basically on the Depletion of the species and all of that and How do we address that? So I think it's gonna be a stimulating conference. It's gonna be long. So let me ask you this this might seem like a strange turn, but

I wanna ask you about life and death for a second, because you cracked a joke earlier. I'm not sure if it was totally in jest or serious, but you said I don't know if I'll be around here in ten years, so we're gonna do the fifth year new edition. If you're open to talking about it, I mean how do you relate to Death and mortality. How do you how do you think about that, relate to it? in in any way you'd like to take a stab at that.

Well You know, I relate to it in the sense that everybody has to die sooner or later. Everybody crosses that threshold sooner or later. And a lot of uh religious traditions and philosophical traditions and everything uh have to do with the focus on What happens after you die? Or when you die?

You know, from a scientific perspective I think The only answer the only honest answer is nobody knows what happens when you die. When you really die. There's lots of studies about the near death experience and all the changes that happens during the near death experience. Fact is that's not death.

So that is maybe a reflection of the stuff that happens to your brain while you're in the process of dying, but it is not in fact dying. Is there anything That persists after death? The honest answer uh I feel is I just don't know.

I'm open to the possibility. I hope there is, and but maybe not. It's a case of Be careful what you wish for, right? I mean, like Shakespeare said in that sleep of death, what dreams may come. Hopefully they'll be pleasant if there is something. Or hopefully If there is something after

Yeah. worthwhile experiencing and not just terrible. Or if there's nothing after death, if there's just oblivion. Well I won't be around to worry about. So So either way, I'm okay. I don't plan to check out soon. I hope not. I wanna be around for

ESP D f sixty and sixty five and seventy, but let's face it, I'm No spring chicken, I'm getting up there. I'm seventy one, I'll be seventy two. Later this year. So Not real old, but not real young either. So

What I do is I think that I kinda take a leaf from the people for example, that get psilocybin for end of life therapy, you know. Very often the insight that they get from that is, well, yes, I'm dying. But I'm alive now.

That's where I met. I mean we're all dying, him. Slowly, fast. Whatever. Important thing is we're alive now.

Make the most of it. That's what I think. So you certainly seem to be making the most of it. What are you most excited about right now? While you are alive. Which you are. Like what is giving you the most joy and aliveness these days? Could be anything.

I think a lot of us are really concerned with Things that are happening and the future looks pretty grim. In a lot of ways. But you do what you can. I think that giving in to despair

is not a solution for anything. And it's tempting. I mean you can just say Things are so bad. That there is no hope. But then If you come to that point.

Then there really isn't any hope. So you just keep plugging to the degree that I can, I keep plugging, and I've got Many people Oh Feel the same way.

Does any of it make any difference? I don't know. But like the Bionosis project is A good example. If we can slow down this this disappearance of knowledge and the

Disappearance of the habitats and the loss of species and all that. Just a little bit. I mean, compared to What other groups and organizations are doing, probably biologis is a small thing. But it's

It's our thing. It's what we're doing. But I think Maybe it'll make a little difference. So let me spell that for people. So Bionosis, just so we all have the spelling. It's B-I-O-G-N-O-S-I-S. Which a a made up word.

Bio life knowledge, you know. A a coi dwarf. Right. But that that's the idea. Yeah. And uh the people can find more about Bionosis Bridges to Ancestral Wisdom at Bionosis.Makinna dot academy and we'll link to that.

In The show notes as well. Let me come back to a second for Kind of slowing. the degradation and depletion of our Natural habitat. This

Sort of greenish blue marble. that is spinning through space with a bunch of monkeys on it who are making a whole whole mess of things. Busy making a whole mess of it. What is your current perspective on say synthetic options for psychedelic compounds in the sense that

I found an an older interview where you were interviewed by Nailed Magazine. And there was a bit of a discussion about, you know, synthetic slash freeze dry ayahuasca. And you mentioned how And feel free to revise this, but how you felt that it may be a psychedelic, but it's not ayahuasca because the ayahuasca experience begins when you taste it and the purging is potentially a feature. And not a bug.

I'd just be curious to know, let's say, in the case of ayahuasca. What do you think some of the most viable solutions might be? to Avoiding over harvesting. and endangering these various plant species is the

synthetic route, you know, creating farm awasca alternatives. Viable, attractive Unappealing. Ill-fated No, I I think we have to look at all viable solutions. For example Silocybutt, silicyb mushrooms.

don't really have that issue. I mean they're not endangered. They can be grown by megaton. So we're not gonna run out of psilocybin. And maybe if we wanna go with natural psychedelics, maybe we should emphasize those. There is a lot of Global interest in Silocybin. And ayahuasca is endangered, and Peyote certainly is endangered, and things like Eboga are endangered. On the verge of extinction. On the verge of extinction. And I think

Part of the solution is Number one, I think the community, the psychedelic community, to the degree that there is one. really has to step up and be responsible. And I I think that the community should seek consensus. For example, Peyote is a good example. The community Like these decrim movements that are happening across the country and in other countries and so on.

In general I'm in favor of them. But the indigenous people have asked Don't decriminalize PayOV. Let it be our thing. Well I disagree with not

decriminalizing it because uh fundamentally I think no plant, no organism should be criminalized. I think the very idea is is, you know, repulsive to me. But That said, the community can say Let's not criminalize it.

But let's protect it. And let's Develop a community. consensus that Okay. What just

Put Peyote behind a fence, we'll say It's the indigenous people's thing. We will not encourage on that. No we'll not uh We'll respect that and will avoid Using Peyote.

Some of these other things Wachuma for example Wachuma is a good source It's not endangered yet. It's much more abundant. It's easier to grow. That's a good alternative. We're at a point with Wachuma where we can use it responsibly. If we don't, then it too may become endangered eventually.

Ayahuasca is a very tricky one. I think that farmer was Fine, but it's not ayahuasca. It may have uses and that's It's a different drug. It's it's completely different than I have nothing against synthetics, you know, I think

Synthetics have their place. And I like to tell people synthetics are They're made by all natural organic chemists, right? So they come from nature ultimately. But What I would like to see happen if If it could is

Developing a over time developing relationships with indigenous communities To produce medicines like ayahuasca, but not encourage people to go to South America to take ayahuasca.

Encourage. These communities to produce them and Take the medicine to the people rather than people to the medicine. Develop ways that are legal. To export them.

to North America, Europe and so on and and Through D Crim. Establish centers where people can come and have these psychedelic experiences that are legal and safe and well structured and all that. And give benefits.

Back to the people who produce it, who grow it economically. Mm. kind of avoid the disruption of the culture that happens. when all these rich gringos come down there. to take ayahuasca and I mean I'm guilty. I've

organized lots of ayahuasca retreats. I'm not sure That I mean I've seen tremendous benefits for people that come to those retreats. But I've kind of evolved in my view of it, whether that is a actually a good thing. It is and it isn't.

And that's why D crim is important, but I think D crim has got to be Very uh thoughtful. You know, and and clear in in its approach to this. And say, Well you know, we're not gonna encroach on things like the boga.

And ayahuasca. Or do it in this way. Bring the medicines north rather than the people south. And that would transform communities as well. Both in both places. So that's kind of This is not something that's gonna happen.

Next week or next year this will take A decade or more and it depends on how the laws can be. Can be changed. There's nothing simple. There's nothing simple. And I I wanna ask you a number of questions about the psychedelic community, as it were, with community and quotation marks, perhaps. But before I get to that, I wanna take not not exactly a counterpoint, but just to add my perspective on peyote for a moment, which is, you know, I believe that it's effectively inevitable that Peyote is going to go extinct, even with

Current demand. By members of the Native American church. And uh very constrained production and distribution and also a lot of poaching. There are really only a handful of licensed peoteros who can distribute and there are abuses of the system even within these various kind of distribution channels.

I really do feel strongly that this is one of the last Shreds of Let's just call it cultural, though it's not true that pay what he was widely distributed prior to Quana Parker and and um other figures and initiatives, but It is so important to so many

North American indigenous People. And also I'm guilty in the sense that like I have had experiences with payote. I've been invited by the the people th who are traveling through the proper channels and nonetheless spending time with a little bit of time, not a ton, but a little bit of time with the board of the indigenous payote conservation initiative. It's a sad picture when you really look at it and you consider that, you know, these these indigenous groups generally are not going to want to consume payote that is cultivated in greenhouses, they're s almost certainly not going to be open to synthetic mescalin or San Pedro.

And just Let them have it. Is my feeling and if a way to Hedge against sort of Bad or chaotic. communal behavior is by

leaving that one regulated in the way that it's regulated. I'm okay with that, just because there are alternatives. for people uh who are who are seeking some type of mesculine or mescline. But that said, Tim. I agree with all that.

What is really wrong with cultivated peyote? You know, why can't they see that as a viable part of the solution, not the whole solution. It doesn't have to be wild. You know, I mean the the reasons that they're prejudiced against it.

Or that they don't want to use it is their spiritual reasons. They're not scientific or cultural reasons they could adapt. They could adapt to cultivated greenhouse, even tissue culture. these kinds of things. They could adapt to it.

But There has to be a little bit of give uh both sides for this solution. I hear you. I guess I'll just And again, uh certainly I w I wish we had some

sort of indigenous representation here to hear their perspective. It is, as you as as far as I understand, largely a Spiritual. matter a sort of a a cosmovision. Yeah. facet of the belief system and if it's not coming out of the ground, there are ramifications and that

Pay O D Derived from the greenhouse is not the same, et cetera. But I guess my perspective is there's so many battles to be fought. This one's a pretty easy give. Just let'em have it. Just let'em have it. Like if you live in Venice and you do like You're like into the Yogawaska scene and you have your green juice and you want to experience mesclin, don't do peyote. Just use something else. Let him have it. I'm all for it, but even if you let'em have it. It's still on the way out.

They'll still have the problem of the poachers. Yeah, they do. It's a mess. Yeah, it's it's really messy. And it's a shave. Because it doesn't have to happen. Yeah. I've spent time with a few I don't know if I'd they'd be considered botanists, but uh certainly scientists. Lives in Alpine, Texas. He spent

decades studying La Foffre Williamsey, I guess it is, and knows just the ins and outs of of cultivation also. But even if you were to have greenhouses, right? How long does it take to cultivate, even if you have the most advanced hydroponics or whatever you might use to accelerate the growth process? What are we talking? Ten years to grow a mature button? I mean, and in some cases fifteen, twenty. I mean, so even with greenhouses. You're facing incredible constraints on volume. So there is that. So let's let's talk about this if if you're open to it. Uh if you want to add something, please jump in. It's tough. I mean there's there's just no optimal solution for Ayoly.

And we're very impatient. We're a very impatient species. I mean would the indigenous people have the insight or the patience to say Let's just stop for ten years and work on developing the Wild populations. I mean And who's gonna administer that and who's gonna make those decisions.

You know, it's just one of those things where It's hard to find consensus. Everybody's got a different idea and we have a hard time listening to each other. So I wanted to I mean, this is maybe a a better conversation for like a few glasses of wine or a few bottles of wine, but let me throw this out there. So the psychedelic community, and I put it in quotation marks earlier. Maybe I'm just cantankerous and didn't get enough sleep last night, but The psychedelic community

or many components of it drive me absolutely fucking bananas. And I feel like it should be called the psychedelic in fighting Olympics because If you want proof that psychedelics do not automatically create a Kumbaya world peace, world of collaboration. Like you need not look very far. You just look at all of the infighting and kind of mutual crippling. In this

Space. Astonishing. It is it is just astonishing to see and Part of the reason this comes up for me A because I'm kind of immersed in it as uh as as many people are as you are, and it's so bad that I'm thinking about taking a little hiatus myself because it's so demoralizing for me to see the just absolute lack of And this is not across the board. There are many great people, there are many people who are clear, ethical

effective, but then they're surrounded for every one of those. I feel like they're just ten idiots running around like chickens with their heads cut off swinging machetes at everybody. This relates to A section in The Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss. So let me read something and and maybe we can I'll I'll let you grab the baton. So here it goes. In many ways, the diggers tried to actualize the best ideals of hippodim. Like most utopian communities, however, they found it difficult to make reality fit with the ideal. Inevitably they seem to founder on the recalcitrance of human nature. For every idealist who is ready to pitch in and work for the common good, there is an opportunist who wants something for nothing, or worse to grab power and bend it to his or her own.

ends. And then dot dot dot dot dot dot trying to run an egalitarian community in a dense city is a challenge under the best of circumstances. And every here's the part I I highlighted for myself. And Every community that aspires to be spontaneous, to thrive without leaders or hierarchies, must confront the vacuum it creates for the power crazed. Yeah. I think that describes where we are today in so many different microcommunities within the psychedelic

larger quotation mark community and quotation. Maybe you can just talk me off the ledge. I you know, we're monkeys, Tim. Ultimately we're monkeys and monkeys squabble and monkeys look for opportunities and you could look at any spiritual practice or any church Eastern religion, astrams, all of that.

You know, I think any time they're dealing with a spiritually powerful Technology. Which psychedelics are Or other religiouses are communion in the Catholic Church, uh meditation and yoga in in eastern traditions.

You know, these can also be used to control people, to control people's behavior and and in that context there's always some Power mad person, almost always a male. Who

Sees an opportunity to the levers of power to their own Good. And it's usually the motivations are I mean

So boring. And so disappointing, but basically they're usually the same thing. It's usually about the chicks and the money. I mean I'm sorry. But that's what it's about. Right? And people are motivated by those things and this idea that uh You know, psychedelics will effectively, yeah. You know, psychedelics are gonna dissolve the ego and turn us all into bodhisattvas and we'll all be kind and harmonious to each other.

It's just not gonna happen. You know, I mean it could, but we have to evolve into it, it seems like. And you have to be sincere about it. There are always people Who are looking for an opportunity to

exercise power of one sort or another financial social or otherwise and psychedelics are not immune to this. You and I know I know lots of people who take lots of psychedelics. They're still assholes. And it doesn't it's not a cure for that.

It can help you Again, step out of your reference frame and look at your situation. You may have a revelation and say, Oh God, I really am an asshole. I need to change my my whole, you know, behavior. Many people are not interested in changing. So frankly, I don't know what to What to say what the solutions are.

It all has to do with where the moral compass comes from. You have to have Some kind of an ethical framework that you work out of and it has to involve Empathy, I think, is a big factor. And Just respect for

Other humans. Um it can be It's rare. I mean, and I think psychedelics can be effective tools for learning this. If you're a sociopath, it's probably not gonna help you. I mean that was re S Shaw and I respect it very much I asked him who would he not give such Uh ayahuasca too.

And he said, Well then basically there are two kinds of people that I would never give it to. One is schizophrenics. Because it's not gonna help them and the other is sociopaths because it's not gonna help them either. Well I would go so far as to say you could probably make both of those worse, right? Exactly. Like throw them again dash them up on the rocks of chaos, and then the sociopath might just come back and say, I just need to do ten times more than we'll Yeah. Of what I'm currently doing. Or they come back with some messianic delusion, you know. I have to save

I have to save the world, you know. I alone can fix it. Something we have to evolve beyond. I think that uh Psychedelics are are co evolutionary partners. I think that they help us become Better people.

But You have to work at it. Right, like any. kind of spiritual, moral, ethical development. You're not gonna make it unless you actually

Try and believe in it. And nobody succeeds a hundred percent. I mean there are plenty bad things about me, that's for sure, that I don't share with everybody, but I know what they are, you know? It's just tough. It's just tough to be a kind and gentle and and insightful and wise person. That's kinda what we're here for, though.

I think. Uh yeah, what a world. Well, it's discouraging. I mean uh part of me wonders because I'm still All things considered, even though I've been very involved for the last whatever six to eight years kinda publicly

New to the scene. And I wonder you know of the of the more senior guard. Uh, if you're looking at everything that's happening and you're optimistic, if you're like if you look at it and you're say, Well, yeah, a lot of shitty stuff is happening, but like we've seen this before. It'll shake out. And hopefully we won't have the executive order to put everything back on schedule one and shut everything down, which is not an impossibility, right? And nor is it is it a solution. You know, that's not a solution. No.

You know. So I I think yeah, I I think that uh You know, we get caught up in the dynamics of the moment too. I think we have to Step away, take the thirty thousand foot level.

perspective and realize that these things are really co evolutionary partners and We've been co evolving with them well, pick your time, maybe for a couple million years, you know, if we believe the Stone Dape theory, which I do, basically. I I think it's credible. I mean we don't need to get into that. But for a long, long time we have co evolved ineffectively in symbiosis with these plants. So they've been sort of nudging us along

On this very difficult path We're midway between the apes and the angels right now. We haven't reach haven't reached the angelhood yet. We're still suspended. But the thing is these these dynamics, these are really biological processes and they They play themselves out over millennia. Of time.

So You know, what's gonna happen in the next ten years, the next fifty years. That's a very s small slice of time I feel that we're always gonna have the relationship with these plants. You know, a as long as Number one, we don't drive them into extinction. Number two, we don't drive ourselves into extinction.

All of these caveats, you know, but hopefully They will be around for us to learn from and boy do we have to learn. We have a lot to learn still. It's a slow process. So let me ask you just a few more questions, uh Dennis, and then we can we can also cover anything you'd like to cover that I haven't brought up. Uh but let me ask you because I don't think I asked you last time. If you could only have two and this may not be the right adjective, so we can change the question, but if you could only have

Too psychoactive. Plants slash substances. For the rest of your life. What would you choose? And I'm gonna Make a few allowances here. So number one

You can have caffeine. Caffeine's a freebie. You get the good. Okay. So yeah, so you don't have to pick that. And then uh for the sake of simplicity, we'll consider Common. Cocktails, let's just say, like ayahuasca will consider that a single plant. So if you and uh this this can include synthetics.

It could certainly include things from the the natural kingdoms. Which which two would you choose? So I only get to choose two. That's right. We could start with three if that's easier, and then we we'll pair it down to two. I like to I enjoy asking people this question. Mushrooms would definitely be one.

One of those. I think cannabis would be one. Which I don't use as much now as I used to but I do use it. I

Think of it as a beneficial Plant ally. And just in terms of my current state of health and all, I think those two Ayahuasca would Pro I I'd like to also have access to ayahuasca.

You know, so What do you find the benefits of cannabis to be for you, or what are the the ways in which you use it? I think it just reduces stress. It helps me relax. It helps me Sleep. and calm down and and it's good for insight. I think it's good for

Writing, for example. Just a general bomb to the spirit. To the sense. B-A-L-M, that kind of thing. A nurturing My brother call Cavabus Sister Mary Redemptress. And if

Kinda like that. That's great. It's kinda like that. Benevolent loving Feminine. Medicine. Do you typically smoke? Is that uh your preferred means of consumption? It has been, yeah.

Yeah. I have tried vaping, I've tried edibles, neither one of those works for me. But my cardiologist I now have heart conditions that I have to worry about. So my cardiologist said Don't smoke whatever you do. No matter how much no matter what you're smoking, like

So I tried that for a while and finally I decided I tried vaping. And that was actually harder on my heart than it was smoking. So what I do is I smoke. tiny amounts in one of those cigarette looking things and Seems to work. I mean it's sort of like I told my cardiologist, I said, Well, yeah, I can avoid all these things, but you know, I'd have to live, right? I mean if if I die smoking cannabis, okay, so be it. You know? Do you have uh any preferred I'm no cannabis expert, but are you do preferred strain anything along those lines? No, not really.

I'm from an era long before any of that made sense. If it's cannabis, if it works. I'm fine with it. Yeah. You know, I I will say that

I've only in the last few years really had proper exposure to cannabis, which take a while to unpack. What the hell I mean by that. But I have a few novice takeaways are number one. I'm actually really glad I discovered it very Late. relatively late in life because it could have been a real problem for me, I can tell.

And number two, the uh Two aspects, no three aspects that have most impressed me are number one The effects on sleep. Although It seems like you need to be careful so that you're not eliminating your REM cycles entirely. So it seems like you can certainly overdo it. But just in terms of turning down the the volume and speed of mental chatter.

so that I can sleep. It's it's quite remarkable. The second is how intensely it seems to improve again. I mean who knows? If someone were observing it, they might have a different perspective. But How intensely it affects and sensitizes my

Perception of music and production of music, say with percussion. Unlike anything else. Of course, the dose makes the poison, but at at reasonable doses without the distortion that might accompany even moderate, say, cellocybin use. Mm-hmm. And uh The third

Is How fucking strong cannabis is now. Yeah. I mean, compared to like the few puffs I had in high school. I had two puffs with a friend recently and I laid down on my bed, thought I was gonna have to skip dinner. And had full blown visuals for a good hour. I mean it was I could not believe

How psychedelic the experience was. Compared to many things that get lumped in. under the umbrella of psychedelics, like MDMA, which I don't consider a psychedelic, but my experience with really strong cannabis certainly I would say I'd be curious to hear your perspective would line up nicely with some of the descriptions of psychedelic experience. How do you think about that?

I think the I don't think of cannabis as a psychedelic either, really. for one thing, pharmacologically it certainly isn't, but I think with all these super strong strains that are available, you can get there more than before. I mean I've had that before before they had strong cannabis there was hashish, which was always a a favorite and you can get some pretty psychedelic

Places especially if you eat ash. Now people are having cannabis ceremonies and they're effectively psychedelic ceremonies. They're like ayahuasca sessions. And I haven't been to Ity, actually, but

But people do it. And that's kind of interesting because here is a legal, pretty much legal medicine that people can use that way. I'm I'm in favor of it. I think it's beneficial and there's no legal risk and These streams are out there, thanks to modern genetics, mostly.

So I so just a couple of things. So on the legal side, definitely check your local jurisdiction with uh listeners around the world. So check your your local restrictions or laws around these things. And I will also just add, because we're talking about a lot of compounds, a lot of different uses. that I haven't touched anything in

At least three months. So it's not like I'm walking around with a fanny pack full of drugs all day, hitting something every two to three hours. I haven't touched anything except for a few glasses of wine in the last three months. So you should also, I would say, as a not to be too like pedantic and Yes, Dad. Thanks for the advice, but I think it is important and helpful to abstain for periods of time.

For at least. the purpose of proving to yourself that you can do it. I mean, that's my perspective. But Dennis, is there anything else you'd like to mention, like to Comment on or add before we begin to to wind down this conversation? A couple of things. I mean we have pretty well covered

The basis that's just been great. You're very kind. to spend so much time on this, but one thing I'd like to mention, you've quoted a number of times from the Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss. People may be interested to know that there'll be a second edition coming out. Toward the end of the year. Oh no kidding. I had no idea.

Yeah, they're gonna reprint it. I've written a new chapter, so it'll be the old one, but I've written a new forward in a new chapter for it. Um sort of in that sense tried to bring it up to date because the book itself What it actually described ended in more or less with my brother's death in two thousand and then the book itself was published.

in twenty twelve. Well a lot has happened in the last twenty two years. So it's coming out. Synergetic has gotta We print it. A little

have this amended chapter to it. So that's one thing. The other thing that we Didn't really Yeah. into

And maybe it's It w when we talked about Bionosis, I don't know if people understand Exactly what we're doing. In a nutshell, what we're trying to do with this BioNosis project Which is a long term project and is actually gonna cost

Considerable money if we do it right. Basically two aspects to it in terms of this Knowledge recovery, knowledge. preservation and connection into science. One is doing this series of documentaries.

on Amazonian traditional medicine. The first documentary we have a short there'll be short documentaries. The first one Will be showing that ESP D fifty five. And Make it a big

pitch basically for support to complete the series, we conceive this as five So seven. thirty to forty minute documentary is the kind of Is a snapshot of

traditional medicine as it exists. Today in the twenty first century. In the Amazon. And That's one aspect to it, but then linked to that is this much bigger long term project. Has to do with

the herbarium in the quitos at the university in the quitos and Digitizing the herbarium It's got A hundred. thousand specimens. Only

Half those have actually been mounted. But what we want to do is make high resolution scans of those specimens. Put them online in an accessible database that anyone can access. And we actually have a an idea for creating a VR. using VR and AI technology to build

what we're calling the visionary rainforest. Which would be basically these collections distributed through this virtual space Just as a way of representing so people if they can't go to the Amazon, they can immerse themselves in the

Visionary rainforest. It would actually have information. Each of the collections. From the herbarium would be assigned to a place'cause they were collected some place, right? So you go into this virtual environment and there'll be nodes that represent

Each collection. You can click on a node And that will open up a whole link to many forms of information. Maybe information about traditional uses, about chemistry, about genomics, about All kinds of things. So make this a dynamic experienceable environment but make it have scientific validity as well. So this is grand vision.

And hopefully. Again, it will be a resource for anyone, for scientists especially, but Really anyone. That wants to Experience

The I mean the herbarium in the ketos is kind of a run down, gradually Eroding situation But it's a gem, it's an important resource, all these plants are there.

What a hundred and sixty thousand plus. Specimens something? Yeah, about a hundred thousand specimens all together. So we wanna make that a real thing and turn it into a world class resource. And the whole idea of this is I think it was Ralph Waldo Emerson who's the one who said the weed is a plant

whose virtues haven't yet been discovered. In that sense. Every plant is valuable and to the extent that we can link information about these collections to to them that gives them a value.

They don't need value from us to be valuable, but It gives them a value that we recognize. So we're gonna talk about this project. And it's going to involve working Very closely with The university there.

And they're all on board for it. It's probably gonna cost several million dollars to do this. But I think we can get the money. I think that people will see the value of it and step up and do it. And this is just In the overall scheme of things, it's just one little thing we can do to try to

Slow down what's happening in the Amazon because the Amazon is on fire. Along with the rest of the world and It's gonna go away. It will be lost forever if we don't do something about it in the next decade or so. And by we I mean humanity. We're just Our little academy of our little project is a small part of it, but maybe enough of a part of it to

The uh A catalyst in this. Yeah. Pretty much summarizes it. That this biomosis thing in terms of The nuts and bolts are these two components. One is using videography.

to document and preserve this knowledge and make it compelling for people. We wanna do a Netflix series or National Geographic, whoever will Take a look at it. And we want it to be something that people want to watch. And then this other project is obviously not separate from it, but

But it is a longer term and more ambitious thing of creating this Visionary rainforest that will live on the web and be accessible to people and benefit People in the Amazon and people worldwide that are interested in

in these Amazonian plants. That's the basic idea. And people can find more on Bionosis. I will include this link along with links to everything else in the show notes for folks. Bionosis B I O G N O S I S dot Mackenna, M C K E N N A dot Academy. And I'm sure if you just search Bionosis. McKenna on Google that it'll pop right up. And

I encourage people also to check out ESPD fifty five.com, another link that I'll include. If The Last two volumes are any indication and if the schedule

Is any indication This should be a fantastic event and cover a lot of ground that I haven't even touched before. And as a devout nerd in the space, I'm I'm both ashamed and excited that that is true. That's happening in the UK, May twenty third to twenty sixth, and you can also attend the live streaming. Online.

What I should mention, Tim, is one thing we'll we will be uh We're talking to Suner Chetic next week. So you'll be able to pre order The symposium volume for ESP D fifty five. Just and you can still order the old one as well. They still They still have that, so you can pre-order that there. Uh and the videos from ESP D fifty

are still online and they're open access and I'll send you that link and you can post that as well. So people can go back and Watch those videos. I think we've pretty well covered just about everything. You've been incredibly generous with your time. Life feels short sometimes, but it's also pretty long and If I'm not gonna spend time having conversations like this, what am I you know in a rush to do, go fold my socks. This is much more fun. People can find you on Twitter at Dennis McKennaThe number four.

We will link to that in the show notes as well. The website for your academy is mekenna.academy and The links to everything will be in the show notes, Tim.blog slash podcast. If you just search my name and Dennis McKenna, no doubt you'll find both of our episodes. And that will be very, very easy to source. So Tim.blog slash podcast. Dennis, it is so nice to see you again. Such a pleasure. It's always fun. This has been great fun. We just had an amazing rant here. This is lovely. Amazing rant. We have a number of punk rock.

band names we have a partial book title for your one of your next books, The Obscure Corners, which I like a lot. I took a note on that, which was drawn from something you said earlier. And all in all, just uh another extremely thought provoking Very, very enjoyable conversation. So thank you, Dennis. Thank you. And to everybody listening, as always. Thank you for tuning in, and until next time, be just a little kinder than is necessary. Take care of yourselves, be safe, and take care. Hey guys, this is Tim again, just one more thing before you take off, and that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week.

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